Pentagon seeks to limit wireless internet

The growth of wireless internet access could be curtailed in the US because the Defense Department believes that it interferes with military radar.

The Pentagon is seeking new limits on the technology, and industry executives, including representatives from Microsoft and Intel, met last week with defence officials to try to resolve the issue.

According to the Washington Post, military officials hace claimed that the technical restrictions they are seeking are necessary for national security.

But industry executives maintain that they would threaten the expansion of technologies such as Wi-Fi.

While they acknowledge that high-speed wireless internet access will soon crowd the radio frequencies used by the military, they believe that new types of frequency spectrum sharing techniques could keep civilian users from interfering with radar systems.

The Defense Department has suggested that Wi-Fi may jam as many as 10 types of radar system used by US military forces.

A spokesman for the Secretary of Defense said that the Pentagon understood the importance of Wi-Fi to the recovery of the telecoms industry, but that "the problem comes when it degrades our military capabilities".

However, the Federal Communications Commission said that there have been no complaints of Wi-Fi interfering with military radar.

Industry executives have insisted that military uses can coexist with the millions of smart wireless internet devices, such as those used in Europe which can sense the nearby use of military radar and automatically yield the right of way.

But the Pentagon continues to argue that the new digital technologies are unproven and could interfere with various military systems.

It wants regulators to delay the opening of additional radio frequencies in the 5GHz band which are eagerly sought by US technology companies and are already in civilian use internationally.