Interesting little article on the front page of the WSJ today:
FCC Agents Trace Radio Interference to Doorbells, Videogames, Blankets
When Signals Interfere With Cell Towers or Radio Broadcasts, Agents Crack Down
These are all incidents that hams who pay any attention were likely already aware of. I do think it is sad that the writer decided to end the article with this quote:
The lights at Perfect Cuts in San Antonio came from General Electric Co., which in 2011 found some of its ballasts caused interference, a spokesman says. GE has offered to replace those ballasts free of charge.
Mr. Bethany says he initially declined GE's offer. But when an FCC letter after the agent's visit mentioned a possible $16,000-a-day fine, he swapped ballasts.
He still doesn't see why he needed to, given that his 18-year-old shop predates the cell tower. "I was here first."
Come now, Mr. Bethany. Were you using that spectrum for any useful purpose? Were you licensed to emit on that frequency? No? Then replace your damn illegally-emitting ballasts and be glad you didn't get slapped with a fine. What makes it even more incomprehensible is that GE offered to replace them for free. Other than being a jerk about it, what was your rationale for initially refusing that very generous offer?
The electromagnetic spectrum really ought to be viewed as a commons. If everyone took the attitude of Mr. Bethany, and the FCC wasn't willing to enforce its rules regarding the spectrum, what we would end up with would be a tragedy of the commons, in which we'd be lucky to be able to use our GPS/cell phone/wireless internet or other radio-equipped apparatus.
People tend to blame hams first when they experience interference, but from what I've gathered over the short time I've been a ham, hams are pretty good about keeping their emissions clean and out of ranges where their neighbors would have a complaint. The real problem today isn't hams using their licensed spectrum, but rather, it's the other way around, with unintentional and incidental radiators that for some reason have become a problem when they shouldn't be a problem (think all those "wall warts" you probably have plugged into your outlets that contain poorly-filtered switching power supplies), and intentional radiators like wireless phones that have for some reason encroached on bands outside of the ones they are supposed to be transmitting on.
Just last night I was wondering why I had S5 noise on 6 meters, and suddenly realized that I had probably screwed myself, because I'd recently replaced the 60W floodlight in the ceiling fixture over my shack desk with an LED equivalent unit. Sure enough, I turned the light off and the noise backed down to S2…
Anyway, we all contribute in some way to what has become an extremely noisy electromagnetic spectrum. Folks like Mr. Bethany who don't think they should have to come into compliance with legal restrictions on emissions don't seem to understand that if there weren't restrictions, the spectrum simply wouldn't be usable, and a lot of handy everyday tools that they've come to rely on would then become useless. And that would be the tragedy of the electromagnetic commons.
