FCC Opens UHF and VHF for Public Use

As long as I'm on a bit of an off-topic stream of nerd posts, here's another one for you. Last month the FCC released a proposed rulemaking opening up unused television signal bandwidth free for use. The reason that the bandwidth is available is that television signals are migrating to digital signals by mandate, thus leaving the existing spectrum of radio signals unused.

This is a big step away from the days of the Clinton administration where unused bandwidth was auctioned off in order to help clear the federal deficit - which was largely effective in both raising money and in generating standards acceptance for emerging technologies. It also helped clear a lot of red tape.

The new proposal is in the early stages of implementation right now, and will likely change in both structure and in deadlines over the next several years. The door is still open for auctioning off segments of the bandwidth according to Michael Copps, but there is nothing in the proposal or really anywhere that I've found indicating that an auction is likely.

So what does this mean to everybody else? I can immediately spot two related ways that this will likely affect the general populous.

When you talk about bandwidth, immediately internet access springs to mind. But first let's talk about in home wireless networking.

The 802.11g standard operates in the 2.4 ghz range with 12 channels comprised of 6mhz each. Currently this allows for a data transfer speed of 54mbps at the high end, 108 if you bond a couple of receivers and transmitters together.

If you just take VHF - that's 12 channels of 6mhz each, which immediately puts you in the mindset that it would be comparable in speed to the 2.4ghz spectrum, only it would offer the side benefit of travelling through walls much better and perhaps greater transmission lengths. OK, so maybe you might not immediately jump to that conclusion, but I would/did. That's not entirely accurate though - first off the VHF range is not entirely clean - there are existing restrictions on usage between channels 6 and 7 because that area of spectrum is used for HAM radio, aircraft communications, and good old FM Radio. The other important difference is that when you are talking about the 6mhz - that is the frequency range and not necessarily a limitation of bandwidth. Using QAM256 encoding, you can squeeze roughly 50mbps into a single VHF channel - and QAM256 is far from the most efficient encoding methods. Not only that, there hasn't been a reason to develop more efficient encoding because TV doesn't need it. If you bonded say channels 2-6 together, you could feasibly have 200mbps wireless activity with a range of about 1 mile using some pretty basic technology available today. Figure out a way around the mess between channels 6 and 7 and you now have 600mbps with a range about 10 times what you are currently experiencing with wifi. And that's with completely ignoring the UHF range.

So that means a huge boost in in-home networking capabilities, enabling a lot of things that were nothing more than pipe dreams less than a decade ago. Now with internet access speeds, there are certainly some technical issues to overcome, but it is realistic to see the USA taking the lead back in broadband capabilities - we've long been well behind what has been available outside our borders. The web as you see it today wouldn't be much different for current broadband users - video quality will improve, web sites will be more interactive - but the other things that can be done over a Global Area Network are mind blowing - and I'm not just talking about the amount of SPAM you'll be able to kick out from your laptop. We won't quite be at the stage where you can beam from one location to another, but a realistic R2D2 hologram is certainly within the realm of possibility.

This also means that rural areas not currently served by a fiber infrastructure and with a questionable telco structure will also be able to be served with viable broadband speeds - which can affect the farming industry greatly, and the real estate markets where land is cheap and the young wealthy technical crowd has consistently shied away from because it's not a realistic place to live.

The world is changing around us. These are revolutionary times.