Questions - John Wilson chairing these . . .

John Wilson (pictured right) keeps the show moving along

What's happening with BT's fusion product??
Ans - Ian Robinson of BT says pre-orders are being taken - he's not sure - not his product.
Q - from James Stevens - Wimaxx -what freq are you using?

Ian from BT (wot me?)
Ans - Ian says they are using 5.8 Ghz band C - in rural areas for the pre-Wimax stuff. [Avoids answering the q - basically].



Q from "the chap with the hat" - How does all this stuff make our society better??

Ans (from Peter Cochrane pictured right) - millions of lives have been saved, many wars have been avoided. UK wouild only support 6m people without technology. 15 years ago we did trials with this technology - getting the surgeon to 'teleport' to accident sites - this is just one example.

Adam Hyde (pictured) - The downside is that there is a kind of 'induced autism' of being glued to the screen. We need to be careful in how we look at the electromagnetic environment and there is an argument that spectrum is a special resource that needs to be conserved [Peter says - 'I don't think we can do anything to upset the Sun'].

Adam - example of the Canadian indigenous peoples worrying about their prayers causing 'interference' with the broadcasts of mobile operators.

Q - landscape is allowing a lot of proliferation of new creativity and ideas. But what might happen if governments exert more control over what networks do.

A - JW says that regulators have the ability to allow and preserve the use of spectrum and this provides a level of protection at a legal level. Hope is that as time goes on can we maintain the balance of closed and open access. Technology can provide us with some solid ground that we can use to maintain our rights of use.

Q - from Malcolm Corbett - lots of creativity and invention all round the country. Can we extend access to more spectrum - do we need more.

A - JW says this is a land plot argument with the tragedy of the commons - spectrum is infinite.

Exemption from licencing - needs to be justified by need. It's the other way round.

MC comes back - vast volumes of equipment mean that we can experiment with these technologies cheaply.

PC says licencing started to restrict interference then moved to being a cash cow. Maybe there's no need to do that anymore.

Adam - we transmit all the time - sometimes unintentionally - do we really want to do that? We leave an electromagnetic imprint everywhere we go. Sometimes these can be used to benefit sometimes not . . .. we need to think about it a bit more carefully than we do - that's what I'm saying.