FCC Approves "white space" broadband

[pm]

This was a pretty big decision yesterday that was swamped by election news:
http://www.pcworld.com/busines...white_spaces_vote.html

How this works is that you can essentially have long-range wireless broadband internet using VHF and UHF signals that are unused after the switch from analog TV to digital TV in the spring of next year. As mentioned in the article, it's essentially "WiFi on steroids". The signals will travel through walls, are unaffected by trees (a WiFi signal won't go through a tree), are unaffected by weather (WiFi doesn't travel through precipitation - so it doesn't work from one house to another during a rainstorm or snow), and travel a lot longer distance using a lot less power. So instead of having multiple WiFi stations around an airport or mall, you'll only need one or a couple.

It is absolutely great news for consumers. Unlicensed spectrum is what makes bluetooth and WiFi work as well as 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz home cordless phones work.

It's also a great decision by the FCC. There was a lot of opposition to it from wireless operators, and broadcasters and not a lot of public support for it from consumers who don't understand it. So a vocal minority who lobbied hard against it versus a silent majority who don't understand it. I commend the FCC for a brave decision that is solidly on the side of the general public.


While it's going to take a while - probably a year or two - for devices using this to be designed, manufactured and offered for sale, this is going to be a really big deal.

 

[boomhower]

Is this going to be a consumer Wifi type deal or is it going to be a service XOHM type deal?

 

[ViviTheMage]

Whose going to pick this up, and how? How will this effect us as the consumer?

IE, cheap 'wifi' internet basically?

 

[pm]

It's not exactly "cheap WiFi internet" it's more like much better WiFi - it's lower power and longer range - at the cost of lower bandwidth rates.

What this spectrum is, is basically the nicest section of spectrum that I can personally think of for doing longish-range, reasonably low-power, pass-through-walls, reasonable bandwidth internet. It would be interesting if Intel's WiMax products moved into this space and out of the 900MHz licensed range. If so, then what you would end up with is something like WiFi except with much longer range and better obstacle penetration. You'd have a lot of products use it - like all laptops would come with it. You could have much more competition from Wisps (wireless internet service providers) who are presently stuck on licensed bands (which are expensive), you could have a much cheaper-to-deploy urban wireless networks - like cities and college campuses who use WiFi for this (but WiFi is expensive because you need a lot of access points for good coverage). You could use it at home to have WiFi but with better range.

The raw bandwidth won't be as high as WiFi, but the ability to put down one basestation and have good coverage over a much larger area will be attractive for larger scale wireless internet deployments.

All that said, there's already an unlicensed 900MHz block and people don't use it for much right now. So maybe this will turn out to be nothing useful. The fact that basestations will need to have a GPS on them (for the geospacial location checking required by the FCC to check that the basestation won't interfere with TV) will boost cost and limit where you can put them. Maybe this will be a whole lot of nothing in the long run... but I doubt it. I have a gut feeling that this will be a big deal.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: pm
Maybe this will be a whole lot of nothing in the long run... but I doubt it. I have a gut feeling that this will be a big deal.

My impression is the exact opposite. It's space that quite literally anyone else has a higher priority with. You can't to launch a long-range commercial service on unlicensed space and expect it to not get inadvertently blasted off of the air; you don't have a license that lets you keep other people off of it. Unlicensed space is great for short-range communication such WiFi, but that's it.

 

[pm]

I never said that I thought there'd be a nationwide commercial service launched on it... But WiFi is unlicensed, and there's nationwide commercial services on it. And they work ok. Unless you want to make a WiFi network larger than a house... in which case, this spectrum could be pretty useful.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: pm
I never said that I thought there'd be a nationwide commercial service launched on it... But WiFi is unlicensed, and there's nationwide commercial services on it. And they work ok. Unless you want to make a WiFi network larger than a house... in which case, this spectrum could be pretty useful.

If it's larger than a house, then it means I can reach far enough to blast you off of the air when setting up my own network. Coincidentally, nationwide commercial WiFi works exactly because of those range limitations.