High-tech, broadcasters continue to spar over white spaces

A high-tech group urged the broadcast industry to stop mischaracterizing government testing of unlicensed wireless devices. The testing, which is set to enter a second round, is being conducted to determine whether portable wireless gadgets can operate in vacant television channels – called white spaces – without interfering with digital TV signals.
“Upcoming testing of white space concept devices is meant to assist [Federal Communication Commission] engineers to craft the strongest possible rules while ensuring maximum public benefit. Yet instead of respecting the FCC’s desire to perform concept testing, your recent public misinformation campaign has confused the testing process and misled the public and policy-makers,” stated the Wireless Innovation Alliance in a letter to National Association of Broadcasters President David Rehr.
High tech giants like Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and others are anxious to see the FCC open up white spaces spectrum for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed wireless applications. They argue signal-sensing technology – similar to that set for Wi-Fi deployment in a 5 GHz band occupied by military radar – can work in TV white spaces without disrupting DTV transmissions.
Broadcasters insist such a move will create interference to DTV, set for national deployment in February 2009.
“A successful consumer transition from analog to digital television is now imperiled by a cadre of companies that have been hoisted on their own flawed technology petard,” said Dennis Wharton, NAB executive VP. “Try as they might, portable unlicensed device advocates like Google and Microsoft cannot run and hide from the fact that their own technology utterly failed FCC testing. That is not ‘misinformation,’ but rather an inconvenient truth.”
While a Microsoft prototype was found to cause interference, – an outcome attributed to a defective device – such is not the case with Google.
“We have never submitted a device to the FCC for white spaces testing, and for them to suggest otherwise is yet another example of how they are trying to politicize this issue,” said Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman.
“The benefits of white spaces will only be realized . if the FCC is allowed to proceed with a fair, objective testing regime that is free from misleading attacks and misrepresentations,” said the Wireless Innovation Alliance.
The white spaces debate has been further complicated by support for a completely different regulatory system than that envisioned by Wi-Fi backers: one based on fixed licensing. Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. recently voiced support for such an approach, explaining it would offer a less costly alternative for wireless backhaul services. The fixed licensing plan was advanced in a white paper submitted by FiberTower Corp. and the Rural Telecommunications Group Inc. in October.
This week, General Electric Co.’s healthcare unit voiced support for fixed licensing in TV white spaces, arguing such a regulatory model would avoid interference to wireless medical telemetry. GE said use of unlicensed portable wireless devices in TV whites spaces “poses a significant risk of harmful interference” to medical telemetry users.