Television White Space Spectrum Approved For Use By FCC
New submitter ptmartin01 writes "The unused spectrum now assigned to television broadcast has been made available for public use by the FCC. This is going to be used for wireless applications (PDF) with implications that it will generate as much investment as the previous Wi-Fi spectrum. It also happens to be the last available spectrum to be exploited."
I was wondering the same thing. I guess if there was a "killer app" for white space spectrum, we'd have heard about it. This page summarises it so; "Unlicensed spectrum opens the door to all kinds of uses, but the use most commonly talked about is to provide fixed and wireless broadband Internet services. It could also prove a good technology for moving video and other bulky data types around the home."
Oh no... it's the future.
The FCC could try to take away some of the amateur radio spectrum. Every now again they try to take some away. In so far they have not been successful. It is only a matter of time though. What with the number of new hams decreasing every year.
You might want to check your facts. The number of licensees in the U.S. is actually at an all-time high. It's been climbing since 2007, when the FCC dropped an outdated Morse Code proficiency requirement. See graphs and some additional stats for the details.
No. It hasn't. It's been made available for commercial use, following the long standing tradition at the FCC of giving the public nothing or next to nothing, and corporations everything.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't have the FCC's spectrum allocation chart handy, but here's the one for Australia: http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/radcomm/frequency_planning/spectrum_plan/arsp-wc.pdf
The only unallocated spectrum is below 9kHz and above 275GHz. Obviously a lot of overlap can occur at VHF and above (if you allow for the odd tropospheric ducting event to cause interference) but TV is the last of the big chunks of spectrum, everything on the chart that isn't broadcasting (orange/red colour) is hacked up into small pieces.