Genachowski Expected to Propose Eliminating White Spaces Sensing Requirement
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to circulate an order late Thursday for the Sept. 23 meeting that finalizes rules for the use of the TV white spaces to surf the Internet. In one key change, agency officials said, the order is expected to eliminate the requirement that the devices have the capacity to sense whether TV broadcasts are using a channel. Instead, the order would permit devices to rely on a national database containing information on which channels are occupied in a given area. The commission released the tentative agenda for the meeting, but the order had not circulated at our deadline.
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The change, if approved, would be a big win for companies like Dell, Google and Microsoft, which pushed for the FCC’s original white spaces order and have since lobbied for elimination of the sensing requirement. Various public interest groups have also urged that the requirement be stripped form the order.
The FCC approved an order in November 2008 opening the TV white spaces for the use of “new, sophisticated wireless devices” to go online. Industry groups that fought a multi-year battle for access to the spectrum have been waiting since for the commission to wrap up the proceeding. The National Broadband Plan recommended that the FCC “move expeditiously to resolve pending petitions for reconsideration in the TV white spaces proceeding” and approve final rules.
Broadcasters have concerns about eliminating the sensing requirement without a more “viable and effective” geolocation database, Association for Maximum Service Television President David Donovan told us. “The FCC and the broadcast industry share the same goal -- avoid interference to tens of millions of TV viewers and protect a station’s ability to gather local news with licensed wireless microphones,” he said. The “FCC’s response to the problems encountered with interference from unlicensed devices in the 5 GHz band was to create a system using both sensing and a geolocation/database. We believe a similar response is required here.” A NAB spokesman declined to comment. MSTV and NAB said in a filing Tuesday (CD Sept 1 p9) that the sensing requirement “serves a vital backstop function to protect against interference to the public’s broadcast services and is the only mechanism for protecting against interference to itinerant licensed wireless microphones used for critical newsgathering purposes.”
"Eliminating the sensing requirement is critical to making this affordable for consumer devices,” Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld said Thursday. “We had always told the FCC ‘do sensing, or do database, but don’t do both, because that adds a great deal of expense in the design and manufacture of the products.’ Given the FCC’s determination to rely on the database approach, it makes sense to eliminate the sensing requirement.” Feld said the database is likely to be “more conservative, in terms of designating channels as open, then sensing would be, because the FCC has created fairly generous exclusion zones for protected services.”
"Overly stringent sensing requirements coupled with database and advance registration requirements would have been too inflexible,” Media Access Project Vice President Matt Wood said: That would have the effect of “adding cost to and unnecessarily deterring use of low-power TV band devices.”