In 1998 Crown Prince Tupouto'a of the Royal Kingdom of Tonga commissioned a former FCC technical advisor named Dewayne Hendricks to bring free wireless Internet, telephone, and video services to the South Pacific kingdom. Hendrickson implemented a "spread spectrum" system to run over the radio spectrum; it proved to be five times faster than the fastest cable modem in the United States and to have virtually no marginal cost.

Why is this relevant? Does Tonga have radio stations competing for this space anyways? Well, the answer is yes, sort of -- I found one. But surprisingly, what enabled this breakthrough in communication was not the relative uncrowdedness of Tonga's radio spectrum, but the audacity of its sovereign Government to challenge the long-held tenet that one person's use of the spectrum lessens another's ability to use it: the very notion of spectrum scarcity.

The idea that radio waves were a scarce resource became law in the U.S. with the sinking of the Titanic. Following the disaster, navy analysts argued that chaos on the airwaves had prevented a ship less than twenty miles away from receiving the distress signal and coming to the Titanic's rescue. In an effort to prevent future radio interference, the government began regulating access and use of the spectrum.

The Radio of Act of 1912, the first national regulation of the airwaves passed by Congress, granted the power to license the use of radio equipment to the Secretary of Commerce. According to Law Professor and communications theorist, Lawrence Lessig, the period after the passage of the Act, "saw an extraordinary shift in the nature of radio use -- from a diverse collection of uses, some commercial, most not, to a single dominant use of the radio spectrum -- namely, commercial radio."

By the mid 1930s, there was such a great demand for spectrum that Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, which both created a new regulatory body, the FCC, and issued a new mandate: to regulate the airwaves "as public interest, convenience or necessity" requires. The government's reasoning in upholding the practice of regulating the airwaves was explained by Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy: "there is a fixed natural limitation upon the number of stations that can operate without interfering with one another."

The case of Tonga, challenges this notion. Lawrence Lessig, explains that such "spread spectrum" technologies as the one implemented by Hendrickson, allows many different users to "share" spectra at the same time without interference. With new radio technology, radio receivers are capable of changing frequency, bandwidth, and modulation scheme, enabling the listener to follow the singnal as it jumps from frequency to frequency. This "end to end" model of communication is how the internet functions: "protocols coordinate multiple, unplanned use," and all you need to join the grand dialogue is a computer, or in this case a new, really smart radio.

Thus while Tonga's airwaves may be less crowded than the U.S.'s and its government more sovereign, its treatment of the radio spectrum as a public commons may demonstrate that the U.S. has got it backwards in doling spectrum out as if it were a scarce resource. Picture it, many little 90ways.coms in radio form could crop up and all broadcast at once. And then our democracy would be as vibrant as Tonga's, ahhh I mean well... It would at least be a breath of fresh air.

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