THE STRANGE DAVID AND GOLIATH SAGA OF RADIO FREQUENCIES

[rsmentele]

Shure, Sennheiser, Audio Technica- All the major players lobbied hard. But we're small beans in this world. There are far more cell phones and other data devices in use than wireless mics, it was a loosing battle, and will continue to be one as the spectrum required to provide the growing data requirements of our devices grow. There are a few small sections of the spectrum that have been left for us to use, and there always will be 'open spectrum' areas that the cell phones and tv stations have to leave as buffers, but coordinating mics in large venues and other performance areas is just going to get harder as time goes on. It's our new normal

 

[FMEng]

There are three main reasons this happened:

1. Congress was lobbied hard by the wireless companies that constituents demand 5G, and that this would "bring broadband internet to under served, rural areas" and made it law. It won't do the latter, but it sounds good. Those rural areas elected the majority party.

2. The wireless companies paid $19.8 BILLION for the spectrum.

3. Off air TV reception has given way to cable and satellite. Few people know that there is such a thing as free TV, let alone what a rooftop TV antenna is, or know how to select and install one. That knowledge disappeared when the local TV repairman retired.