Wireless for Free
Have you ever wondered why we went to digital TV so quickly. It’s because the FCC Auctioned off the old Television frequency spectrum back in the Clinton era. This was done to “Balance the Budget”. Well now here is something new. The frequency spectrum or white space between channels 1 and 51 has now been declared, by the FCC, available for use for free (unlicensed). ( We used to see it in the analog days as snow on the screen like the above picture.) It’s been in use since Jan 26 of this year in North Carolina where testing has been going on. Once the Bugs have been worked out, it going to catch on like wildfire. The lower frequency means longer range and the opportunity for a plethora of new technology products. I could mean free Internet for the world, if done correctly. With the bandwidth crunch and throttling of data plans, look for the cell phone companies to try and design new cellphones that use those frequencies so they can pass customers off to in order to lessen the strain on their 3G and 4G networks.
The White Spaces Coalition and IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee IEEE 802.22 WG on WRANs (Wireless Regional Area Networks) Have been working on this since 2007. Usually the white space is used to prevent interference between TV channels but with digital TV that is no longer a problem. I believe with Digital there is an infinite amount space to grow. I’m wondering why congress hasn’t thought of auctioning off these frequencies to make money, but wait….it’s not over yet.