Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy joined the COO from the Malaysian Communications and MultiMedia Commission on the program today at the RadComms 2010 Conference in Melbourne. Representatives of the Department of Communications and ACMA joined spectrum user stakeholders from all sectors of the broadcast and telecommunications industry at the conference.

Australian Communications and Media Authority chair Chris Chapman opened the conference, talking about key issues to be tackled in the coming year, such as access to wireless spectrum for mobile broadband, smart grids and smart infrastructure.  Ultra wide band functionality and motes were also on Chapman’s agenda as were crowd control weapons using microwaves.

This is some of what he had to say:

A little over four years ago, just as I joined the ACMA, we held a conference on Wireless Access Services (WAS) in Sydney.  That conference discussed an issue that still faces us today, the seemingly insatiable demand for spectrum for mobile broadband services.

Since that conference we have seen in the mobile broadband space the release of some spectrum in the 3.6 GHz space, the release of the final paper on the 2.5 GHz band and of course the Department’s Green Paper on the 700 MHz Digital Dividend…

RADCOMs is one part of our stakeholder engagement strategy that we believe truly supports our previously expressed intention to rejuvenate the international reputation of the ACMA as a leading regulator in radiocommunications management…

Now here we are at RADCOMS-2010.  I think the rejuvenation has come some way, but there is more to do. Again, we are looking at spectrum for a mobile world; however, this time we are talking about delivery. We have delivered on 3.6 GHz, we are in the final stages of delivery for 2.5 GHz and my staff are well down the track of planning for the Digital Dividend, both achieving it and getting it out there…

Spectrum is a topic that increasingly fascinates me. Yes, I was for several years the COO of a major broadcasting network and had responsibility for the broadcasting transmission facilities but, as they were really just broadcasting assets on an inventory sheet, I really knew nothing about that “invisible stuff” that came out of the end of that stick!……the antenna.

But I am getting there and recognise a clanger of a quote about spectrum when I hear one. Let me share with you my two favourites: “Why can’t we simply use the spectrum that follows the transport corridors” and my favourite, “Spectrum, it’s very important you know; apparently it’s all around us”.  Now the people who made these quipps were smart guys and of course both meant well but, like me a couple of years ago, obviously didn’t get it.

Let me explain. I think it actually takes a particular perspective to fully understand ‘spectrum’ because it has so many dimensions: it lives by the laws of physics, can be regulated by the laws of man, it appears in substance to be nothing at all and can never be used up, yet it has huge value to those that use it. 

Unfortunately many, even within the industry, take spectrum for granted, and neglecting these vital characteristics may well come back to bite them.

Recently I delivered a speech to the national Smart Grids Forum. In that speech, I spoke of smart infrastructure – not smart grids because smart grids are only one small part of what will ‘connect’ modern Australia in a decade or so’s time.  My salient message to the smart grid community in that speech is the same one I would send to all sectors in the communications industry: cooperate and standardise, otherwise you may find you don’t have enough spectrum with which to make those connections…

Our work is focussed on making connections in this increasingly distributed world, and this is a common thread in ACMA thinking and action…

The market and the myriad impact of technology and social changes are too large, diverse and changing too rapidly for the more traditional, fiat – style regulation to carry all before it. The reality is that the ACMA is more than a traditional ‘regulator’ and our work in the planning, allocation and management of spectrum is a perfect illustration of how we work well as a facilitator, as much as a pure regulator; our strapline is about us playing our role in the maintenance of this nation’s economic competitiveness,, about truly making communications and media work in Australia’s public interest. 

The challenge is that the spectrum used by many of the devices and applications featured in these science magazines must be considered and hopefully accommodated today; not a simple task when you consider the myriad of technologies that we know are vying for a place in the future, let alone the ones yet to be invented. So, if there are several related touchstones, they must be, flexibility and accommodation, / an accommodation based on an evidence – informed risk assessment…

Smart infrastructure means connected stuff, almost everything, connected in an information – processing network, and the ACMA and the spectrum we manage in Australia’s public interest has an important, facilitative role to play in connecting all this stuff together.

Last year at this conference I spoke of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), this is smart infrastructure.  I spoke of what it meant for travellers, for traffic and for the environment.  Without re – visiting that subject but on a related, connected note: what about the general infrastructure that these vehicles use – the roads, the bridges and the tunnels. How can we connect these, flexibly, adaptively and where possible reasonably close to real-time?

To be able to fix roads you have to know where the problems are.  It’s unlikely (but not impossible) that every stretch of road will be able to be fitted with sensors, so you use the next best thing to gather the requisite data.  Vehicles fitted with acoustic sensors can detect and report air pockets through the ITS infrastructure before they decay and turn into potholes and cracks.  These can then be fixed before they become a safety hazard.

Bridges too can be fitted with sensors to show cracking and fatigue.  This information can be relayed back via radio or fibre into the system so that remedial action can be taken before a failure occurs… 

And why limit it to bridges, anything you want to pass information about, the height of a river, the condition of land, or even livestock, could be transmitted to passing vehicles for later download into the ‘system’.

So, the simple concept of ITS opens up a Pandora ’s Box of possibilities limited only by the imagination of our engineers (be they road, automotive, software or spectrum engineers) and our scientists.

I mentioned acoustic detectors – of course radio technologies can also be used to detect things – Ultra Wide Band (UWB) is a recent development, revealing people or things moving inside buildings or even underground or through walls.  At the moment there are some weaknesses, but I discern from the articles that eventually the systems could be used to find hostages, people trapped in collapsed buildings or those buried underground, or as radars to prevent collisions between underground mining equipment.

Just recently my staff presented a paper to the Authority on spectrum access for Ultra Wide Band (UWB) devices, which culminated in its release last Thursday. An inevitable question arose: what else could UWB deliver?  Now that got me thinking. Again, my trusty New Scientist provided some insights, and I was surprised at what I found.

UWB can connect your TV monitor to your set top box or PVR without wires (perhaps that’s a no – brainer), it can be used by vehicles to detect threats ahead and by the military to transmit data at such a low power it is virtually undetectable. Of course, as seems inevitable, the bands proposed for UWB are already used by many other applications, and the ACMA engineers have worked hard to ensure the power levels UWB will operate at do not harm these existing applications and services. That is their job and I think they do it well.

On further reading, I have discovered some interesting twists: moving then from the Ultra Wide to the infinitesimally small, in the shape of things called motes.  No, not water – filled channels around castles; these are very small sensors connected together via radio, forming an ad hoc, flexible mesh network which can transfer the data they collect to a central point for processing. This would offer the opportunity to monitor structures with motes working at a micro-level in a mule-like fashion not unlike the macro-role for the vehicles I mentioned in the bridge scenario.

I learnt that engineers are already planning to mix motes with concrete before it is used in construction. Powered by a combination of vibration and long – life lithium ion batteries, these things will be able to report on the health of the structure they are part of, transmitting to each other over very small distances, eventually to a larger transmitter to the collection point.

And when it comes to Defence, I also reflected on the fact that not all radio-enabled or radio-based weapons are necessarily deadly, as the technology has a place in building an arsenal of non-lethal force.

The defence industry’s need for non-lethal, crowd-control weapons could be met through the development of a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aeroplane.

This technology uses microwave radio to heat the surface of the skin, causing pain without actually burning, hopefully causing individuals to leave the area.

At the heart of the new weapon will be a compact airborne antenna, which will be steered electronically and be capable of generating multiple beams, each of which can be aimed at individual targets while on the move.

In concluding, it is an essential part of the ACMA’s job to look over this horizon, to seek to grasp what is coming, perhaps sometimes to guess, so that we can facilitate the connection and transition between the spectrum solutions and applications that operate today and the exciting, opportunity–laden yet confronting totally inter–connected mobile world that is tomorrow.

But as well as this ‘over-the-horizon’ work, it’s also the ACMA’s job to do the hard yards in the planning and product packaging – the delivery. This may perhaps be where our harder edge, more traditional regulatory role is more apparent, but we always aim to be constructive in crafing flexible solutions that best balance commercial and national needs and the economic, social and  technological imperatives that we discern.