Google co-founder Larry Page turned up on Capitol Hill today to boost the company’s “Free the Airwaves” campaign, reports the Washington Post.
Companies such as Google that are part of the Wireless Innovation Alliance are asking for the white spaces to be unlicensed and open to all. They have started an on-line petition to support unlicensed broadband access over unused television frequencies.
“It’s worth asking whether 13,000 petitions are more important than retaining interference protections for 113 million TV-watching homes,” said the NAB’s chief apologist, Dennis Wharton. The NAB says it will be the end of broadcast television, appealing to their base of morons.
FCC engineers performed the latest round of testing on August 9, at FedExField, just outside of Washington, D.C. “The test was rigged deliberately,” Page said during his remarks in the Dirksen Office building. “That’s the kind of thing we’ve been up against here, and I find it despicable.”
What did he mean by rigged? A Google spokesman explained later that the test devices could not detect the wireless microphones because the testers had used the same frequency as local television stations — in essence hiding within the television spectrum so that the test device could not detect them. “There’s no way to do that,” he said. “You’re going to detect the television station, not the wireless microphone.”
Asked afterward whether the FCC, which had run the tests, had a role in their “rigging,” Page stepped back. “Broadcasters have been very active in this,” he said.
He called on the FCC to approve the unlicensed use of the white space before the November election and toward that end, met with most of the FCC commissioners today, as well as some members of Congress.
Shortly after Post blogged about Page’s visit to Washington, Mark Brunner, Shure Inc.’s senior director, public and industry relations, contacted them with a response:
“The FCC’s wireless microphone field tests were carefully planned and thoroughly executed based on sound engineering science and real-world operating scenarios. These tests were open to the public, and those who choose to discount the results — which have not yet been published — had every option to be present and to witness them for themselves.”
In the analog television era, adjoining stations interfered with each other.
In the digital era, DTV stations with million watt DTV transmitters can be right next to each other (Channel 41, 42, 43, etc). Digital transmission cleanly separates signals on adjacent channels and allows interference-free reception.
But 100 milliwatt “white space” access points (using unused channels), can’t be designed to prevent interference to televisions, claims the NAB.
The top part of the dial — from UHF Channel 52-69 was just auctioned off by the FCC for nearly $20 billion dollars. But the bottom part of the television dial is now a largely unused resource.
The Wireless Innovation Alliance says the NAB “has consistently opposed every bit of new technology offering new media options to consumers.
Not to worry. The NAB was too dumb to permit COFDM modulation for HDTV and too arrogant to even consider that their “public service” doesn’t deserve free channel space. Commercial group owners may not be a political force much past the first quarter of ‘09, after the advertising goes.
Related White Space articles on Dailywireless include; Google Launches White Space Offensive, Motorola on Whites Spaces: We’re Good, White Space Field Testing, Google Pitches White Spaces, White Spaces: Now It’s GE, CTIA: Unlicensed White Spaces Bad, 700 MHz Resurrected in White Space, White Space War Continues, White Spaces Prototype: Dead Again, Sprint and T-Mobile Support “White Space” Use and White Space Gets Hot
.gif)
