FCC Says White-Space Spectrum Device Doesn't Work

from the proto-failure dept

Tue, Aug 7th 2007 8:27pm — Carlo Longino

A gaggle of tech companies, led by Google and Microsoft, have been pushing the FCC to open up the "white space" spectrum -- open airwaves in between those used by TV broadcasts -- for use by electronic devices and broadband services. This has been talked about for quite some time, and represents one way to more efficiently use spectrum, which is a finite and very valuable resource. The group delivered a prototype to the FCC earlier this year, as a way to show that the technology to allow devices to automatically detect what spectrum's in use and what's available, and route communications accordingly, is viable. The FCC's been testing it for several months, and it's all good, except for one little problem: it doesn't actually work. The Commission says the prototype couldn't detect TV broadcasts, and it also sometimes interfered with them. While this current iteration of the technology sounds like a failure, the FCC is still open to the idea of allowing use of the white spaces; now Google, Microsoft and their friends just need to get the technology right before things can move forward.

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Filed Under: fcc, spectrum, white spaces
Companies: fcc, google, microsoft

10 Comments

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Kyros, 7 Aug 2007 @ 9:15pm

See, this is good news that everyone wants to hear. Inovation and good use of resources. It's just a shame it's purely a matter of time before it ends in patent debacle and lots of suing. But, hurray for the moment?
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- General Eskimo, 7 Aug 2007 @ 9:50pm
  
  Re:
  Obviously, hurray for incompetence!
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2007 @ 11:17pm

Forgive the skepticism, but I really can't trust the FCC to get anything right anymore. Who wants to bet that they were just unable to properly work the device?
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2007 @ 4:36am

Clearly the device ran on some form of windows....
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- Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2007 @ 6:10am
  
  Re:
  or OS X
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Slightly Confused, 8 Aug 2007 @ 6:31am

Why Bother?
Aren't we about to have a spectrum auction that will take these exact airways and sell them for this exact purpose? Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but within a few years this 'while spectrum device' will be a moot point and completely useless ... right? And even though it would be useful until then, it probably wouldn't make much, if any, money for whoever invests in it.
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Phil, 8 Aug 2007 @ 6:37am

Who actually built and designed this device? If it was in-house at Google and/or Microsoft it isn't much surprise that the device didn't work. This type of thing should be made an organization that has, you know, actual experience building communication equipment.

By the way, they submitted two devices. The second worked acceptably even though it was supposed to not yet be ready.
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Brian, 8 Aug 2007 @ 11:34am

That's why people buy licensed spectrum
Licensed spectrum was created for the very reason why this device is failing...BUT, if people bought licensed spectrum, then device choice becomes limited and then investors would need to make a return on investment and so on and so forth...
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Barney, 8 Aug 2007 @ 9:21pm

9 will get you 10 the device's bandwidth was too narrow and detected the TV signal as noise.
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Dana, 13 Sep 2007 @ 3:44pm

White noise..
Elsewhere on the 'Net .. it says the product that they tested was defective and that the FCC refused to use the one that was not defective to retest the item.
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