Impacts of Spectrum Policy on Microwave Businesses [MicroBusiness]

In the universe of electrotechnical technologies of interest to the various divisions of the IEEE, radio technology is covered by more governmental regulation than almost all the others. This governmental regulation was initiated in an era when the maximum usable frequencies were much lower than today, antennas had little directionality, and most radio communication was expected to be for ships at sea. These early, underlying viewpoints still linger to some extent in national and international radio regulation, even though many new issues have arisen and the frequencies are now very different. For example, the 2019 World Radio Conference of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will consider, for the first time, communications in frequencies up to 450 GHz.