High-tech and electronic giants last week gave the Federal Communications Commission a Wi-Fi device to test that they said can operate in vacant television frequencies without disrupting high definition TV signals. Thus, the product could ratchet up the stakes in a battle between Silicon Valley and the powerful broadcast lobby over the possibility of injecting additional unlicensed spectrum into the market.
The coalition is urging the FCC to conduct its own tests using the device, designed to operate across frequency bands 54 MHz to 698 MHz (TV channels 2-51). The upper end of the TV band is adjacent to spectrum being transferred from TV operators to public-safety agencies.
“We welcome innovation that helps put people in touch with information and expands user choice. Clearly, open access to unused TV spectrum will promote competition, spark a new wave of innovation, and holds the potential to provide broadband access to underserved communities,” said Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for Google Inc.
Joining Google in the development of the device, calibrated to operate in accordance with proposed industry-crafted technical guidelines, are Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Philips North America.
“The sale of HDTVs is an important business to Dell and it would not support the use of the white spaces if there were any realistic chance it would cause interference to broadcast TV,” stated the tech group in a written summary of a meeting with FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein earlier this month.
The FCC is trying to decide whether TV white space should be made available on an unlicensed basis, through traditional exclusive licensing, or by some combination of the two approaches.
Unused broadcast spectrum, commonly known as TV white space, is the subject of significant attention and controversy at the FCC, in Congress and throughout the wireless industry.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin last month told the Senate Commerce Committee that freeing up white space on an unlicensed basis would be far less complicated than licensing the frequencies. Two panel members are pushing TV white space legislation. Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), is sponsoring a bill that would expedite the release of TV white space and permit both unlicensed and licensed services. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), for his part, is calling for exclusive unlicensed use of vacant broadcast spectrum currently employed as guardbands.
TV broadcasters question plan
The high-tech group’s delivery of a Wi-Fi device to the FCC’s laboratory in Columbia, Md., follows recent criticism by TV broadcasters, which have invested hundreds of millions of dollars transitioning from analog to digital technology. “[T]hey provide no technical analysis, or even an explanation, for their suggested sensing level, which provides less protection to incumbents than that previously suggested by one of the coalition members and for which a technical analysis, while flawed, was provided,” stated the National Association of Broadcasters and the Association for Maximum Service Television.
The broadcast organizations pointed to public comments of the Wireless Internet Services Providers Association and others that recommended against operation of personal portable devices in TV white space, favoring such deployment in higher frequency unlicensed bands. One reason for that view is the 700 MHz band has strong propagation characteristics.
Motorola Inc., the largest U.S. wireless manufacturer and the top public-safety vendor, told the FCC that “industry recognizes that further work is needed to support the introduction of personal portable devices, but that the commission should not now foreclose options.” The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials opposes operation of unlicensed wireless devices in the 470 MHz-512 MHz band (TV channels 14-20) because those frequencies are used by first responders in major metropolitan areas.
In their joint filing, the NAB and MSTV highlighted results of TV white space testing funded by the New America Foundation, a major unlicensed Wi-Fi proponent, and conducted by the University of Kansas.
The testing showed that under certain circumstances, such as the operation of TV band devices on either co-channel or adjacent channels within a TV station’s contour, there could be interference to TV viewers.
At the same time, the New America Foundation concluded preliminary test results “support the claim that properly implemented secondary transmission in the television band is possible without significant impact upon DTV reception.”
5 GHz, military precedent
There is somewhat of a precedent for permitting unlicensed devices to fire up in unused TV frequencies. Several high-tech firms gunning for TV white spaces previously worked with government officials in designing cognitive Wi-Fi gear capable of operating in a wide swath of the 5 GHz band without compromising military radar.
The mobile-phone industry has urged the FCC to ensure interference protection for licensed mobile-phone carriers, existing operators and those that might purchase spectrum at the 700 MHz auction later this year.
NextWave Broadband Inc., with a nationwide spectrum footprint comprised of licenses in the 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz and the 1.7 GHz/2.1 GHz bands, is pushing for a hybrid licensing approach along the lines of what federal regulators adopted for the 3.65 GHz band. That approach is described as nationwide, non-exclusive licenses requiring fixed base station registration and use of certain protocols. EchoStar Satellite L.L.C., searching for a path into the wireless broadband space, said it supports “robust use of the TV band spectrum.”
Meantime, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), is championing a bill to protect other wireless gadgets currently operating in broadcast spectrum-such as wireless microphones-from new devices, like Wi-Fi products, that could be introduced into unassigned TV frequencies by early 2009 when the DTV transition is complete.
Earlier this month, a group of producers and engineers that use wireless microphones in high-profile entertainment and sporting events said they were “struck by the utter lack of evidence that any prototype personal/portable device has been designed or built by the devices’ proponents.”
