Broadway Urges FCC to Keep Unlicensed, Mobile Devices out of TV White Spaces
The League of American Theatres and Producers is the latest group to join a coalition opposing opening the TV white spaces to unlicensed use, including wireless broadband. As major sports leagues and some religious groups do, the groups fear disruption to wireless microphones already using the band.
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The group said its representatives were meeting Monday with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and others at the agency. The theater association planned to tell Martin the order imperils a $4.8 billion industry responsible for 45,000 full-time jobs.
“The League hopes that through today’s meetings the FCC will see Broadway’s concerns as unique to this case because of the high concentration of wireless systems used every night,” league official Erica Ryan told us. “The League will be urging the FCC to undertake additional field testing in areas like Broadway before any decisions are made. Wireless mics are professional applications and cannot tolerate any interference. The most appropriate FCC action is not to permit new portable devices to operate on the TV frequencies.”
“Any evening in New York, upwards of 3,000 wireless units are in use on Broadway, providing state-of-the-art sound to audiences, giving members of the hearing-impaired community the opportunity to experience live theatre, and supporting complex technical coordination,” the group said.
Ed Thomas, former chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, called the opposition “misplaced” and without scientific basis. “The White Space Coalition has gone to great lengths to propose operating parameters which will protect wireless microphones,” he said. “Also I find it puzzling that these folks are so concerned about personal portable devices and not at all concerned about the fixed devices which have already been approved by the Commission and can transmit at powers between 10 and 2000 times higher than what we propose.”