Broadcasters Oppose Wireless Internet in White Space
September 11, 2007 3:51 PM | Google | HP | Microsoft | Comments (0)
Executives from the broadcast television business, major sports leagues and digital TV manufacturers launched a campaign yesterday Monday designed to persuade the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) not to allow portable wireless Internet services in the so-called "white spaces" of TV spectrum. Even though the FCC found that the prototype devices don't consistently work properly, the agency said it is open to the possibility that future devices could perform better. |  |
The Association for Maximum Service Television and the National Association of Broadcasters unveiled a television advertisement (see below) that began airing yesterday and will continue to run on local television stations in the Washington area throughout the week.
The ad urges viewers to "tell Congress not to allow unlicensed devices on digital TV channels." Additionally, print ads begun running in several Capitol Hill publications.
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NAB Television Board Chairman Alan Frank, president of Post-Newsweek Stations, noted the importance of protecting viewers from interference.
"Interference is not acceptable to our viewers. While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not," said Frank. "Consumers know that computers unexpectedly shut down. TVs don't. TVs work and people expect them to work."
The campaign from the National Association of Broadcasters and the Association for Maximum Service Television comes in response to a report the FCC made at the end of July detailing its testing of prototype devices from the technology giants, which are working together as the White Space Coalition.
The companies, also including Hewlett-Packard Co., EarthLink Inc. and Philips Electronics North America Corp., had submitted prototypes of products that could operate in the portion of a spectrum band that a TV broadcaster doesn't use, known as white space. The devices were designed to look for broadcasts in the spectrum and then transmit only if the spectrum was free. But the FCC found that the devices didn't consistently detect the signals and could sometimes cause interference.
The FCC has already approved transmission in the spectrum for fixed devices. The prototypes submitted by the technology companies were of portable products.
Two weeks after the FCC released its report, Microsoft filed a letter with the FCC explaining that the device it submitted was badly damaged and that's why it failed to adequately detect broadcast signals.
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