Prospects are bright for building under an Obama White House
on successes by supporters of Carterfone, net neutrality rules and open
spectrum for wireless broadband, leading activists said. Groundbreaking changes
probably will come Nov. 4 with the arrival of a friendly national
administration and FCC white- space rules, said President Andrew Schwartzman of
the Media Access Project Tuesday at an open-wireless conference of Google and
the New America Foundation. "Policy makers are ready to listen," he
said: "There's likely to be a very receptive environment going
forward."… more
An important fact that has been lost in the debate about opening unused television
channels (TV white spaces) to white space devices is that the Pentagon has already
approved the unlicensed sharing of military spectrum in the 5 GHz band for devices
utilizing similar spectrum sensing technology proposed for white space devices in the TV
band. In the upper part of the 5 GHz band, wireless devices are required to dynamically
scan the airwaves and avoid operation on spectrum utilized by radar systems. The
experience of… more
The technology is ready for smart radios to prevent interference by portable devices for wireless broadband, and in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air, speakers said Tuesday at a conference held by the New America Foundation and Google at the company's headquarters.
"Take TV off the air" in a few years, said Michael Calabrese, director of the foundation's Wireless Future Program, since 2002 an advocate of opening the TV… more
Among the panel speakers was New America Foundation scholar Michael
Calabrese, who addressed an otherwise neglected argument offered
against white spaces by broadcasters: The claim that auctioning white
spaces for licensed use could provide a financial windfall to a
cash-strapped government. Drawing on a freshly-released NAF working
paper, Calabrese argued that industry estimates of some $10 billion in
revenues from a white space auction were based on a flawed comparison
between the "Swiss cheese" of white space bands and bands in the 700
MHz range, which are suitable… more
Take the question of spectral availability. While this might seem one of the easiest to settle-is more than half of US TV spectrum lying fallow or is it not?—the answer isn't obvious. The New America Foundation, a think tank that supports white space devices, claims that 25 to 80 percent of TV bandwidth is unused, depending on where you look. When the group hosted Google co-founder Larry Page at a DC event a few months back, Page also spoke of… more
Media Access Project, on behalf of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC), submits the attached Informal Complaint and Petition for Rulemaking pursuant to Rules 1.41 and 1.401, 47 CFR §§1.41, 1.401. PISC requests that the Commission:
