White Spaces Coalition Stumbles, Tries Again
Posted on January 18, 2008 By: Mike, VoIP Facts: The Blog email author
Filed Under Articles
As recently alluded to in a previous post, the White Spaces Coalition wants to use the spaces between local television channels, which are becoming available in 2009, to bring inexpensive wireless broadband access to the masses. Today, the FCC announced that on January 24th, it will launch a 6 week lab test, followed by 6 weeks of field testing of devices that would allow the unused spectrum to be used for wireless broadband.
The main obstacle for the technology, and the reason for the testing, is that unlicensed broadband devices could creep into the neighboring spectrum, causing interference in TV and wireless microphone radio waves wreaking havoc, for example, on a local broadcast of a sporting event. Needless to say, the Broadcasting industry is totally against anything that would interfere with “their” spectrum. Some in the Healthcare Industry have also expressed their concerns that white space broadband could cause interference in hospitals
The WSC, a group comprised of such techies as Microsoft, Google, Intel and others, contend that the technology is there to detect the existence of the broadcast signals, thus keeping the offending broadband signals out of their space.
The FCC, seeing the potential for a badly needed expansion of broadband access in the country, agrees. This is not the first test.
In the spring of last year, Microsoft put forth a prototype for testing by the FCC that ended in failure, as the device was not adequately able to detect broadcast transmission waves. Later it was said that one of the devices was broken and was subsequently replaced, but never tested.
The new round of tests will be more open than before, with prototypes from Adaptrum, Microsoft, Phillips, and Motorola going through a rigorous test by the FCC, first in the lab, and then in a real life like environment.
The technology would work best in localities that have fewer television stations, and thus larger swaths of white space. In larger Metropolitan areas, the more channels you have the tighter it would get, but the WSC seems convinced they can make it work.
Like the 700MHz UHF band of spectrum, these lower (2-698 MHz) radio waves travel far and penetrate deep, making them ideal for large rural expanses, as well as densely populated cities. It has been said by some that this spectrum could provide speeds up to 80mbs, and that access could be as low as $10 per month.
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