High tech celebrates white-spaces victory
Tech companies are wasting no time in predicting products that will be coming to market on the ruling, with some expecting the first white-spaces devices to be here for the 2009 holiday season.
By Tam Harbert, Contributing Editor -- EDN, December 2, 2008
High-tech lobbyists were dancing in the streets in Washington, DC, on Nov. 4, and it had nothing to do with the presidential election.
Instead, they were celebrating a spectrum policy victory at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which on Election Day unanimously approved the unlicensed use of “white spaces” for wireless broadband service. After more than two years of FCC testing, not to mention heavy lobbying from both proponents in high tech and opponents in the broadcasting industry, the commission adopted rules that will allow the use of channels vacated by broadcasters when it switches to digital TV in February 2009.
Because of the ruling, “consumers across the country will have access to devices and services that they may have only dreamed about before,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a statement. “I fully expect that everything from enhanced home broadband networks, to intelligent peer-to-peer devices, and even small communications networks will come into being in TV white spaces.”
The tech industry, including Google, Dell, and Microsoft, had campaigned hard for that spectrum because it has propagation characteristics that would allow data, video and audio to travel farther and penetrate obstructions better than WiFi. The industry has argued that opening up that spectrum could create an entirely new market for wireless products. Broadcasters and wireless microphone vendors opposed the move, claiming that such devices would interfere with their transmissions.
While the FCC put some restrictions on the devices that could limit the market, the tech industry was nevertheless thrilled to have the FCC approve the use of white spaces, according to Michael Calabrese, VP and director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation. “The certainty of opening the vacant channels for unlicensed access by both fixed and mobile devices is the single most important thing,” he said. Now that companies know what the rules are, they’ll be able to start developing equipment.
And tech companies wasted no time in predicting the products that would be coming to the market as a result of the ruling. Just one day after the vote, a Dell executive was quoted as saying the company would introduce new products with integrated white-space chips, although he didn’t say how soon.
Given the time it will take to build devices and have them certified by the FCC, products won’t be on the market until late next year, estimates Rick Whitt, Washington telecommunications and media counsel for Google. “If you’re looking for your first white-space device, it will probably be here for the 2009 holiday season.”
Google Co-founder Larry Page, who along with Microsoft’s Bill Gates had personally advocated for opening the spectrum, predicted that the majority of computers and mobile devices will have white-space capabilities within the next few years. “It is wonderful that the FCC has adopted the same successful unlicensed model used for WiFi, which has resulted in a projected 1 billion WiFi chips being produced this year,” Page wrote on Google’s blog. “Now that the FCC has set the rules, I’m sure that we’ll see similar growth in products to take advantage of this spectrum.”
The decision came down to the wire, with Chairman Martin under heavy pressure to pull the item from the agenda. If that had happened, then a vote on the issue would likely have been delayed until the Obama Administration made new FCC appointments, a process that could take six months or more.
In the report and order it adopted, the FCC took a conservative approach, including many safeguards to protect incumbents from interference. First, the commission distinguished between two different technologies that devices could use to avoid interfering with existing broadcasts: spectrum sensing and geo-location.
In spectrum sensing, devices use cognitive radios sophisticated enough to detect when a TV signal is using the channel. Geo-location means the devices would be equipped with GPS or similar location technology and would check an online database via the Internet to determine what channels were available in a certain area.
The FCC said it will allow under its normal equipment certification process only those devices that use both technologies. It will consider devices that use only spectrum-sensing technology, but they will be required to undergo an unusually rigorous approval process. The FCC will test them both in the lab and in the field, the staff’s report and recommendation will be released for public comment, and approval will require a vote by the full commission.
In this way, the FCC is trying to reassure broadcasters that they’ll be protected. “It's like a separate rulemaking for each of those devices,” said Steve Sharkey, senior director of regulatory and spectrum policy at Motorola. “I'm not aware of anything that's been done like that for certifying devices. But it demonstrates how cautious the commission is being.”
Second, the commission specified different power limits for the devices, depending on whether they would be using channels that were adjacent (immediately on either side of the TV station channel) to the incumbent’s. Mobile devices using non-adjacent channels have a power limit of 50 milliwatts if they use sensing only and 100 milliwatts if they use both sensing and geo-location. In adjacent channels, the limit is 40 milliwatts for either type of device.
That severely limits the use of certain portable devices in major metropolitan markets, because there are very few non-adjacent channels in cities, said Calabrese, noting that the 40-milliwatts level is less than a typical home WiFi router. So while the ruling provides extra channels for WiFi-type of connections in the home, it won’t help those who want to extend wireless networks throughout communities, such as municipal networks, he explained.
Google has filed comments urging the FCC to approve the use of a mechanism that could vary the power level of a white-space device operating in a channel adjacent to a digital TV signal. The FCC said it would continue to consider additional information from manufacturers on the topic of allowing the use of higher power devices in adjacent channels.
The order also helps rural broadband, providing a power limit of 4 watts for fixed-access devices that use geo-location, but only on non-adjacent channels. That limits them to small rural areas, but in those areas it will be quite useful, said Calabrese. The FCC said it will study whether to permit higher-powered unlicensed operations in rural areas.
