Eventually we will use ultra-wide spread-spectrum orthogonal frequency division multiplexing techniques for all wireless communications because this method utilizes spectrum and energy more efficiently.

We are moving in this direction with the evolving technologies of Internet wireless transmission, cellular networks, and digital radio and television. These will merge into one ultra-broadband wireless digital network.

You’ll listen to your favorite radio station, watch your favorite television program, interact on the Internet, talk on the phone, anywhere on the planet. Reliability will improve at lower power levels resulting in reduced levels of electromagnetic pollution and carbon dioxide.

There is a cloud to this silver lining. Greater channel capacity, providing the consumer with more choices results in fewer viewers per channel, lower revenue per channel, and lower quality programming.

The global reach of each channel compensates but you lose local relevance. Perhaps a situation will emerge in which quality draws a large enough audience to sustain itself.

As satellite and cable have made many more television channels available, we haven’t seen quality improve. Gone are theme songs. Real actors are replaced by Joe Average seeking glory on reality TV, which also eliminates the need for writers. Create an unreal situation and then let nature take it’s course. Writers can find work creating news.

Radio is moving towards greater use of automation, syndication, and lack of professionalism. Dead air, bad queues, and bad taste seem to be the norm. Recent ownership rules that allowing a single entity to own several hundred stations greatly reduces competition, diversity, and local relevance.

Expanded channel capacity is going to worsen these existing trends but will make narrowcasting practical. Finding specialized programming will become easier. Now you can take that radio proctocology coarse you’ve always wanted.

Advanced civilizations still using radio will have moved to this model because of the efficiencies. SETI is unlikely to be productive looking for narrow band carriers. A carrier is a waste of energy. Allocating tiny bits of spectrum to individual channels is a waste of spectrum. We’re not going to find ET on the radio unless we look at a broad bandwidth and spread spectrum encoding characteristics. I wonder if ET has found a way to address the program quality issues.