Update from FCC Meeting: White Spaces Get Green Light
Nov 4, 2008
I'm watching a live Webcast of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) open meeting and will be posting brief updates here as it unfolds.
After considerable wrangling and lobbying by supporters on both sides of the issue, the FCC has voted to open up the white spaces in the television spectrum.
The news is a huge victory for Google, Microsoft, HP, Motorola and other companies that hope to use the white spaces to deliver high-speed mobile broadband services. FCC commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate dissented in part, but all five commissioners ultimately agreed that the benefits of allowing use of the white spaces outweighed the concerns raised by broadcasters about interference created by unlicensed devices.
Commissioner Robert McDowell called it a "revolutionary" decision that he thought would pave the way for "an explosion of entrepreneurial brilliance." And Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said he hoped that this decision, and others like it, would help create not just a "third pipe" for affordable broadband but a "third channel" with greater competition and choice for consumers.
Indeed, there are high hopes pinned on white spaces. In its recent Free the Airwaves petition drive, Free Press described its "potential benefits" as "overwhelming" and listed the following goals that white spaces could help acheive:
* Pave the way for universal wireless broadband access;
* Extend broadband wireless to rural areas that currently aren't connected at all;
* Enhance the reliability of public safety communications;
* Enable distance learning for students in remote locations or for whom traditional classroom-based learning is impractical; and,
* Bring high-speed mobile internet access to every high school and middle school in the country.
Tags:
broadband, Deborah Taylor Tate, FCC, Free Press, Google, HP, Jonathan Adelstein, Motorola, Robert McDowell, white spaces, wireless, Wireless Innovation Alliance
