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FCC Unanimously Approves White Space Wi-Fi
Smelly Jeffrey writes "With the release of this whitepaper, the FCC unanimously approved plans for a new technology with strong supporters and even stronger detractors. White Space Wi-Fi effectively allows manufacturers of wireless devices to incorporate transceivers that operate on unused DTV channels. Although the deregulation is new, the idea seems to have caught Google's interest recently as well. It seems that this has been rather rushed through the normally stagnant channels at the FCC. While some view it as interference in the already crowded spectrum, it seems the FCC Chairman really likes the idea of re-purposing dark parts of the newly allocated DTV bands once more." Update: 11/06 18:15 GMT by T : You may want to look at Tuesday's mention of the decision as well, but the additional links here are interesting.
I was watching the behind the scenes of "Family Guy" and they were talking about making up swear words. Seth said that when a made up swear word that was OK to say on TV becomes part of the language, the FCC will then consider it off-limits to say on TV.
People can be so weird about words.
Then you have the cry babies who have to bitch to the FCC over every little thing. But if you actually mention that there's an off switch, somehow, you're the moron.
Finally!
Rural areas with rolling hills and trees have really limited options with regard to high-speed Internet access. Line of sight just wasn't one of nature's design goals. It's really difficult to have a cottage high-tech industry without the infrastructure to support it and the population density simply isn't there for the telcos to have any incentive to build it out.
Your best bet is Wildblue with 750-1500ms latency and 256kbps upload speed. You get used to it but forget sharing say a vmware image or uploading anything of substantial size. If you spend the time to do it, you also face rate-limiting from WildBlue once you pass a bandwidth threshold. Let us not forget wiping the snow off the dish, throwing a trash bag over the lnb when it rains, and wiggling the dish when you lose signal.
Sure, rural users can try to order a T1 but since the wired infrastructure isn't built out (else the telco would be offering high-speed services), you can bet on "special construction charges" of at least $4k on top of the $500/month service charge. ISDN? Same issue.
What about getting a ham radio license? That's fine and all, provided you don't ever use encryption, don't mind people intercepting your data, and remember to identify your station periodically.
The truth is that more than half of the country simply cannot acquire high-speed Internet access for a reasonable rate.
There's several hundred megahertz of open spectrum in between the TV channels. Wireless mikes have had sole use of that empty space for a long time, and they're complaining because things are changing. In some cases, they may have to buy more equipment, but the idea that they should continue to get sole use of this huge amount of spectrum is ridiculous.
What's needed is a way for wireless mics and the new whitespace devices to properly share the spectrum. The reason this is difficult is that wireless mics are manufactured many different ways, and don't have a standard transmission pattern. The "cognitive radios" will be able to detect digital TV stations automatically, but won't be able to sense the presence of wireless mics. So one possible solution is for wireless microphones to have an extra box that transmits a beacon that indicates to whitespace devices that "hey, there's a wireless mic here". That's an extra expense for each existing installation, but again, wireless mics shouldn't get sole use of this extra space.
They want to deregulate. Which means there will be no one authority to control these whitespaces. I don't think I need to explain what happens to an unmanaged network resource with multiple authorities competing; Multiple DHCP or domain controllers, etc.
And no matter how you cut the bandwidth, there will be overhead, which increases as a function of the number of devices. While these devices may be logically separated, they are not physically separated, making the entire spectrum act like a hub-based network. And devices outside the range of other transcievers can still cause interference so long as the the device at the remote can hear that interference.
So let me say that this is NOT A TECHNICAL PROBLEM. This is a tragedy of the commons problem. And it will be hugely exasperated in dense urban areas -- except on a larger footprint. Whereas before geographies with high densities of wifi devices could only interfere with each other up to a hundred meters or so, now we're talking about metro-wide interference. It'll be like CB radio, but for digital communication. And it will never compete with hardline installations like it could if it were regulated.
This is the simple truth -- unless the FCC puts some form of regulation onto these bands prior to their first use, it's going to be a nightmare. It would be far better to license these bands for **non-profit use** (note I did NOT say non-commercial) somewhat like Ham radio, where people needed to aquire a license to transmit, and take classes, and have an ID associated with transmissions, and a regulatory body to monitor specious transmissions and revoke licenses or shut down non-compliant equipment as necessary. This plan stands the best chance of achiving a usable public, wireless, high speed network... which incidentally could carry internet traffic. Anything less, and all it takes is a few jerks with high power transmitters in an area to render the entire spectrum useless.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie