Bone, or Boon?

Last Thursday the FCC finally threw WiFi a bone. (Picture from the blog of Dakota Feinstein.)

The agency voted to allow low power, unlicensed devices to use the spaces between TV signals, once the TV stations abandon them under the 2009 digital switchover.

Under the order tests of interference will be completed in the middle of next year, and technical requirements would be set by October. Marketing the new gear would only begin after the switchover, now scheduled for February 2009.

The question is, will this be a boon or just a bone?

Right now, Brett Glass says, evidence is it's a bone.

He says his tests of interference at 900 MHz, a higher frequency than what is being used here, showed extreme interference, even within a town of 2,700.  Allowing use of the spectrum under the Part 15 rules of WiFi would be a disaster, he feels. Glass, who runs a WiFi operation, prefers a "light license" under which companies would be required to avoid interfering with one another, as in the 3.6 GHz band.

The spectrum at issue here has long wavelengths, in contrast to the microwave frequencies used for WiFi. This means that, just like today's TV signals, it can easily penetrate walls, it takes a lot of power to create the waves and (since we're just talking about the "white space" between channels) there's really not much spectrum being offered off-license.

We're not talking here of point-to-point signals that only travel a few feet, but of point-to-multipoint signals which, by their nature, are directional. The good news is they come into the house. The bad news is that they take power to produce, and can thus only be produced by a limited number of people before the interference makes the whole thing worthless.

Intel spokespeople said they were happy with the decision. But a statement from a company attorney urged the agency to make more open spectrum available, rather than continuing to sell it to frequency hoarders. Time will tell whether Intel gets its wish, and what it or other equipment makers will be able to do with the spectrum they've gotten.

But under the most proprietary FCC in a generation, open spectrum at least got thrown a bone. And that in itself is a boon.