Today the President backed the FCC decision to release 500 MHz worth of unused television spectrum for use as wireless Internet connectivity in a memorandum. There are plans in place that will nearly double the amount of commercial spectrum available, and most will go to high-speed broadband Internet. At stake are the creation of many new jobs and even the country’s competitiveness.
Poor bandwidth access is also an issue of equality and social justice, as there are notoriously poor connections in much of rural America. Poor rural connectivity will strongly benefit from this move, and the high-speed ubiquitous connectivity will have a myriad of implications for society and for work in the field.
A great number of geospatial jobs center around fieldwork– whether it’s mapping assets, conducting a survey, locating and repairing things or responding to an incident. To date, the ability to check data in and out addresses some of this issue, but nothing matches real-time connectivity for the ability to communicate via maps.
This move is being touted as a ‘wireless broadband revolution’, and the stakes could certainly be that high. We’ve become used to high-speed Internet connectivity in our homes, and this service often tethers us to a computer and desk when we’d be more productive and effective if we were interactively exploring and interacting within the real world.
