Intellectual Property Law

This week in the white spaces

By Susan Crawford

The battle lines are being drawn:

[Only a] licensed approach to new services in the TV bands white spaces would provide accountability and regulatory certainty to stakeholders and best protect incumbent users from harmful interference.

(FiberTower Corporation and the Rural Telecommunications Group, Inc.)

We are concerned with the potential effectiveness of devices that rely solely on spectrum sensing techniques to avoid interference to mobile radio systems operating on TV Channels 14-20.

(American Petroleum Institute, Enterprise Wireless Alliance, USMSS)

[F]ully utilizing TV ?white space? as a low cost alternative for improving broadband and mobile phone coverage in rural areas [such as Vermont] may well require a simultaneous deployment of what the Commission has termed ?fixed/access? and ?personal/portable? uses. TV ?white space? could be used to support individual handsets, as well as backhaul of wireless traffic through fixed devices.

(Vermont Telecommunications Authority and the Vermont Department of Public Service)

From the NAB’s point of view, . . . potentially having unlicensed portable devices on white spaces interfere with television-broadcast signals was completely unacceptable, and no amount of testing by the Federal Communications Commission could change the NAB’s mind.

(Speech by Kelly Williams, senior director of engineering and technology policy for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), reported here.)

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on April 24, 2008 (boomark / email).