First White Spaces Devices Expected to Hit Market in 12-18 Months
The first devices that use the TV white spaces to surf the Internet likely won’t hit store shelves for at least a year, high-tech and FCC officials said last week. The FCC approved an order effectively opening the white spaces Nov. 4, but the agency still must develop a database so that the first generation of devices, which check channels against a geolocation database before they turn on, can be sold. An additional wild card is a likely legal challenge to the order on the part of broadcasters.
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“It’s hard to predict when products would be brought to market, and a multitude of factors will determine that,” said one high-tech industry official. “We would expect that it would be about 18-24 months or so.” An attorney active in the proceeding said the first devices will likely be available about a year after the details of the database are solidified. Google co-founder Larry Page said at the Wireless Communications Association convention in mid- November he expected to see commercial devices within 18 months.
Next steps on the white spaces path, including establishment of a geolocation database by the Office of Engineering and Technology and of a program for testing and certifying sensing-only devices, likely won’t occur until next year, under a new FCC chairman, FCC officials said. “There’s a lot of questions still to be decided, including certification,” said an agency official. “It could be awhile.”
Michael Calabrese, vice president of the New America Foundation and a white spaces advocate, said several equipment makers, especially Philips, appear to be fairly far along in developing devices. Philips said recently it’s too soon to speculate on product timing or features (CD Nov 6 p15). “The biggest potential roadblock is FCC’s proposed monopoly, government-contracted geolocate database,” Calabrese said. “This could cause interminable delays and the distortion of political influence and lobbying around how it is contracted and managed. If this operates on FCC time, the opportunity costs will be enormous.” Calabrese said it took the FCC some six months to make a decision on the white spaces, and OET took a year longer than expected to test devices submitted by industry. “We and most white space proponents had advocated that the FCC certify any database that meets OET’s rules” but not establish a single database, he said. “There can be more than one, with OET setting ground rules and resolving any complaints.”
Harold Feld, senior vice president of the Media Access Project, predicted the first fixed white spaces devices will be probably on the market in about a year. “Folks who invested in this are eager to crank out devices, and fixed devices will be the first generation of technology out with the promise of personal portable devices to follow, once chipsets are made,” he said.
Feld said several challenges remain. Among them, is creation of the database, he said, “if it takes the commission forever to resolve the issue of how this will work, or if the commission does it wrong.” Standards are also a potential pitfall, he said. “It took forever to get WiMAX going because the standards got held up, and ultra-wideband never managed to get its act together.” If the FCC doesn’t ban wireless microphones in the 700 MHz band, the white spaces would be essentially unusable in urban areas, he said.
A legal challenge to the FCC order by broadcasters also appears likely, white spaces advocates say. NAB said the FCC’s vote on the order Nov. 4 is “just the beginning of a fight on behalf of the 110 million households that rely on television for news, entertainment, and lifesaving emergency information.”