WHITE SPACE PROPONENTS TO FCC: TAKE IT SLOW

The White Spaces Coalition may have just blinked in its high-stakes showdown with broadcasters.

The Coalition of high-tech firms that had been pushing hard for an FCC vote next month that would permit unlicensed wireless devices to use the vacant TV broadcast channels in each market—the so-called white spaces—is now asking the agency to take its time and consider new data that it will be submitting, possibly as early as this week.

The Coalition believes the new data, results of field testing on devices in New York and California, will refute allegations that the unlicensed devices will cause devastating interference to digital TV reception and derail the DTV transition.

“Hopefully the commission will accept that data as verification that the Coalition’s proposal is a good one,” said Ed Thomas, a former FCC chief engineer who now represents the Coalition, which includes Microsoft, Google, Philips, Intel, Dell, HP and others.

“But if the commission doesn’t accept it, our preference is that they be given the time in order to do their own independent justification and validations as opposed to ruling just because they said they were going to rule in October.

“We would provide them with whatever support is necessary for them to do it on an expedited fashion including providing them personnel if they want it,” he said.

Last week, according to FCC filings, representatives of Microsoft and Dell contacted FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, thought to be one of the Coalition sympathizers, saying they would not mind if the vote slipped slightly.

The FCC has set a timetable that calls for a vote in October. The last word from Chairman Kevin Martin is that he is sticking to the schedule.

That the Coalition is tapping the brakes on the proceeding may be a tacit admission that it has lost ground since the FCC released the negative results of its testing of white space devices and evidence that the broadcasters’ increasingly aggressive campaign against unlicensed white space devices is having an effect.

Early last week, the NAB and the Association for Maximum Service Television ratcheted up their lobbying efforts. Following a Monday press conference at NAB headquarters, a contingent of broadcasters and their Washington reps visited all the commissioners arguing that unlicensed devices in the broadcast band would hobble the new digital broadcast TV service.

The broadcasters’ cause was strengthened—and the Coalition’s weakened—in July by results of the FCC’s testing of unlicensed device prototypes. The FCC found them seriously lacking and “capable of causing interference.”

The broadcasters needed the help.

When the FCC relaunched its white spaces proceeding a year ago, three of five commissioners—Copps, Jonathan Adelstein and Robert McDowell—were clearly leaning toward approving the devices.

“For some time, I have hoped the commission would move forward to enable this exiting new technology, so it is very encouraging that we are doing so today,” Copps said at the time.

In a speech earlier this week, McDowell said he has “long advocated vigorous promotion of unlicensed use of the white spaces.”

McDowell said that he understands the interference concerns. “But, at the end of the day, we will have a resolution,” he said. “Inventors will continue to invent, and a workable technical solution will develop.”

More telling perhaps, McDowell told Communications Daily after the speech that broadcasters won’t give up the spectrum easily—not until “it is pried from their cold dead hands.”

The white spaces debate centers on the vacant TV channels in every TV market.

Broadcasters believe they need to remain vacant or strictly regulated to avoid interference with TV signals. The Coalition believes the channels should be opened up for use by unlicensed devices, particularly those that facilitate broadband access. They include everything from wireless laptops to PDAs to radio-controlled toys.

Broadcasters contend that such devices would inevitably interfere with reception of digital TV signals, causing pictures to pixilate or freeze.

But the Coalition says not to worry. It says each device will contain technology that will sense what channels are in use by broadcasters in a market and automatically switch to an adjacent channel that is not.

For example, if a station is broadcasting on channel 30, the device will sense that and commence operation on either channel 29 or channel 31.

But the broadcasters have no confidence in the sensing technology.

If the sensing technology malfunctions, they say, the device will operate on the same channel as a station. Such co-channel interference could extend for miles.

The broadcasters also claim the sensing technology as now proposed is not sensitive enough. It sets the signal threshold for triggering a channel switch so high that in areas far from a broadcast tower the sensor might decide a channel is vacant even though DTV sets in the same place might receive perfect pictures.

Plus, the broadcasters say, the sensing technology can easily fool itself. A user may turn on a portable device in a “dead spot” where the station’s signal is so weak that the sensor wrongly determines a channel is vacant. And from the dead spot, the device could cause widespread on-channel interference.

The FCC tests focused on the sensors in prototypes submitted by Microsoft and Philips and found that neither could consistently detect TV signals. The Microsoft device in field trials failed to accurately sense the presence of a TV signal 40%-70% of the time, the FCC found.

“If you can’t detect, you must reject,” says MSTV’s David Donovan.

And even if the device manufacturers somehow perfect the sensing technology, broadcasters would still not be satisfied. They believe adjacent channel interference also causes cause interference to TV sets.

Even the best DTV sets cannot block out interfering signals from devices operating on these channels, the broadcasters claim.

The broadcasters also argue that the FCC should be wary of allowing unlicensed devices in broadcast spectrum because once the devices are in consumers’ hand they cannot be recalled. Damage to the band would be irreparable, they say.

And because devices would be unlicensed, the FCC would be unable to police their use or track down malfunctioning ones. Consumers with the new devices won’t know they are causing interference and consumer with affected digital TV sets won’t know where the interference is coming from.

Working on the Washington premise that you can't beat something with nothing, the broadcasters support allowing use of white spaces for broadband access in rural areas where there are plenty of vacant channels and where “fixed” transmitters can be carefully located outside of TV stations’ coverage areas.