Ofcom follows America into the white spaces

[dboomer]

And I though y'all were getting off too easy ... :)

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/10/of...ite_spaceofcom/

[AndyL]

:) Probably the most dangerous - for the UK entertainment industry - idea ever to be consulted on so far by Ofcom. Only four weeks for responses, and, if you don't already know, and only read the exec summary (as MP's and the like will do at the very most) you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a Win - Win situation. If you think that losing ch.69 was / is traumatic, you aint seen nothing yet! This industry has been using the White Spaces for over thirty years, not just in the UK, but at least here we have a licence mechanism for it. Channel 38 will almost certainly be protected to some extent, but that still leaves any major event or venue that relies on what we currently call UHF Interleaved Spectrum - i.e. White Spaces - with a looming, potentially uncontrollable interference problem, unless this madness is stopped.

 

The situation in the UK and Europe is very different from the USA. In the USA a very small percentage of 'primary TV screens' receive their TV through an aerial, the vast majority using cable or satellite. In the UK and Europe it's more like 80%. So the US TV broadcasters do arguably waste a lot of UHF spectrum with multi megawatt (yes, really) transmitters which hardly anyone watches. Why? Because if you have a broadcast licence then the cable companies who serve the majority of homes in the US have to carry your output.

 

The key here is the word "free". The people behind these White Space Devices, who won't actually tell you what their devices are really going to do (try asking Microsoft for example, I'm sure they know but they won't tell you, it would spoil the surprise after all), are very excited about the idea of access to spectrum without having to shell out the Billion $ / € / £ sums paid by the mobile operators for their spectrum.

 

Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.