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White Space Plan Would Reuse TV Spectrum
An anonymous reader writes "A collection of companies including Microsoft, Google and Motorola are teaming up for a new white space wireless network plan. The White Spaces Database Group, as it will be known, plans on formulating a plan to create, govern and maintain a wireless broadband network on abandoned analog television spectrum. When the spectrum is finally vacated in June, the group hopes that system in place which will allow for the creation of an open wireless broadband network which will be accessible by any device. The FCC officially approved keeping the spectrum open back in November, despite staunch opposition from telco firms."
...but if your wireless mics really are in the TV bands, and really aren't Part 15 devices, then they're Part 74, Subpart H devices, which do require a license. There are no other options. You're one of many who've been sold a bill of goods by unscrupulous manufacturers of these microphones which, by law, can only be licensed to television stations, broadcast networks, cable television systems, motion picture producers, television program producers, and Multipoint Multichannel Distribution System (MMDS) licensees (Title 47 USC, 74.832). See this for a pretty good, if slightly dated, FAQ on what's required to license a wireless microphone in the US.
These microphones typically will be offered no protection against interference from whitespace protocols like the IEEE 802.22 standard. Note that the IEEE 802.22 group is also in the final stages of standardizing a beacon protocol, IEEE 802.22.1 [pdf]. This beacon is to be present whenever the (licensed) wireless microphone is in operation, and produces a signal easier to detect (at a greater range) than the microphone itself, so that cognitive white space secondary users can more reliably determine that that television channel is occupied and move elsewhere. This system avoids interference to the wireless microphone by the secondary user.