DailyTech - FCC Mulls Delaying White Space Wi-Fi Vote

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Internet FCC Mulls Delaying White Space Wi-Fi Vote
Tom Corelis (Blog) - October 22, 2008 3:20 AM

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6 comment(s) - last by omnicronx.. on Oct 23 at 10:27 AM

Broadcasters say they want a chance to comment first

The Federal Communications Commission says it will “consider” requests by the National Association of Broadcasters to stay the upcoming November 4 election on “white space wireless” devices.

White space Wi-Fi isn’t yet ready for a yay-or-nay vote, reads a 14-page letter (PDF) submitted last week by The Walt Disney Company, NBC Universal, News Corporation, and others. A November 4 vote on the technology’s fate, they argue, would break regular FCC protocol by denying the public a chance to comment on the results of recently concluded testing.

“The Commission’s established practice has been to seek comment from the public on studies before issuing a final rule that relies substantially on those studies,” the letter reads. “Failure to provide adequate opportunity for public comment … raises serious questions about compliance with the Administrative Procedures Act.”

Speaking to Ars Technica, FCC spokesman Rob Kenny acknowledged the letter, noting that broadcasters have had “several years,” including “multiple rounds of testing in the lab and field, which were open to the public,” to voice their objections and provide input.

The FCC gave broadcasters little time to voice their objections to the latest round of testing, however, of which the results have been available for barely a week. An executive summary says the technology satisfied the Commission’s criteria for “proof of concept.”

White space Wi-Fi devices, which will use radio frequencies normally allocated to vacant over-the-air HDTV channels, can bleed into a broadcasters’ DTV transmissions if their signals are not adequately controlled. The FCC says it is satisfied with a hybrid approach to solving this problem: Wi-Fi transmitters will need to scan for available channels and cross-link their results with a publicly-accessible TV allocation database, to determine what areas of the spectrum are free.

The prototype devices the FCC tested earlier this month, while far from perfect, exhibited a considerable aptitude for picking correctly out vacant TV channels – even when TV signal strength dipped below what one would receive from an out-of-range 802.11g Wi-Fi router.

Broadcasters are demanding a variety of safeguards to protect their signals, including the implementation of a 2-channel buffer on either side of any TV channel deemed empty. Such a technique, say white space Wi-Fi’s promoters, would limit the technology’s usefulness.

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Pretty Obvious that the FCC is trying to save money by pushing this through ASAP...

By Ryanman on 10/22/2008 8:57:00 AM , Rating: 2

Doesn't seem like a very useful spectrum though. Anyone care to explain what makes it desirable?

RE: Pretty Obvious that the FCC is trying to save money by pushing this through ASAP...

By Expunged on 10/22/2008 10:07:25 PM , Rating: 2

One word, Coverage. A 100 watt UHF signal can cover 50-100 miles easily even in fairly rough country, VHF reaches even farther. In Colorado, the major networks transmit from the front range area on top of the mountains toward the eastern plains. About 150 miles from their main transmitter is a translator that rebroadcasts with 100 watts of power. Each of these translators easily cover an entire county.

I have not seen any specifics about how much bandwidth will be allocated so speed may be an issue, but the frequency is a WISP's dream. Transmission line loss is low, many of the microwave band problems like rain scatter all but disappear and the line of sight is no longer an issue. Basically, if you can, or at one point could, get an off air TV signal, a white space WISP could get you high speed internet.

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RE: Pretty Obvious that the FCC is trying to save money by pushing this through ASAP...

By omnicronx on 10/23/2008 10:27:39 AM , Rating: 3

Cell phone signals already make use of the UHF spectrum, they are just in the high end. Its usually a rule of thumb, the lower the frequency, the larger distance it can travel which is a result of a larger wavelength. While normal PCS cell phones are in the 1800-1900MHZ Range (UHF is 300MHZ-3GHZ) the proposed white space is in the 700-800MHZ range, which is currently the upper echelon of Over the Air
Television signals and as the poster above me mentioned, has the ability to travel longer distances. One of the things he did not mention is that lower frequencies also have the ability to pass through other objects more easily . The one disadvantage is bandwidth, the proposed whitespace will have much less bandwidth than existing cell phone frequencies, which would limit its usefulness (in my opinion) to be used as high speed internet.

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Why bother with White Space

By LeftSide on 10/22/2008 8:53:02 AM , Rating: 3

I don't understand why the FCC just didn't give up a set number of channels for this. It would make things so much easier if They just said channels 19 through 25 are no longer available for broadcasting. With the switch to DTV channels can still be called '20' , but they can use any other physical channel they want. It would have made this much easier. I use an antenna for DTV and I already have a hard enough time picking up faint signals. I don't need any added interference.

RE: Why bother with White Space

By omnicronx on 10/22/2008 3:11:56 PM , Rating: 2

They are already doing what you describe. Currently Stations can make use of any frequency within either the VHF or UHF band. When the shutdown occurs, channels will will have the choice of being reassigned back to their original VHF analogue channels (channels 2-13). At this point any channels 51 through 69 (UHF) which is the coveted C-BLOCK that was auctioned off by the FCC for white space wifi will have to move to a different frequency. My guess is that any channels that are near the proposed whitespace could potentially have their signal bleed into the C-BLOCK spectrum.

And the two channel limit seems like a stretch, I can't think of an area that will make use of all remaining UHF and VHF channels, even populated areas like New York does not have nearly that many channels. If anything channels 49 and 50 should be used buffer, especially consider that channels 7-13 seem to be more suited to DTV broadcasts than any other part of the spectrum.

And as for worrying about signal, if anything you will get better signal after analogue stations are forced to shutdown. This is because currently the both bands are at capacity, because not only are they broadcasting analogue, but they also have to broadcast the DTV signal. So potentially after the shutdown the traffic will be reduced by two fold. Not only that but many DTV channels are currently left underpowered as to not interfere with existing analogue stations, once again when the shutoff occurs they will no longer have this limitation, and will be able to focus all of their resources on DTV.

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