Via Ars Technica
By Nate Anderson | Published: September 23, 2008 – 11:30PM CT
High stakes
Every city in the country—even New York City—has a host of unused TV channels. Opening up that fertile field of spectrum to the seeds of innovation is a worthy-sounding goal that everyone can agree to in principle, but when it comes down to making the rules that govern access, and to certifying the devices that can operate, the debate hops on the express train to Nastytown.
So say the broadcasters
How did a campaign to allow unlicensed access to TV “white spaces” turn into a “campaign of fear,” a “political proceeding,” and a series of “ridiculous assertions”? Because of what’s at stake.
I sat down recently with several of the leading voices in the white spaces debate. The goal: to get beyond the political posturing in order to present the technical issues being argued about in Washington. What quickly became apparent is that the two aren’t so simple to separate.
Black, white, or gray?
Despite the ferocity of the debate over mobile white space devices, one thing that becomes clear in talking to the participants in the conflict is that the issue isn’t just a black-and-white engineering challenge. It’s much more a calculation of risk vs. reward, except that in this game, the incumbents stand only to lose (from interference), while the new entrants stand only to win (by selling devices and creating more demand for their online services).
