Well... that was a bit of sarcasm - that the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) would oppose license-exempt use of unused portions of the spectrum allocated to television broadcasting ("White Spaces") isn't shocking at all - it's what they do, and this development was utterly predictable and business-as-usual with NAB and MSTV. As I wrote a few days ago, this FCC report is specific to the testing of prototype devices, and validation of the concept of license-exempt White Space devices, that the concept shows sufficient promise to move forward with proposals... which would then be open to comment.
With the release of the FCC's report on their testing of prototype White Spaces devices, NAB is grandstanding by filing an "Emergency Request" with the FCC "because they're concerned".
I had to chuckle when the NAB's press release stated "... unlicensed devices relying solely on spectrum sensing threaten the viability of clear TV reception." In the decades I've been watching broadcast television, the only time I've had what I'd call "clear TV reception" was in my youth when my mother used a bit of money from an inheritance to pay for the construction of a 40' tower with a ungainly VHF/UHF television antennas to receive signals from Toledo, Ohio. And in the coming years after the DTV conversion is complete, very few people will be able to get by with indoor television antennas because the digital signals require a very high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) to decode reliably. So, television viewers will require an outdoor antenna (perhaps not the 40' tower of my youth), or "cable" television (or, increasingly, "telephone" television), or direct broadcast satellite dish.
In fighting license-exempt use of White Spaces, NAB is really missing the big picture. License-exempt white space devices provide a perfect ecosystem for continuing television broadcasting - they defer to the broadcasting use of the spectrum, but their presence, in the billions of devices, would deter the tendency to further reduce the television broadcast spectrum for other services like what happened with the 700 MHz bands being created from television broadcast channels 52-69, and the conversion of television broadcast channels 70-83 into wireless telephony decades ago.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
This article was written and posted via Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A on a MacBook Pro laptop.
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