Outbid by Verizon Wireless in the great American airwaves auction last week, Google plunked a six-page letter on the Federal Communication Commission’s desk asking the government to make the “white spaces” – the airspace between TV channels – available for unlicensed wireless data use by mobile devices.
The notion is backed by Microsoft, Intel, HP, Dell and the North American arm of Philips Electronics, a k a the White Space Coalition, and opposed by broadcasters on the theory that it’s going to interfere with TV reception. Google basically calls the broadcasters Luddites and told the government its job isn’t to protect the status quo. Google calls its plan Wi-Fi 2.0 or Wi-Fi on steroids and pictures it drastically revving transmission speeds to billions of bits a second, say, movie speed for wireless devices. The white space will become available early next year when TVs are supposed to switch from analog to digital. Google says white space-exploiting devices could be out maybe six months later, certainly for Christmas of 2009. The FCC is currently testing a second round of equipment to see if it interferes with TV broadcasts. Google is proposing spectrum-sensing technologies like the military uses that would check to see if the channel was open before using it and offering free technical assistance to other would-be white space users including IP, reference designs and open geo-databases. See, if Google-designed Android handset users get better Internet reception Google will make more money selling ads. The FCC could come to a decision this summer. The white space is between channels 2 and 51 on TVs that aren’t hooked to cable or satellite.
About Maureen O'Gara Maureen O'Gara is the Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.
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Outbid by Verizon Wireless in the great American airwaves auction last week, Google plunked a six-page letter on the Federal Communication Commission’s desk asking the government to make the “white spaces” – the airspace between TV channels – available for unlicensed wireless data use by mobile devices. 
