Posted
February 2, 2006

Broadcasters' Lockup of "White Space" Spectrum Thwarts WiFi

Broadcasters' lock-up of "white space" on the public airwaves spectrum thwarts public access to wifi.

Even as demand for wi-fi and other unlicensed wireless Internet services soars, commercial broadcasters are trying to lock up some prime, unused slices of the public airwaves for themselves. Recall that the broadcasting industry is in the midst of making a transition from analog to digital television transmission – a move that Congress enabled by giving broadcasters two sets of spectrum for free, simultaneous use during the course of the transition, now slated to be completed by February 17, 2009.

But because broadcasters don’t need two sets of spectrum – for analog and digital signals – Congress declared in December that unused spectrum between channels 52 and 69 should be put up for auction to commercial wireless services. The decisive question now is whether the broadcast industry will succeed in hanging on to unused spectrum by hoodwinking Congress and the FCC with bogus arguments.

In an attempt to blow the whistle on broadcasters’ deceptions, the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program has released a flurry of fact sheets and issue briefs to explain how the “white space” in the TV spectrum could be used much more efficiently, and for public benefit. It’s time for Congress and the FCC to step in and put an end to the political manipulations over who shall control the unused, unassigned portions of the “analog” TV spectrum.

Every one of the nation’s 210 TV markets has between 15 and 40 unassigned and vacant channels reserved for broadcasting – all of which could be readily converted to wi-fi and other wireless uses. After broadcasters vacate the analog spectrum (channels 2-51), Boston will have 19 vacant channels constituting 38% of the TV band spectrum. Seattle will have 26 vacant channels constituting 52% of the TV band. These sorts of numbers are typical for other American cities.

While this spectrum sits vacant, some 60 percent of the nation’s households don’t subscribe to broadband because it is either unavailable or too expensive. But by some estimates, the TV band white spaces could be used to deliver Internet access to every American household for as little as $10 a month. Municipal wireless could also do a great deal to stimulate economic development.

But broadcasters say no. They adamantly refuse to give up “their” spectrum even though they don’t need it and have no announced uses for it. They want to “warehouse” the spectrum in the hope that they can exploit it somehow in the future when lit suits them. This is exactly what they did when they objected to low-power FM radio stations from using empty spectrum in the FM band; they later developed a technology that increased the number of FM channels they could transmit by a factor of ten.

The FCC recognizes that because the amount of available spectrum varies from city to city, it would have to be used by a new generation of “smart” radio devices that could tell if a channel was in use and avoid interference with it. But broadcasters are using the technical novelty of wi-fi to spread misinformation. They claim wi-fi devices would cause signal interference with TV stations.

The Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation has shot back with an issue brief by three respected spectrum engineers, “Why Unlicensed Used of the White Space in the TV Bands Will Not Cause Interference to DTV Viewers.” And J.H. Snider has issued a fact sheet rebutting many of the industry canards about WiFi interference. These and related documents can be found at www.spectrumpolicy.org.

Congress is expected to deal with this issue in coming months. It needs to tell the FCC to proceed with its rulemaking to open up the white space for wireless devices. In the meantime, the broadcasters’ lockup of the white space amounts to a colossal waste of a valuable public asset.