Unlicensed Devices in TV White Spaces Imperil Sports, FCC, Hill told
From NASCAR to the NBA, sports industry and broadcaster representatives Tuesday began a full court press at the FCC and on Capitol Hill, describing what they call a major threat posed by an FCC proposal to open broadcast white spaces to unlicensed use. They called the effort the first coordinated outreach by all major sports against the white spaces move. The group explained that wireless connections loom far larger in sports than generally thought and face serious interference problems if unlicensed devices share the frequencies they use.
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Teams and broadcasters use of hundreds of wireless links letting coaches talk to quarterbacks and pit crews to drivers, said Ken Kerschbaumer, editorial director for the Sports Video Group. “I don’t think until you actually sit in a broadcast compound do you understand how many microphones are used and how much coordination is done,” he told us. “The NFL has frequency coordinators at every event and they're coordinating about 100 to 150 frequencies. ESPN uses about 175 frequencies themselves for a football broadcast.” The Superbowl and similar events employ five or more frequency coordinators to handle hundreds of frequencies.
The effort includes a meeting with Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, among other FCC officials, and top House and Senate staffers. Other targets include the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET), now testing devices intended for the white spaces spectrum. Representatives of Major League Baseball, NASCAR, the NBA, NCAA, the NFL, the NHL, the PGA Tour and ESPN are participating.
Leagues and programmers are hard-pressed to find enough spectrum for major events, the group said. “In most major metropolitan areas where many sporting events are held, the TV spectrum is not actually ‘white’ or vacant but is, in fact, used to support these events,” they said.
Interference could wreck the performance of wireless microphones central to sports events and coverage of them, the group said in the filing. “Such interference would have a devastating effect on program producers, organizers, teams, coaches, and live spectators at an event as well as the millions of viewers watching on television. Imagine the public complaints and outcry from fans if audio was lost during a decisive call or key play during a televised playoff or national championship.” The group will ask OET to include wireless microphones in field and lab tests of interference from devices designed to make us of the white spaces, it said, calling “real- world” testing “particularly important… The advocates of new devices in the TV frequencies bear the burden of demonstrating that no interference will occur to existing operations and should be prepared to demonstrate that their devices detect and protect all incumbents, including wireless microphones.”