FCC Members in Agreement on Most Details of White Spaces Order

TV white spaces will play a key role in communications once devices are made available, most likely next year, said speakers at a New America Foundation panel Wednesday. The discussion comes with several fine points in the FCC’s white spaces order, scheduled for a vote at the Sept. 23 commission meeting, still potentially in play. The order finalizes the proceeding, after the FCC approved the use of the white spaces for accessing the Internet in November 2008. The agency is expected to cut off further lobbying when it releases the sunshine agenda on next week’s meeting Thursday.

In one key policy call, under a proposal circulated by Chairman Julius Genachowski, the draft order effectively eliminates a requirement that white spaces devices have to detect whether spectrum is occupied before using the white spaces. Instead, the order allows white spaces devices to rely on a strict national database to check before they turn on in a particular channel. Sensing remains an option, down the road, under the order, FCC officials said.

Most of the last-minute tinkering on the order involves small, technical changes, agency and industry officials said Wednesday. The FCC is expected to reject a Wireless Internet Service Provider Association push for changes allowing for higher broadcast towers in rural areas, said industry and agency sources. Questions have also been raised about how many channels to give wireless mics and whether to have some process by which the biggest users can get in the database. But the order is expected to retain a provision providing two dedicated channels for microphones per market, with few other changes likely. Still unresolved is what to do about Fibertower’s proposal to dedicate part of the white spaces to licensed spectrum for wireless backhaul. As written, the order rejects the company’s request.

"There’s still a number of open issues and unanswered questions about how robust this access to the TV white spaces will be,” said Michael Calabrese, senior research fellow at New America’s Open Technology Initiative. “It’s critical that we have channels in every market. There’s many fewer channels in the most congested markets like New York City, Washington, D.C. We need channels in every market so that there’s national markets for chips, devices, applications and so on.” If the FCC offers too many channels for the estimated 500,000 unlicensed mics in the band, or offers too many protections for broadcasters, it will make the white spaces less useful for accessing the Internet, he said. Meanwhile, one eighth-floor aide said that issue might be somewhat in play.

Among details of the draft order that appear in flux at the commission are whether to add some of the geolocation database protections that broadcasters seek, while still doing away with the sensing requirement, broadcast industry officials said. They said internal conversations among FCC officials and forthcoming changes to the order likely will center in part around whether white spaces devices should check in with some frequency with the database of licensed users of that spectrum. That’s been among the changes the NAB and Association for Maximum Service TV have asked for in recent days, ex parte filings show.

"Once you eliminate sensing, you create a number of issues that require the database to be improved,” MSTV President David Donovan said. “We are working with the commission to improve that database.” Although the TV industry is concerned about white spaces rules, for now that fear may be for naught because there are no devices set to come to market, some broadcast lawyers said. But when the devices do start to be used, at least some interference is to be expected, they said.

"What’s really important here is that the FCC eliminates the uncertainty that has existed since November 2008,” said Steve Coran, WISPA regulatory counsel. “Most of the times when the FCC puts out an order people say, `great, I'll go out and build it.’ This time that didn’t happen because there were big questions.” The extent to which the FCC provides certainty next week “is going to be very important to how quickly we can get these devices out there, how quickly Dell, Microsoft and Motorola are willing to put [equipment] out there with very little risk,” Coran said. “There’s a lot of set asides for wireless microphones and we worry that if all of this goes through it could undermine the ability of white spaces devices to flourish,” said Paula Boyd, regulatory affairs counsel at Microsoft.

The white spaces will provide spectrum with favorable propagation characteristics both for the equivalent of super-Wi-Fi and wireless backhaul, Calabrese said. It also offers promise for machine-to-machine communications, for example, a text message delivered to a wireless device from a super smart refrigerator that detects someone is out of milk. The order also sets a precedent for opening up other white spaces across the radio spectrum, Calabrese said. “The chairman of the FCC talks about the emerging spectrum crisis and a central goal of the National Broadband Plan is 500 MHz more spectrum,” he said. “Well, there’s not 500 MHz more of exclusively licensed spectrum to be found. But what we can do is have more shared spectrum, more spectrum band sharing and so what we're going to see -- and TV white spaces is going to be pivotal to this -- is more hybrid networks.”

The FCC was on the right track in dropping the sensing requirement, said Liam Quinn, Dell chief technology officer for security, communications and peripherals. “In a new market like this, a new area with white spaces, we just have to be very careful of the design complexity and implementation of the solutions,” Quinn said. “Sensing, we believe, is burdensome right now as the ecosystem is starting to develop and potentially will develop. So we believe the database is a very good approach initially to get the market kick started.” Boyd agreed. “At the end of the day you want devices you can put in the market in an economically feasible manner,” she said. Requiring both sensing and the ability of a device to check a database would drive up the costs.

Various groups and companies have been at the FCC this week for last-minute lobbying of the advisers to the five commissioners and other FCC staff. Dell and Microsoft, two of the lead promoters of opening the white spaces, met with Genachowski aide Rick Kaplan and Julie Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology this week to make last minute points. “During these meetings, we discussed the fact that multiple channels will exist in every market where personal/portable white space operations are not permitted, that this spectrum can accommodate previously unauthorized wireless microphones, the potential impact on white space operations if previously unauthorized microphones are permitted to register for database protection, that database administrators should not determine the propriety of including previously illegal wireless microphones in the database, and that any rules regarding previously illegal wireless microphones should seek to avoid the confusion and incentives for improper use that characterized the past regime,” said an ex parte filing.

NAB and MSTV met with Kaplan to make a case for a more rigorous database. The FCC should disclose the geolocation/database operations requirements and provide opportunity for public comment “that could be expedited to avoid delay,” followed by approval by the full commission, the groups said in an ex parte letter. White spaces devices should not be allowed to come to market until those steps are complete, NAB and MSTV said: “This will not delay the inauguration of white spaces services because they cannot be launched until a geolocation/database regime is up and running.” The broadcasters also told the FCC that devices should have to check the database as often as every 60 seconds and that FCC should restrict use of the white spaces to licensed wireless microphones, not the hundreds of thousands of unlicensed mics that now proliferate in the TV band.