White spaces
Today’s communications law class focused on the 700 MHz auction, the white spaces, and a discussion of the relative roles of Congress, the FCC, and the courts in communications law.
I did my best to convince the class that the white spaces proceeding is really exciting. Huge! Lots of spectrum, potentially available for portable, unlicensed uses! A whole world of opportunistic, clever devices will open up!
They were polite about it. One student wisely said that he thought the Commission would stall until after the new president has been inaugurated. Nothing’s going to happen, he said. It’s too political and difficult right now.
He’s probably right. Sprint, T-Mobile and rural carriers recently said that the white spaces should be used only for fixed, licensed purposes (provision of backhaul). CTIA is claiming that the results of the 700 MHz auction indicate that licensed use of the white spaces would be appropriate:
Many advocates for white space unlicensing . . . tout in-home networking and improved WiFi as likely uses of the spectrum. Filling up the white space with low-power, short range services like these would be wasteful and inefficient, however. Indeed, the white space is “overqualified” for such use, which “would amount to using land in downtown Tokyo to grow rice.” A far superior approach would be to optimize the opportunity for long-range services. While such services typically require significant investment, an unlicensed environment offers no protection from low-power devices and competing uses in the band. An unlicensed environment significantly deters potential investment in infrastructure necessary for long-range service – indeed, even with several hundred MHz of unlicensed spectrum already set aside, a nationwide unlicensed network has never been built.
But the whole point of the unlicensed idea is that it doesn’t have to lead to the construction of a national network to be wildly successful - 802.11 hotspots aren’t a national network, yet they’ve changed the way we use PCs and dual-band phones.
Let’s hope the next administration will get this idea.