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Why We Need Unlicensed White-Space Broadband Spectrum
pgoldtho writes "PC Mag has a story about why the 'white-space' spectrum that will be freed when TV broadcasts switch to digital should be available for unlicensed use. This would allow it to be used to deliver broadband connectivity in rural areas and create a 'third pipe' alternative to the cable/telco duopoly. The FCC is scheduled to vote on this November 4th. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has filed an emergency appeal to block this vote. If the NAB succeeds, the issue will be kicked into next year. Which would mean a new FCC, Congress, and Administration."
And even if it stands that the space will not be licensed for some other commercial use, the existing bandwidth owners will lobby against it ever being given back to the public, because there is money to be made fencing people in to their existing ownership of the spectrum.
The very idea that the electromagnetic spectrum can be fenced off strikes me as ridiculous. Don't get me wrong - I'm aware of why it needs to be done. But it seems like such a short jump from there to Coca Cola declaring all rights over 'red'.
How useful would these whitespace frequencies be at the home users end if this was used for two way internet? They aren't going to be running huge 50,000 watt towers like the TV broadcasters use. At say 5 watts (whatever/small) for the home connection "last mile" rig, will this work over long distances with hills and trees, or will it be line of sight and not much better than current wifi? I tried a service with motorola canopy wireless and it's still line of sight to a tower, any hills in the way and the signal dergrades fast to barely there or nothing.
Seriously.. WHAT? We don't _NEED_ this to provide rural broadband. If 900mhz, 2.4ghz, 5.7Ghz, and 5.9ghz (are there more?) aren't enough, THEN YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG! I'm providing rural broadband right now over both 900 and 2.4 to over 100 customers. The base package is 1Mbit/512K. Not bad if you live on a farm in Iowa if you ask me.
Can all fish swim?
While you are right, I think you are emotionally wrong. If Google puts up a nationwide 3 channel white space network, paying for it with ad revenue, then yes, you do pay for it, but you don't pay for it, if you understand what I mean.
One might also argue that nothing worth having is truly free. You have to pay for it at some point, and in some way.
Besides, won't someone think of the terrorists? They need communications too!
On a lighter note, there are many situations that justify a socialistic payment plan. Imagine that everyone has Internet access, pizza and emergency services are routinely ordered via the Internet. It is so common that an entire generation has grown up using it. Now, imagine that this is only for people who can afford it. When we decide to make this pay for play forever, it ends up being the same as pay for play electricity. Perhaps not everyone can afford it, but no one can NOT afford to pay for it. The Internet is becoming something that is not really optional anymore. Sure, you can say you can live without it, but you won't be competitive, you won't be effective in society. There is a point where services become necessary rather than luxuries. The USA is at the point where Internet service is a necessity rather than a luxury.
The White Space networking plan is a good one. There is space there for controlled usage. The fear mongers are trying to sell their own services. Musicians who worry that their wireless microphones will stop working are selling fear, and blatantly so. It amazes me, musicians, like the rest of the population will have some very small percentage who are smart and who understand telecommunications, so why do we listen to all of them like they are special?
Moving on... Why should you pay for it? Simple. For the same reasons that the Federal Government tries to regulate the financial markets. It's supposed to be good for growth and prosperity of the whole country, not just for one or two people. (Even though that seems to be what is happening under the current government) when other parts of the country/economy grow, you benefit as well. The point is that tax payer dollars spent on white space networks with open access is good for the economy, and thus good for you and me. If no tax dollars are spent on it, that's even better.
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How does that work with the hills and trees in the way? I asked this up above, as I tried such a service and it didn't work, had to go back to dialup. Hills where I live on this farm, not flatlands like Iowa. Sorry but I don't know what frequency that motorola canopy based service was, I forget now, but I will assume it was one of those in your list, and the techs said no line of sight=SOL.
Unlicensed doesn't just mean a free for all. It would be regulated in much the same way the many existing radio services are. The new users would have to make sure they operate in such a way that the primary user is not affected in any negative way. This includes ceasing transmissions completely if necessary to avoid interference. If you violate it and a primary user complains, eventually you're going to attract attention from the FCC, and they will fine you.
When will America get it? Some things, like education, healthcare/health insurance, 911 (police, fire department, ambulance), and the internet should be offered to everyone. They're not assets, they're life essentials. Right now, they're only guaranteed to two of those and one of them (education) is fading fast.
There was once a time when the fire department was a private service - imagine what life would be like if they still had to pay for that (yes, I know we pay taxes anyways, but it's still granted for everyone). And how long are they going to treat other essentials like the internet as such?
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
"Unlicensed" doesn't mean "unregulated". Licensed spectrum means that only one organization is in control of the spectrum, but even that doesn't prevent someone from setting up a jammer. I believe the FCC controls what radios can be sold on the market (i.e. the equipment must use this new-fangled "cognitive radio" scheme, and must hook into the FCC database of known incumbent signals), and as well, the FCC can try to locate someone who is persistently jamming.
Wouldn't there be huge amounts of interference if the spectrum was unlicensed? Could someone not just make a jammer for the frequencies in question and spoil it for everyone? Or do FCC laws cover that even when it's not formally licensed? IANAEE.
FCC Regulations, Part 15 covers this in great detail.
Here's an excerpt from sub-section 5
If a Part 15 transmitter does cause interference to authorized radio communications, even if the transmitter complies with all of the technical standards and equipment authorization requirements in the FCC rules, then its operator will be required to cease operation, at least until the interference problem is corrected.
Here is a PDF from the FCC entitled "UNDERSTANDING THE FCC REGULATIONS FOR LOW-POWER, NON-LICENSED TRANSMITTERS", which is exactly the rules which would be applicable to the hardware used for accessing the White-Space Broadband Spectrum .
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While the regulation and control of airwaves seems absurd from some viewing angles, if you think about it, someone making sure that no one interferes with anyone else is a good thing. I'm not necessarily saying that the FCC has always done a superb job, or that laws are enacted without prejudice. I'm just saying the principle is sound and good. Since airwaves do not stop at state borders, a federal agency for such is necessary. Having said that, I agree with your sentiment but also understand that Joe the plumber down the street doesn't necessarily give a shit what my reception is like so it's good to have someone to go to for mediation of conflicts. Laws help with that mediation.
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It'd be like all the things we already do on unlicensed spectrum. Think 802.11b/g WiFi and 2.4 cordless phones running on overlapping frequncies. So possibly a lot of noise in heavy use areas. However, regulations specifying manufactured capabilities and use of items will still be made by the FCC, so intentional jammers will still be a no-no.
And how well can we expect that to be enforced?
Right now, there are millions of in-car transmitters out there used for relaying satellite radio to car stereos. They cause all sorts of interference with "authorized radio communications". But since they were only interfering with NPR broadcasts, rather than those of someone with money, rather than take serious action against XM the FCC agreed to let them send out cheap useless ferrite beads and leave it up to customers to install them.
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While I love the idea of free and open internet communication (unlikely if we farm this out to Google and Microsoft), if they plan on using the performances they've seen in FCC tests as the benchmark, you can expect even your cable TV to cut out. I absolutely love the concept, but the simple fact is that current versions of these devices don't work, and Kevin Martin is for sale.
I'd put $50 on him ending up at Google or Microsoft within a year of leaving the FCC. Anyone who talks with the people who were at the white-space device tests knows that these devices failed miserably. If you think the iPhone (or any GSM phone, honestly) next to your speakers is annoying, just wait for these puppies.
Ask your doctor to decrease the dose.
I also hear that with enough whitespace noise, the dead will arise and walk again. Killing and maiming the living in a never ending, ceasless desire for all to join them. Eventually we will all live in walled cities, praying for a quick death as plauge and starvation consume us from within. All because of little Suzzy's Whitespace Enabled iPod (LSWEP!).
Or maybe that was just some unsubstantiated FUD spread by someone who wanted to scare people into thinking the world was ending.
Who knows.
Stories like this one make my head spin. For some reason, people simply can't seem to get the engineering issues through their heads.
Prototype devices tested by the FCC earlier this summer were shown to be capable of detecting Digital TV stations. However, they were not even close to capable of detecting wireless audio devices such as microphones, in-ear monitors, wireless intercom systems, and IFB devices. You may not realize it, but these devices are all around you, and chances are, they are mission-critical devices for television stations (think about reporters in the field), theatres (from your local high school to The Phantom on Broadway), professional sports (almost all professional sports games use copious amounts of wireless intercom and microphones), houses of worship (if you go to church, chances are you are in the vicinity of wireless microphones), concerts (almost all concerts rely on wireless microphones and in-ear monitors these days), and many other people.
All it takes is one single white space device to fire up on top of one of these wireless audio devices to knock it off the air, and there is no good solution - we cannot go digital, because of power and fidelity concerns; we cannot go to another band, because there are no real options (and because of the cost - it would cost my theater $50,000 to refit our space); and we cannot simply go "off the air."
Let us be clear as well about who will be using these white space devices. They will NOT be used to provide rural broadband (as one person noted above, this need is already covered by 900 MHz devices), at least in the beginning. The first devices to market will be gadgets like the iPhone that everyone will see as a "must have." It will work like Wi-Fi, but will cause far more interference because it will be everywhere - in church, in the theatre, and at the game.
All of this is not to say that it is impossible for white space devices to work together with wireless audio devices. All that is required is for white space devices to not transmit on top of a wireless audio device. In the future, wireless audio devices may be able to avoid other devices by themselves, but for now white space devices must bear the burden of not causing harmful interference to other users of the space (some of which are currently not licensed, and some of which are actually LICENSED for operating in the TV band!) But this is an engineering challenge, and not a political one. Let us hope that the FCC realizes this, and listens to its own engineers - and not politicians, lobbyists, and naysayers.
He responded to a troll in an informative way using the troll's own native dialect. Sounds informative to me.
No, not correct at all.
Whether it will work or not depends on how many degrees of curvature the signal has to disperse across to go "around" the hill in question.
The higher the frequency, the less the signal will "curve" around such obstacles. With UHF being less than half the frequency of WiFi, you can expect it will do a much better job of going around hills, and any other conceivable obstacle. That should allow you to get connectivity in more spots than you otherwise would, but it's never going to work in all situations.
If you have two transceivers at opposite sides of the base of a mountain, no radio frequency is ever going to allow them to communicate directly (well, VLF will, but that's impractically slow, so let's ignore it for simplicity sake). If they have line of sight, just about any frequency will work. As the obstacle between them, blocking line-of-sight communication gets larger, lower frequencies are required to circumvent it.
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Perhaps, they just read your post and realized it was mostly unsubstantiated bullshiting in the fine fashion of Microsoft/Neocon/Fox News FUD.
Perhaps, they aren't modding you down because they disagree with you but because you didn't add squat to the discussion.
A 100 milliwatt WSD will travel about four football fields distance. If the WSD is broadcasting on VHF (channels 2-13), it won't be blocked by trees, but if it's broadcasting on UHF (channels 14-51), then trees will block the signal quite easily.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
1) Spectrum being freed up.
No. No spectrum is freed up by switching from analog to digital. A digital station takes up 6Mhz, same as an analog station. It's true that the FCC has relaxed adjacent channel restrictions, but any spectrum freed by that is balanced by the loss of channels 52-69, which have already been auctioned off. There's no truly free high-VHF or UHF slot between New York and Baltimore; spectrum's full.
2) WSDs being able to detect stations
For a WSD to reliably detect another transmitter, it would have to be as sensitive and have as good an antenna as the intended reciever. What are the chances of that, particularly in a portable device? Sure, your little iAndroZune with its 2" stub can't detect the channel, but my purpose-built TV tuner with a 10dBi antenna could pick it up fine... or it could, until the iAndroZune started stepping all over it.
3) Won't interfere even assuming it finds a white space
The front-end filters on TV tuners have about a 5-channel passband. A strong signal anywhere in there can cause the RF amp to overload or force the AGC to cut in and thus desensitize the tuner. One of the FCCs own studies showed it could be cause up to 70dB of sensitivity loss on adjecent channels, which makes the difference between very good reception and none at all. Furthermore, those of us using a pre-amp to receive weaker stations don't have the benefit of front-end filtering; a white space device anywhere in the band can cause problems throughout the band. Note that some of those little USB stick tuners don't have front-end filtering either.
Except for one pertinent instance of "fuck", all others removed and the grammar slightly altered to make up for it. Otherwise this is the exact same post as above.
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The government, isn't trying to own the white space networks. Google and a few other companies are trying to do something good for society. People like you are trying to ruin everything because you can't understand common sense. They will probably make some money for their efforts, but for fucks sake, they deserve to make some cash for all that work. You, on the other hand, probably think that you alone are worthy of getting something for free while everybody else needs to pay. Perhaps next time you can read something about the issue before shooting off your mouth about shit you have no clue about?
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naturally municipal WiFi/WiMax deployment would be handled by the municipal government.
having an unlicensed white-space broadband spectrum simply allows wireless broadband equipment manufacturers to use the white-space spectrum, which is currently monopolized by TV broadcasters and the occasional wireless microphone user. opening up the white-space spectrum to a more broadly useful (and increasingly vital) application has nothing to do with making you pay for someone else's internet access.
regardless of how it's going to be implemented/funded, these wireless devices will need a radio frequency range to operate on. so maybe you should go back to worrying about someone driving on the roads you paid for, or your neighbor's kids using textbooks purchased with your tax dollars. public education has more to do with socialism than the white-space wireless debate.
Licensing is not free market. licensing doesnt bolster competition. it creates a limited monopoly for those corporations who were able to buy those licenses.
imagine roads were privatized. imagine 10 companies bought roads, and used them as they wished, and charged anyone using them anything they wished.
do you think we would be in the level we are today as a civilization ?
we wouldnt.
there are some things, venues that need to be open to everyone, for anything, SO THAT competition, free market CAN happen.
FCC should vote totally in favor of this free spectrum. its necessary for betterment of mankind, leave aside internet access in a few locales.
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