FCC Set To Finalize Rules For Next-Gen Wireless

GovTechGuy writes "The FCC's agenda for Thursday includes a vote on the final rules for unlicensed devices making use of unused TV spectrum known as 'white spaces.' Industry and lawmakers have predicted the opening up of the white spaces could result in the biggest leaps forward in wireless technology in the past 25 years. Among the benefits is so-called 'WiFi on Steroids' which allows a large number of users within a 50-mile radius to tap into a single high-speed broadband connection for the same price as a traditional WiFi router. The FCC is expected to approve the move, but Google and other companies warn that the devil is in the technical details of the rules."

Re:2008

[Sepodati]

This is the same issue on it's second or third go-around. I'm sure the rules for using the spectrum have been updated to take in the latest complaints, but that's probably about it.

It's time for the FCC to open this up and see what happens. Rules are in place. I'm sure they'll be adjusted as this goes. Let's use the spectrum and start dealing with some real issues instead of "possible interference" and horror stories.

-John

Re:Ummmm

[commodore64_love]

>>>(600 megahertz is a frequency, not a bandwidth.

How on earth did you get out of college with an engineering or science degree?!?!? The SI unit "megahertz" can be applied to a discrete point (600 million cycles per second on the EM spectrum) - or - as a measure of bandwidth (700 through 1300 MHz == 600 megahertz of space). So going back to what I said:

- Cellphones have been assigned, by the FCC, approximately 600 megahertz of bandwidth
- TV has been assigned approximately 200 megahertz of bandwidth

Perhaps I am to blame. Perhaps I wrote my sentence in shorthand (aka technospeak) but this IS slashdot after all - I expect technically-minded persons to understand the basics they learned in PHY101.

Re:What open channels?

[commodore64_love]

>>>didn't they move the spectrum during the digital changeover?

No they did not. Analog 2-51 and Digital 2-51 are exactly the same spectrum. In fact a lot of the stations are had to do a "live cutover" from analog-to-digital at midnight June 12, because they occupy the exact same spot. These stations include WPVI, WGAL, WBAL, WHYY, WJZ, and so on.
.

>>>This is the whitespace formerly used by *ANALOG* broadcast TV.

Mistaken again. The former analog channels 52 through 69 have been sold to cellphone companies (plus emergency police radio), and are already in use even as I type this sentence. These TV Band/whitespace Devices don't operate in channel 52-69 and also don't exist yet.

Re:So just forget about home users?

[commodore64_love]

I doubt the stations will broadcast that far.

50 miles requires a large antenna like the one I'm using now (4 by 3 feet) to receive a signal..... not really practical to attach on an iPod or iPad. 50 miles also requires a transmitter output of ~100,000 watts. That would drain a tiny iPad battery in about 1/4 minute.

Re:What open channels?

[MarkRose]

The spectra weren't even used by analog broadcast TV. The spectra consist of unused space between the old channels, space that was left unused to avoid interference, harmonics, etc. between the analog channels.

Re:What open channels?

[Sepodati]

So if the data doesn't fit your assumptions, you just cut it in half? Nice.

Methodology for the Trenton, NJ area:

"TV channel assignments were compiled using a variety of data sources to ensure accuracy. The preliminary channel line-up was taken from the Consumer Electronic Association's "Antenna Web" online resource (www.antennaweb.org), which lists all available signals from a given zip code. In this case, the base zip code used was downtown Trenton. CEA's listing was then cross-referenced with data from the Center for Public Integrity's Media Tracker Database (www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/) and the television license query engine at REC Networks (www.recnet.com/cdbs/fmq.php). All of these databases consist of information taken from the FCC. A final check was performed using the FCC's TV TVQ Database Query (http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/audio/tvq.html). FCC databases were also searched to determine if any public safety organizations operated in the TV band. Channels with public safety devices were deemed occupied.

This combined station listing was cross-referenced with multiple local television guides to determine which channels are available over the air. All stations broadcasting in or near Trenton that can be viewed over-the-air in Mercer County were included."

Re:So just forget about home users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er?

FTFA (yes, yes, turn in my /. creds)

The move to adopt white spaces for devices is expected to significantly accelerate adoption of wireless broadband because the low-frequency waves can travel through buildings and trees and cover a radius of 50 miles with a single router.

Quinn said new routers would leverage the larger coverage area to allow many more users to access the Internet for the same price as a standard W-iFi router. He predicted the earliest adopters would be college campuses, schools, libraries and other institutions that seek to provide ubiquitous Web access but have thick walls that make it difficult.

It *sounds* as if the technology is largely safe (because it's just wi-fi with more range) and is something that most places would invest in quickly. Sure it's not something you'd have at home, but exactly why would you need more square footage in the first place? It's not home networking because, unless you're living in a massive house or wanting to get your home wi-fi from your workplace, the nearby park, or a restaurant down the street, I don't understand why you'd need the massive range.

Now, if you *do* have a larger than average house that requires more range (and I don't get how big your house would be. I can see the wifi of people two houses down from where I live) I'm sure they'll release low powered super wi-fi up to a half a mile or whatever the hell you need.

Why are you so angry about this? People out in the boonies now have a better chance of getting broadband if this goes through and it means that those of us not in the boonies might be far more likely to not get stuck in dead zones without wi-fi access.

Re:P2P networking

[adolf]

By posting this, I'm un-modding some other stuff. So be it.

With CB, you have to listen to everyone else's banter. Communications are broadcast, by definition, to anyone else whose particular squelch setting and receiver sensitivity will allow them to receive it. It is easy for one party in one conversation to step all over another party in a completely different conversation, while being completely unaware of it.

There are no PL tones [wikipedia.org] on CB to limit unintentional interference and distractions, just different channels.

But I hasten to say that things have moved on:

We now live in a world where communications are neither so rude, nor so limited.

It is now trivial to determine the precise sender and recipient of a transmission (hello, IP [wikipedia.org]). It is trivial to ratchet down output power, automatically, such as to very nearly speak only to those who you intend to speak to. And it's possible to share a band, due to things like CDMA [wikipedia.org], TDMA, [wikipedia.org] and OFDM [wikipedia.org].

None of this exists on CB.

And when mesh networking [wikipedia.org] enters the picture, things become even less like a CB.

The acceptance of a white-space provision by the FCC, no matter what modern technology it consists of, will be a boon for communications amongst a populace -- including the torrenters and the porn mavens, as well as the web browsers and the Facebookers.

To think otherwise is to disregard everything, so far, that the Internet has brought to us, as well as everything that has been learned about RF communication over the past few decades.

Yeah - WiFi is just like broadcast TV....

[markana]

This is going to work really well... not

Think about it. Compare this mythical 50-mi radius super WiFi to an existing hotspot. Or cell tower, for that matter...

1 - Contention. how many clients will be in that coverage footprint, competing for the bandwidth. Radio is a shared medium - only one source can be using it at a time (disregarding exotic and expensive tricks). So you split it up into channels - there goes your bandwidth. And you MIMO the area into sectors - bummer if you live on a sector boundary and bounce between them. No matter what you do, you have to divide a limited resource among a whole lot of users. Suddenly, small local cells look a lot better.

2 - Power. Sure, your local TV station gets great coverage (or since digital, not so much). They've got a 50-Gazillion-Watt transmitter, and it's one-way. How much power will your laptop/tablet/phone/etc. need to talk reliably to a base station 50 *miles* away? At a decent data rate, with the interference of everybody *else* trying to get the attention of that base? It's hard enough to do on analog *voice* systems. If you thought hidden-node problems were bad with WiFi, you ain't seen nothing yet! Oh, and how big are the antennas going to have to be for these lower frequencies (compared to 2.4Ghz)? The next iPad will have a band around *it* for the antenna....

3 - Infrastructure. How many of these mega-APs will get to be in a given area? Does everybody get one (hey - no license)? It's not going to be easy or cheap to backhaul all of those clients from your huge central site. It's simple to serve a small area at a time, and the cell companies certainly have the hand-off issues worked out (well, mostly). But the only long-range two-way systems out there are fairly low-bandwidth and server relatively few nodes.

You can have bandwidth, coverage, or population - pick 2.