The FCC is expected to make annoucnements regarding use of White Spaces soon. Public Knowledge applauded the upcoming (Sep 23) opportunity to discuss the issue of White Spaces.

I ran into an interesting article on White Spaces in The Register (Microsoft strolls into white spaces).It’s hard to recap the article but in short it gives a glimpse at what’s going on and what could go on with White Spaces.

• Folks such as Microsoft and Google want white space to be unrestricted. Kind of a if you got ‘em, use ‘em policy that unfortuanutely relies on a “detect-and-avoid” technology that doesn’t seem to work that well.
• Folks such as FiberTower have been looking to the FCC to reserve some channels for backhaul. And it sounds like they would like to own/manage that backhaul.
• Others have concern about handing over the backhaul to one company. Access Humboldt and Mountain Area Information Network are two organization with such concerns. They have been mobilizing like-minded folks and have created a letter of concern to the FCC, which they were kind enough to share. I’ll just post their opening here – and suggest that it may be interesting reading to many folks…

As organizations concerned with ensuring fair and equitable access to broadband and to the media, we write to express our concern that proposals to set aside additional channels for wireless microphones, as well as proposals to reserve six channels in rural areas for licensed wireless backhaul, will unduly limit opportunities for new unlicensed wireless technology.