700 MHz Auction Begins Tomorrow 187
necro81 writes "On Thursday, after much speculation and wrangling, the FCC will begin auctioning licenses to the coveted 700 MHz band that will be vacated by analog TV in 2009. The NY Times has a good summary of the players (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Google, et al.), how the auction will work, how Google has already scored an open networks victory, and what it could all mean for consumers. The auction will go on for several months, but you can keep tabs on the bids at this FCC site."
Re:When did it go from public to private (Score:4, Informative)
Re:When did it go from public to private (Score:2, Informative)
The gov isn't selling off anything that belongs to people. It was licensed to TV broadcast networks, not residents.
Auction 73 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where does the money go? (Score:5, Informative)
It's always been private (Score:4, Informative)
I think you're confusing transmitting and receiving. You can receive on whatever frequencies you care to. Swap out a few parts to an old ham radio receiver and it will totally pick up 700MHz band and you can listen to your heart's content.
Transmitting is a different story though. Even public radio stations have to pay (albeit less than commercial radio stations) in order to broadcast and they are assigned a unique frequency on which to do so.
Re:Where does the money go? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Big businesses win, we lose! (Score:2, Informative)
I would like to begin my reply by imploring you to use linguistic features like "paragraphs" to organize your thoughts so that they are easier to read.
As the article summary notes:
As for the rest of your comment, it is as poorly thought out as it is written and organized.
Re:Auction 73 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:When did it go from public to private (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang (Score:3, Informative)
You're assuming the systems are symmetric. It's more likely that the official licensees will have a far stronger transmitters than the ones in wireless microphones. The microphones won't interfere significantly with the licensees, but any licensee operating in that part of the spectrum will probably drown out wireless microphones over a fairly large area. Moreover, transmitters based on the "white space" detection that's been discussed recently would probably fail to detect such low-power signals and transmit right over them.