Larry Page of Google Pushes White-space Agenda

• Posted: Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Google

By Sue Marek

Speaking at a New America Foundation event yesterday in Washington, D.C., Google co-founder Larry Page tried to bolster his firm's case for the FCC to make white spaces--vacant channels of spectrum--available for unlicensed wireless broadband access. Page is hoping to sway the FCC, which is expected to issue a report on its white-space device testing some time this summer. The FCC has been testing several white-space device prototypes and is expected to continue to trial devices.

White spaces are slivers of spectrum in the 700 MHz that were originally designed to prevent interference between TV broadcasts. However as broadcasters transition to digital broadcasting, some industry players (such as Google) believe there is an opportunity to use these white spaces to deliver unlicensed wireless broadband services. The broadcast industry opposes the move, saying that it will threaten the transition to digital TV and cause interference.

The CTIA meanwhile recommends auctioning off the unused broadcast spectrum. During his speech yesterday, Page discounted the broadcasters' view that using white space spectrum would cause interference, saying that there isn't any technical validity to that claim. [FierceWireless]

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