Posted on 11/05/2008 5:52:10 AM PST by steve-b
Preachers on the pulpit, Guns N' Roses and others who fear their wireless microphones would be disrupted by widespread public access to certain unused airwaves were drowned out by high-tech titans Google and Microsoft in a federal ruling yesterday.
The Federal Communications Commission approved a plan that would allow those airwaves, called white spaces, to be used by gadgets such as cellphones and laptops connected to the Internet once that spectrum becomes available after the national transition from analog to digital television in February.
Opponents of the plan, including preachers and entertainers, say such devices could interfere with broadcast channels on nearby spectrum and with wireless microphones, which are used in live performances and operate on the same frequencies. The plan's proponents, including Google and Microsoft, say it would open more wireless technologies to consumers....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Let me be the first to say it -- that's RACIST!! That type of talk is not allowed beginning today. Report to camp, on the double.
The better wireless microphones seek and find alternate channels. Diversity is the word. Anyone not using such equipment is probably stupid.
I expect the government will add on a huge fee to all our electric bills, cable bills...anything associated with this analog thing and do it by unit...5 cells=5 fees..5 TVs=5 fees....etc etc
It says in the second paragraph that this is about the spectrum currently used by analog TV (and will be available after the digital transition). Since incumbent users of wireless microphones are involved, I presume it refers to between-channels slices of the analog TV spectrum.
You pick any allocation plan and somebody’s going to feel shafted. We use too much of the spectrum for the spaces between channels; supposedly this gets better in February but we’ll see.
I have a couple of friends who own a bunch of 930 Mhz (+/-) paging licenses all up and down the eastern seaboard. I installed a bunch of “license saver” paging terminals for them several years ago. They knew when they bid on these licenses that paging was on the way out, but they also knew that something new would undoubtedly come along and fill their license spectrum. They were hoping this ruling would include them. Guess not, since it's essentially 698-805 Mhz.....
Thanks. I was looking for specific frequencies, since "analog TV" covers a fairly wide spectrum. Analog anything is a spectrum hog by today's definition. I'm glad to see this is happening.....
Even the full article doesn’t go into that level of detail — it’s more directed to the FCC policy decision than to technical implementation.
http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/PressRoom/WhiteSpaces/index.htm
Everything you want to know about “White Spaces”.
If you've ever had any dealings with the FCC, you realize straight away that "technical implementation" isn't the FCC's strong suit, thus this article and it's lack of information from the source is completely understandable......
These people have already invested money in expensive radio equipment that will now be worthless. This happened during the Clinton Administration when the Government decided to appropriate the so-called pcs spectrum and auction it off to the highest bidder, ignoring the businesses that were using that bandwidth at the time, mostly fire and police departments and construction jobsites with two way radios. Oh well, buy stock in Motorola. People will have to buy new stuff now.
Yet MS and Google come in and “win” the “right” to basically take over this airspace?
And the proposed way of dealing with it - spend money for new wireless systems and/or register your “events” where you use such technology in an FCC-run database (where is this database? OH - it hasn't been set up yet?) each and every time you have a church service or other event where you use your wireless stuff.
I see this, much like the “DTV” switchover, as more of a sales generator than a real necessity. Forced obsolescence. Where are Greenpeace and the other enviro-nazis out there screaming about the landfills and the wasted electronics?
Nice link to one of the parties who twisted the government’s arm into hijacking it for their purposes.
The "white space" they're referring to will be the portion of the band spectrum left vacant by the Television stations after the conversion to digital television is complete. The reason these frequencies are desireable for high-speed internet for example, is because transmisions in this space are subject to multi-path communications. "Multi-Path" is the reason you'd see ghosting of images on your TV due to the analog nature of transmissions. Multi-path is bad for TV, but great for wireless internet access.
That’s a good link, especially for the layman.
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