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FCC White Space Rules Favor Tech Industry
holy_calamity writes "The FCC has come to a decision on the rules governing devices that make use of the unlicensed wireless spectrum between TV stations, with commissioner Genachowski trumpeting a new era of 'super Wi-Fi.' Most crucially, the FCC dropped the requirement that devices sense TV and wireless microphone signals. Instead, they can geolocate and use an online database to learn which white spaces are available in their area. That makes tech firms happy because it provides a software-centric alternative to developing complex new sensing hardware."
The sliver of bandwidth we get with the ISM band is really not very useful in heavy population areas. The shift to 5ghz wifi didn't seem to help as in all the cases I've used it range was borderline useless and N degrades pretty badly. In a spot where G gave me 3 or 4 mbps, N gave me the same or less.
I can't wait for the new wifi standard to use these frequencies. Now if we can get rid of broadcast television altogether and just move to an IPTV solution and be done with it.
the longer wave length and smaller channel size means it has longer range but is much worse at carrying a usable data.
http://www.martinsuter.net/blog/2009/02/white-spaces-wifi-on-drugs.html
The FCC is too intrusive as it is. They can stay the hell out of my code. They can pry my tab key from my cold, dead fingers.
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Are you actually claiming that Democrats favor non-regulation in general? This smells more like a step toward the free market principles being championed by the Tea Party.
Geolocation, followed by a lookup in a central server presumably administered by the FCC... So what you're saying is that my device will constantly determine my location and report it to the government. Wow, I'll take fifty of 'em.
No. The favor regulation that helps the majority of people. - VAST generalization.
The Tea Party is a bunch of idiots that have no plan to implement the changes, is funded by the Koch brothers, and has people specifically trained to disrupt rational conversation.
The things they claim to want o do? we did them,. 100 years ago. it didn't turn out so well for the vast majority of people.
Sweat shops, death traps, 10 year old working, pollution. That's the unfettered free market. People with power abusing the position.
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Interesting. Reporting to a central authority. Now I can see why they opted for this path rather than have a device check its surroundings. They benefit from making devices a bit simpler and collecting information on the useful idiots at the same time. Genius.
To be honest, I'd rather my devices have a modicum of intelligence and look around to find the best frequency to use. To do otherwise leaves the whole system open to attack. What happens if this central authority server goes down? What happens if a rogue device doesn't report to the server? I'd like my robots with eyes and ears please, not being remote controlled from D.C.
No one sensible favors complete non-regulation as the left claims the right wants and no one sensible favors regulation for regulation's own sake as the tea party/right claim the left wants.
Basic regulation is a requirement of our society in order for there to be a free market in the first place and for laws to be enforced. Basic regulation and oversight provide the structure for the market to exist in.
I happen to be left leaning and do think that the Tea Party in general, especially the higher echelons of the Tea Party, are far too generalized and radical in their positions against regulation. Yes reducing regulations in general for a simpler law-code, just like refactoring a program for leaner code, in general is a good thing but you have to look at WHY those regulations are there in the first place, not just who put them there, and what the effect will be if they are simply repealed.
Like program code the various codes of law do often grow outdated and experience things like mission creep and over time can do more harm than good, BUT that doesn't mean that regulations and laws (after all all laws are regulations in one form or another) in GENERAL are bad.
I believe that more things need to be regulated, but they need to be regulated well, and those regulations need to be enforced.
One thing I hear from the right and especially the Tea Party is the sentiment that all government workers, all government, is incompetent and corrupt merely by virtue of working in government. I come from a family with quite a few government employees, mostly scientists and professors, and I take offence to such a notion.
We're a small AV company, 8 employees, and even we have 40-50 wireless mics. We got rid of our old ones and bought new ones that were all in the allegedly safe bands. However, even though we don't have to worry about breaking the law, now we will never really be able to know if the mics will actually work in any given location.
We travel a lot to convention locations around the country. While the databases that the FCC talks about sound nice, in practice they simply do not exist in any meaningful way. There is no one out there asking us to input our frequencies into a DB somewhere, and even if there was, it wouldn't help when we travel.
We will, of course, invest in spectrum analyzers we can take on the road, but even then we won't know if someone powers up after we've done our sweep and settled on frequencies. This is a big problem because if a mic goes out on the CEO of a big company we may have to comp a portion, or all, of a show to keep them happy.
I'm happy to have better wireless communications available, but it won't come without a big cost to us and companies like us.
No, it's actually very good news.
With the use of sensors, you have the "ABC problem". You have three collinear stations, A, B, and C. Station A is a licensed FCC broadcasting station. Station B is a receiver for that station. Station C is a frequency-hopping device that looks for an empty channel. Because station C is too far away, it cannot "hear" station A, but it is still close enough to station B to cause interference. Now granted, this is less likely when you're talking about multiple orders of magnitude difference in transmission power, but it is still possible, particularly when the transmitter might be inside a concrete structure with semi-directional leaks. This is a technologically unsolvable problem as long as you are depending on station C being able to somehow sense station A.
With geolocation, since all broadcast TV and radio stations are required by law to register with the FCC, including tower location, HAAT, a detailed map of estimated signal strengths based on topographical features, etc., you can come up with a much better idea of what frequencies are safe.
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