Anablog

I will do a longer tirade about white spaces in a few days. For now I want to reprint a letter I got from Stephen Dunifer, a spectrum radical and promoter of free radio. For now, lets think about public interest. Notice that the lower VHF band, the TV channels 2 through 6 are now sort of unloved. The phone and data companies thought they could rip these frequencies from the broadcasters, but then they realized the low frequencies require a large antenna that would make them useless for high-dollar mobile service. It turns out that there is an actual public service proposal on the table. It does not come from any high-dollar multinational corporation. It comes from Stephan Dunifer, a Berkeley radical and proponent of free radio, disparagingly called pirate radio by many people. Stephen wrote me:

I enjoyed reading your article on the FCC. As someone who has had more than his share of experience with the FCC vis-à-vis the Free Radio Movement (aka Pirate Radio), my conclusion is that it is about the money and controlling resources.   During the time the FCC was taking comments on the proposed LPFM [low-power FM radio] service I drafted a proposal on behalf of the Free Radio Movement. This proposal was carried forth by several attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications as part of a larger lobbying and comment process. A good deal of what I wrote was ultimately incorporated into the final version of the LPFM service. What was not incorporated was the proposal of extending the FM band into channels 6 and 5 for strictly analog, community/free radio stations. Since the transition to digital was on the horizon it seemed to make logical sense that the public should benefit in some meaningful way from the giving away of $75 billion worth of UHF spectrum to the broadcast industry as mandated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Of course, public benefit (need, necessity and convenience - terms the FCC has never really understood the meaning of) is the last thing on the FCC's agenda, if it is to be found there at all.

Given the issues you raised, I believe the allocation of channels 5 and 6 for community/free radio stations should be placed on the agenda. It would not present any real technical problems, just setting a transition period and opening of service date. Receivers entering the US after a certain date would have to be capable of tuning down another 12 MHz or so. To answer the issue of administration, this new allocation would be strictly non-commercial and essentially license free with a maximum power cap. With 60 FM channels to go around, spectrum availability would not be a problem. The paperwork process would be rather simple, a single page form stating location, responsible parties, power level, etc. Submit the form, receive acknowledgement from the FCC and go on the air.

It is good to see that you are analog person as well. I enjoyed your joke about teaching analog to digital folks. Starting next month I will be teaching a series of introductory DIY electronics classes/workshops, mostly analog. For more about my adventures, just plug my name, Stephen Dunifer, or Free Radio Berkeley into your favorite search engine. Our websites are http://www.freeradio.org/ and www.radiotupa.org.

So let’s see if the FCC will take channels 5 and 6 and open it up to free FM radio. I doubt it because there is no money in it, but you never know. I know the technical part of the FCC what I call the old FCC might be all for this proposal. After all, if there was a open slice if spectrum it might keep people from broadcasting on commercial FM bands. And the political part of the FCC, the higher ups, well they are not really as crass, craven, and venal as I make them out to be. I think that they might really care about the people more than big-money spectrum auctions. At least we can hope so. All I know is that it is pretty stupid to keep shutting down radio stations when all the TV bandwidth is now available.

The whole pirate radio issue also highlights something told to me by Dennis Monticelli, a ham radio enthusiast and chief technologist for National Semiconductor’s analog group. I asked Dennis what he thought about the white space proposal and he smiled and said: “The white spaces are really gray.” There are portable microphones and other uses for these frequencies. But Shure must have smaller brown envelopes than Google and Intel, since nobody really cares that Shure was in the white spaces first.