Quick thinking
Comments were due recently in the white spaces rulemaking. A lot to read, and no time to do it tonight. But here's a first thing — a report from the New America Foundation says:
This report answers the following question that is central to the FCC’s current rulemaking about whether to open the unused TV-band channels in each market for wireless broadband and other innovation: Can unlicensed TV-band devices using cognitive radio techniques completely protect licensed broadcast TV services? Some published reports have postulated an affirmative response to the question, while others have claimed the opposite. This report provides the engineering support to definitively resolve this question in the affirmative: cognitive radio techniques can be used by unlicensed TV-band devices to protect licensed broadcast TV services.
It's nice to see Dell, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Philips weighing in:
[T]he Commission should ensure that the TV white spaces are used for unlicensed operation; spectrum should not be allocated on a licensed basis. The Commission has concluded correctly that unlicensed operations may be better suited to adapt to the “shifting spectrum environment” characterized by low power operations in the TV bands. Indeed, the phenomenal success of the Wi-Fi industry is merely a prelude to the benefits the country can expect from making unused television spectrum available on an unlicensed basis.
I have a lot to learn about the engineering details, but I have a feeling this is going to be another rulemaking that (once decoded, once the acronyms are taken apart) will reveal a great deal about who is trying to shape the future of internet access in this country, and why.