Lost in the back-slapping over today’s FCC approval of the “White Spaces” plan is much real discussion of what these new slices of unlicensed spectrum will actually be used for.
Larry Page has said they will give rise to “WiFi on steroids”, and that phrase has been picked up and repeated without any attempt to define it. Even FCC chairman Kevin Martin used the phrase (without attribution) today.
Given the lower frequencies and longer wavelengths, signals in the White Spaces bands will carry much further than short-range WiFi, but that does not give much of a clue about how they will ultimately be used.
Martin suggested the applications would span “everything from enhanced home broadband networks, to intelligent peer-to-peer devices, and even small communications networks.”
Another FCC commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein, claimed the new spectrum would support a “third pipe” to the home, a new channel for broadband to compete with existing services from telecoms companies and cable operators.
And a third, Deborah Tate floated a number of potential uses, including this: “Communities of users may find they are able to communicate seamlessly through mesh networks rather than traditional phone lines.”
With an obvious nod to political expediency, tech companies have been talking up the potential to bring services to poorer, more sparsely populated rural areas. In the words of Motorola, the new spectrum will make broadband “available to millions of under-served Americans” – though the real money, as always, will be in the more densely populated and wealthier parts of the country.
Clearly, White Spaces are a blank slate on which any number of visions can be sketched. Until the technologies and business models of the companies that come to stake out this new territory become clearer, there is no telling what will happen.
But, like WiFi in its early days, that’s what makes it all so exciting.
