FCC White Space Rules Favor Tech Industry 135
holy_calamity writes "The FCC has come to a decision on the rules governing devices that make use of the unlicensed wireless spectrum between TV stations, with commissioner Genachowski trumpeting a new era of 'super Wi-Fi.' Most crucially, the FCC dropped the requirement that devices sense TV and wireless microphone signals. Instead, they can geolocate and use an online database to learn which white spaces are available in their area. That makes tech firms happy because it provides a software-centric alternative to developing complex new sensing hardware."
Fucking finally (Score:4, Insightful)
The sliver of bandwidth we get with the ISM band is really not very useful in heavy population areas. The shift to 5ghz wifi didn't seem to help as in all the cases I've used it range was borderline useless and N degrades pretty badly. In a spot where G gave me 3 or 4 mbps, N gave me the same or less.
I can't wait for the new wifi standard to use these frequencies. Now if we can get rid of broadcast television altogether and just move to an IPTV solution and be done with it.
Re:Hell must be freezing over... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hell must be freezing over... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. The favor regulation that helps the majority of people. - VAST generalization.
The Tea Party is a bunch of idiots that have no plan to implement the changes, is funded by the Koch brothers, and has people specifically trained to disrupt rational conversation.
The things they claim to want o do? we did them,. 100 years ago. it didn't turn out so well for the vast majority of people.
Sweat shops, death traps, 10 year old working, pollution. That's the unfettered free market. People with power abusing the position.
Re:Hell must be freezing over... (Score:2, Insightful)
To be honest, I'd rather my devices have a modicum of intelligence and look around to find the best frequency to use. To do otherwise leaves the whole system open to attack. What happens if this central authority server goes down? What happens if a rogue device doesn't report to the server? I'd like my robots with eyes and ears please, not being remote controlled from D.C.
AV Companies (Score:4, Insightful)
We're a small AV company, 8 employees, and even we have 40-50 wireless mics. We got rid of our old ones and bought new ones that were all in the allegedly safe bands. However, even though we don't have to worry about breaking the law, now we will never really be able to know if the mics will actually work in any given location.
We travel a lot to convention locations around the country. While the databases that the FCC talks about sound nice, in practice they simply do not exist in any meaningful way. There is no one out there asking us to input our frequencies into a DB somewhere, and even if there was, it wouldn't help when we travel.
We will, of course, invest in spectrum analyzers we can take on the road, but even then we won't know if someone powers up after we've done our sweep and settled on frequencies. This is a big problem because if a mic goes out on the CEO of a big company we may have to comp a portion, or all, of a show to keep them happy.
I'm happy to have better wireless communications available, but it won't come without a big cost to us and companies like us.
Gee, thanks (Score:1, Insightful)
You fucking asshole. On behalf of the millions of people who get shit for internet connectivity now. Just thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. Remove broadcast TV, that means we still get shit for internet, and no TV, and no "IPTV" if your net connection is so shitty all you would see is a "buffering" message, like we get with a two inch youtube screen now.
Fucking urban elitist assholes.
Re:AV Companies (Score:3, Insightful)
The nice thing about laws that make everyone guilty is that you get to pick and choose who you prosecute.