Google Research Says Vacant Channel Order not Harmful to LPTV
Google plans to file at the FCC Monday data on new research about the FCC’s proposed vacant channel rule, which would guarantee white spaces spectrum nationwide, Alan Norman, principal access strategy at Google, told us. Norman doubts TV white spaces spectrum will be widely used for accessing the Internet for several more years, he said. But the research looked at five markets, saying with the rule only 0.01 percent of low-power TV stations and 0.51 percent of translator stations may have to make adjustments, such as channel sharing, to continue to reach their viewers.
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“It’s a long road,” Norman said of the white spaces. “There are not going to be short answers.” Norman said it took more than 10 years for Wi-Fi to take off in the 2.4 GHz band and for industry to make broad use of spectrum set aside for Wi-Fi in the 5 GHz band. “It’s going to take time just like every other time a new band comes onboard,” he said. While the post-auction repacking will take several years to complete, building a market for white spaces devices will take at least that long, Norman said.
The vacant channel proposal is key to widespread use of the TV white spaces, Norman said. “People need to know that there will be spectrum nationwide that’s available,” he said. Consumer products need a national market to see widespread deployment. The propagation characteristics of the TV spectrum, with its ability to penetrate walls, will be particularly useful IoT devices in the home, like wireless thermostats, he said. “It really helps make for more robust coverage,” Norman said. “It’s not just range but it’s the ability to penetrate different materials, hard to reach rooms and things like that.”
Norman said when the white spaces spectrum comes into play, the technology will be baked into new products, and most consumers won’t know, just as they might now know what bands their mobile phones use. “Think of it as another gear in your Wi-Fi arsenal or engine,” he said. Norman said it will be at least three or four years before the first white spaces-enabled products show up at CES. “I don’t want to be pessimistic,” he said. “It just takes a long time.”
Among the five markets in which Google ran simulations was Charlotte, which presented a worst-case scenario because it has a high concentration of LPTV and translator stations in a mountainous region, the company said. “Market-wide, only 0.04 percent of LPTV stations and 0.35 percent of translators were affected in 15,000 simulations,” Google said. “Even in local areas where preserving the vacant channel has some effect, the impact is minimal -- the most affected counties saw only 1.64 percent of LPTV stations … and 0.78 percent of translators … affected.” Similarly, in Albuquerque, Google found in 15,000 simulations only 0.01 percent of LPTV stations and 0.04 percent of translators were affected. In Cleveland, a market Google said was more reflective of the U.S. as a whole, no LPTV or translator stations were affected in any of the 15,000 simulations conducted, the company said.
NAB slammed Google for its support of the vacant channel proposal. “Google’s free spectrum grab apparently knows no bounds," a spokesman said. "Google is already getting, for the first time ever, nationwide channels in the guard band and duplex gap, which won’t displace TV stations. Then it claims the government must set aside Google Channels because there’s not enough spectrum, while simultaneously claiming there’s a glut of spectrum so viewers shouldn’t worry about losing TV service. Even in Google Land, both claims can’t be true. Most brazen of all is Google seeking to force TV stations off the air now in favor of unlicensed devices that might not be developed for a decade or more, if at all.”
LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Mike Gravino said his basic comment is "garbage in, garbage out.” Much depends on the assumptions and settings in the analysis, he said. The key consideration will be "which model of use is more productive in terms of spectrum efficiency and utilization … and how long the spectrum will stay fallow while the mythical TV white space economy builds."
The research “completely puts to rest the bogus claims by LPTV speculators that reserving a vacant TV channel in every market for Wi-Fi and wireless microphones will knock operational LPTVs off the air, including possibly minority-owned or foreign language stations,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “That just isn’t going to happen.” All Americans will benefit when chipmakers add white space connectivity to mobile devices, he said. “But even though the Wi-Fi 802.11af standard is ready to roll, that investment has been on hold for years due to uncertainty about whether there will be sufficient unlicensed spectrum in every market nationwide after the incentive auction,” Calabrese said. “Hopefully now the FCC has the data it needs to vote the order and give consumers the benefit of TV band Wi-Fi propagation.”
The FCC started its look at use of the white spaces for broadband 12 years ago, under then-Chairman Michael Powell (see 0404190160).