Apparently a "database administrator" is a kind of registry of spectrum and location, keeping track of what devices are using which frequencies in which places,

Apparently a "database administrator" is a kind of registry of spectrum and location, keeping track of what devices are using which frequencies in which places, and so ensuring no overlaps? Based on this description of the proposal they submitted: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/01/our-proposal-to-build-and-operate-white.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/01/our-proposal-... and this FCC page: http://www.fcc.gov/topic/white-space http://www.fcc.gov/topic/white-space It turns out that I live in one of the largest "black" areas on their map of channel availability, Los Angeles. The other large black spots are Salt Lake City and New York. There are also a couple odd black spots in New Mexico that must be regulatory rather than physical, since they don't have any "gradient" of decreasing channel availability around them. https://www.google.org/spectrum/whitespace/channel/ https://www.google.org/spectrum/whitespace/channel/ (looks like it's US-only). ETA: It looks like the NM rectangular black spot is the "Very Large Array" of radio-telescopes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array)