What’s stopping another person/company from transmitting on the same radio frequency as an established radio channel?
In: Technology
Most national governments in the developed world have a radio licensing agency that decides who has the right to broadcast on each frequency. There’s a ton of of [international conferences](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/conferences/wrc/Pages/default.aspx) and national lawmaking to sort this out. Some parts of the radio spectrum are reserved for law enforcement, military, or scientific use, others are auctioned off for commercial use, and some are left open for anyone to use without a license. [Here’s](https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/2003-allochrt.pdf) a frequency allocation chart for the US.
In most countries the radio licensing agency has equipment and people who can track and identify “pirate” radio transmissions that aren’t licensed to use their frequency. In the US, this is the [FCC](https://www.fcc.gov/), in the UK it’s [Ofcom](https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/), etc. This agency imposes severe fines and sometimes jail time for anyone who breaks the rules. In the US, these fines can be up to [$120,000](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/583) per day!
This type of enforcement has been in the news recently in the US: the FCC has started to go after a bunch of pirate radio stations in the [Boston](https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2024/09/18/fcc-radio-station-haitian-creole) and [New York](https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-issues-warnings-13new-york-landowners-illegal-pirate-radio-broadcasts) area.
It’s important for national governments to manage their radio spectrum and go after unlicensed users, because radio frequency is a classic example of a [“tragedy of the commons” problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons): if everybody uses it however they like with no organized plan, everyone’s broadcasts interfere with everyone else’s, and radio becomes useless for everyone.
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