FCC’s Julius Genachowski challenges service providers and local communities to build such networks, saying communities would turn themselves into innovation hubs that would create valuable jobs.
Rural Broadband Could Fill Those White Spaces - Ina Fried - News - AllThingsD
On the one hand, the decision by the Federal Communications Commission last week to approve the first devices to run in the “white spaces” between television channels was a modest one.
The decision initially covers only one product, and is limited to the pilot city of Wilmington, N.C.
But backers of the technology hope those white spaces prove as big a boost to innovation as the unlicensed spectrum that gave birth to Wi-Fi.
“We see this as a multibillion-dollar industry,” said Rod Dir, CEO of Spectrum Bridge, the company whose database is a key component of the white spaces system approved by the FCC.
White spaces, for the uninitiated, are the spectrum spots in between TV channels. Like the 2.4GHZ spectrum used by several flavors of Wi-Fi, the white spaces are unlicensed spectrum, meaning any device that agrees to play nice with others and gains regulatory approval can operate in the frequency. Devices that are approved to operate in the white spaces spectrum are required to check in with a database to see which channels are available. (For more, check out AllThingsD’s handy FAQ post from last week.)
Over time, analysts imagine a range of wireless and wired devices that can use the white spaces as a sort of “Super Wi-Fi” that can operate over greater distance and perform better indoors.
A powerful whitespace system could transform, say, a university campus from a clutch of disparate Wi-fi hotspots into a campus-wide wireless signal field. But Genachowski’s bigger thinking may seem atypical to cynics used to line-toeing government officials: He notes “this will also be a platform for innovators and entrepreneurs. There is every chance of this leading to the development of one or more billion-dollar industries.”
What’s he talking about? Things like:
About a third of all Americans still lack broadband access to the Internet. At its Digital Inclusion Summit, held Tuesday in Washington, D.C., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provided a preview of its upcoming National Broadband Plan (NBP) to provide high-speed Internet access to the estimated 93 million people in the U.S. without it. The plan, mandated by Congress last year as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aims to increase home broadband use to 90 percent of the population by 2020.
At the turn of the millennium, the U.S. had some of the best broadband access in the world. It reached more homes, and at a lower price, than most every other industrial country. Ten years later the U.S. is a solid C-minus student, ranking slightly below average on nearly every metric. Just how the U.S. lost its edge and how it plans to get it back are the issues before the Federal Communications Commission as it prepares to launch the most significant overhaul of network policy since the birth of the Web.
FCC Releases Report on Broadband for Rural America
Over the past few years, the United States has begun to lag in the race to deploy broadband, especially in rural areas. However, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans and loan guarantees administered by the Agriculture and Commerce departments, and charges the FCC with completing a national broadband plan by next February
