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"Guerra is part of a Rice team [...whose...] goal is basic research on providing broadband in the TV "white spaces" — empty channels that the government recentl

• thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Yeah, I was hoping to find a little bit more in-depth information though. I'm finding reports of a handful of companies (including Google) being selected to be database "administrators" for this, but I can't get clarity on whether such a database is supposed to apply to equipment manufacturers or to service providers. There's also an ongoing federal lawsuit over the use of this technology. I'm still looking into it though. edit: looks like the equipment is still under development, experimental, and not commercially available. Phooey. I can't find any development timelines, either, and it looks like the FCC wants to restrict devices using certain frequencies to certain geographic areas, so it could be a while before it becomes possible to roll this out.
  • trotsky 15y ago
    You need an experimental license because none of the (still prototype) devices have received FCC approval yet. In theory, the use of the whitespace frequencies is already open to the public - if you had approved equipment. The rate that the FCC is approving experimental licenses has accelerated a lot in the past 9 months, and new deployments are rolling out much faster as some quasi-commercial gear has started going to trial. While it is difficult to say for sure when the first generally available radios might arrive, I've heard a vendor suggest the second half of 2012. That would be for enterprise gear though, it might take a couple of years before it was hitting consumer price points. The database issues shouldn't be a big deal.