Open Spectrum: Latest Publications

Yesterday will go down in history as a bellwether moment. Few among us will soon forget the excitement of Obama's election. But there was an equally historic vote yesterday that for geeks, policy analysts, and technologists represents an entirely new trajectory in telecommunications. In essence, the FCC has begun the transition from command-and-control, single-user spectrum licensure to a more distributed system that holds the potential to eliminate the artificial scarcity that prevented widespread access to the public airwaves since 1927.

Yesterday, the FCC ruled that unlicensed white… more

In an October 2007 letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), executives from the four largest TV networks told the Commission that proposals to allow low-power Wi-Fi type devices to operate on vacant TV channels, “could cause permanent damage to over-the-air digital television reception." Such a dire warning would ring alarm bells for policymakers, if not for the fact that similar nightmare scenarios have been predicted before.

In 2004, the FCC initiated a proceeding to determine rules to allow the unlicensed operation of wireless communication devices in unused television band spectrum between channels 2 and 51. These vacant and unassigned television channels, known as the TV “white spaces,” would help make affordable wireless broadband in rural America a reality.

I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of a “White Space Device.” And yet, white space devices have the potential to be one of the most revolutionary new technologies to come along in the past twenty years. White space devices will have a greater positive impact than Wi-Fi and spur far more innovation than mobile phones. And yet, the trade press and inside-the-beltway media have been inundated by a massive PR campaign, and congressional offices have been swarmed by hundreds of