As I mentioned in an earlier post, the FCC acted on the broadcast “white spaces” item at today’s meeting. While the actual text of the order is not yet written, the general summary given at the meeting, the FCC press release, and statements of the Commissioners indicate that:
1) At this time, the FCC will not exclude any channel between 2-51 for unlicensed use (where empty) except channel 37. The FCC will, for now at least, not permit mobile devices to operate on channels 14-20 (I presume for fear that a mobile device will move from a market where 14-20 are not used for public safety to one where 14-20 are used for public safety).
2) The FCC did ask questions about exclusive licensing v. unlicensed. Worse, from my perspective, the FCC has shifted from its stronger position in the original 2004 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). Building on the work of the spectrum task force in 2002 and a specific notice of inquiry in 2003, the 2004 NPRM resolved the licensed v. unlicensed question in favor of unlicensed. Broadcasters succesfully pushed back to once again make this an open question.
Both Democrats, Commissioner Copps and Commissioner Adelstein, issued strong endorsements of opening the white spaces for unlicensed use rather than trying to license access to the white spaces. Both also fought hard to make sure that the FCC did not exclude Channels 2-4 or Channels 14-20 until after the FCC conducts its own engineering studies. You can see Copps’ separate statement here and Adelstein’s separate statement here.
In particular, I hope everyone will read and take to heart this statement by Commissioner Copps:
“In many contexts — as with the enormously succesful bands that support today’s wi-fi networks — unlicensed uses most closely approach the ideal of the people’s airwaves, to be used in direct service of the public interest.”
The above quotation appears
The above quotation appears to be nothing more than typical rhetoric from a bureaucrat or politician trying to make himself and his peers look caring and as though their only motivation is ‘doing what’s best for the people’. Without meaning to have put unwarranted words into anyone’s mouths, people who speak thus on this issue often seem to have forgotten the lessons taught by the CB radio band (with its fad, overcrowding and largely passing phases), which lessons were followed by massive crowding in the 2.4 GHz band, which problem then drove a multitude of users into the now-itself-becoming overcrowded and interference-laden 5.8 GHz band. Forgetting the lessons of the past only leads to the formulation of bad policy based upon worse precedent, something the marketplace can ill afford.
Of course today’s wi-fi networks provide a valuable service in a vast number of cases. But the technical downside issues are many and severe—-a lack of data security, coverage reliability, interference mitigation and throughput performance are among the highly variable and often unsatisfactory conditions experienced in the consumer market. “Carrier-grade” QoS is virtually impossible to guarantee to commercial customers in such an environment. It seems to me that only a fool would base a high-end business plan on a totally unknowable and uncontrollable operating environment, and that only craven politicians, greed-blinded “entrepreneurs” or technological illiterates would advocate such folly.
The discussion on the relative merits of licensed versus unlicensed spectrum has been grandstanded to the point where many advocates and regulators appear completely polarized, as though both uses cannot and should not coexist. This viewpoint is technically naïve and counterproductive to the overall public good. Provisions should be made for both types of usage, be applied where each makes the most sense. Yes, RF spectrum is a finite resource and nobody’s making any more of it. But that does not mean that intelligent usage and sharing of this resource cannot be achieved, merely that doing so is neither simple nor easy.
Ted: The White Spaces is
Ted:
The White Spaces is all about licensed and unlicensed coexisting.
Sure, we are seeing congestion in the limited spaces available for unlicensed. There are a number of ways to resolve the interference problem. Some of them, unfortunately, are artificially limited by the FCC’s existing rules.
Which is why the “lessons from history” on CB radio are of limited usefulness here. For one thing, CB radio was succesful for what it was and what it tried to be. Its waning popularity owes much to its limited utility and poor design, I would argue, rather than any inevitable “tragedy of the commons” that modern interference avoidance technology is powerless to correct.
Instructively, the direct descendant of CB radio, “Family Radio Service,” continues to work quite nicely and profitably as a niche service. It is not a cell phone, and does not try to be. But I and my family have found it much more useful on family trips than our cell phones. The use of the service has grown steadily and substantially since first authorized in 1996. Yet it has not undergone the same “inevitable” tragedy of CB radio. This suggests, to me at least, that the rise and demise of CB radio is more complicated than your argument suggests.
Whether RF is a finite resource, and if so to what extent, is debated by experts far more learned than I. But just about everyone agrees that we could be doing a significantly better job now in terms of managing it than not. There are the laws of nature and the laws of the FCC. To many people mistake the later for the former.
As for the last point, I do believe that, as a matter of First Amendment principles, it is a far superior use of spectrum to allow citizens to communicate directly with one another than through a licensed intermediary. You may call me an ignorant advocate if you wish. I’ve certainly been called worse. But I firmly believe that where technology allows direct communication between people, the government has no right to instead require that these same people use a government-licensed intermediary. Where the limits of technology require us to maintain exclusive licensing, yes. But where technology has eliminated that requirement, it should not persist.