Clear All TV from Spectrum for Wireless Broadband, Says New America

“Take TV off the air” in a few years, said Michael Calabrese, director of the foundation’s Wireless Future Program, since 2002 an advocate of opening the TV white spaces. To open all TV spectrum to wireless broadband, over- the-air broadcasts should be replaced entirely by cable, satellite and Internet viewing, he said. All channels should be available by broadband, with the government possibly subsidizing cable and satellite providers to deliver free Lifeline service, Calabrese said.

Expectations of a Nov. 4 FCC vote to open the TV white spaces are only whetting the appetites of those advocating allowing unlicensed broadband devices in many spectrum bands. “The TV band is just the beginning,” Calabrese said. Consultant Paul Kolodny, an adviser to M2Z and former chair of the FCC Spectrum Policy Task Force, agreed. “There are a lot of other opportunities” for “opportunistic spectrum” use, he said.

The FCC proposes to limit devices to 40 milliwatts of power in white-space channels adjacent to TV stations, but “we're going to push that up over time,” Calabrese said. Mark McHenry, CEO of Shared Spectrum Co., said “the FCC is going to start conservatively, but we're going to wear them down. In a few years, we're going to be at 10 W all over the place.”

The New America Foundation is gunning for wireless broadband access in “underutilized government and even commercial bands” by promoting the use of cognitive radio to prevent interference, Calabrese said. “Let smart radios operate around the dinosaurs,” he said. This may call for the use of micropayments or “microauctions” for the benefit of licensees, Calabrese said. Kolodny said “the white spaces are going to be at the forefront of showing that these technologies actually work.” He cited the upper 700 MHz, AWS-3, BRS, UNII and 3.5 GHz bands as other targets. One project proposes Earth Exploration Satellite Service, which would constantly switch spectrum to allow downloads, he said.

Shared Spectrum developed Dynamic Spectrum Access technology for DARPA’s X6 program, a $25 million, six-year government effort completed a few months ago, McHenry said. “This is all very proven technology, and we have prototype radios” in a demonstration at the conference, he said. The technology allows “a large reduction in radio cost,” which is DARPA’s overriding priority, McHenry said. The company did field tests a year ago, in the air and water as well as on land, and was to report the results to the FCC Tuesday or Wednesday, he said. “There really are no hard technical challenges,” McHenry said. Calabrese said the biggest challenge raised at an IEEE conference last week on dynamic spectrum use was coming up with business models.

Shared Spectrum is selling DoD lab groups the radio in test kits, McHenry said. The company is putting its technology in Joint Tactical Radio System receivers for the U.S. Army, and the military is interested in it for robots and unmanned air vehicles, McHenry said. “DoD now wants to do” spectrum pooling with peer users, he said. And the NTIA’s Boulder, Colo., lab is doing “stealth tests” that parallel the white-spaces developments, McHenry said. “The NTIA is getting very involved … The white space is just the beginning.”

“I can’t imagine a radio in the future that doesn’t have DSA,” McHenry said. He sees the technology moving from the military to public safety and then into general uses, he said.