WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission is opening up unused airwaves between television stations for wireless broadband networks that will be more powerful and can travel farther than today's Wi-Fi hotspots.
The five-member FCC voted unanimously Thursday to allow the use of so-called "white spaces" between TV stations to deliver broadband connections that can function like Wi-Fi networks on steroids. The agency is calling the new technology "super Wi-Fi" and hopes to see devices with the technology start to appear within a year.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said white-spaces networks will serve as "a powerful platform for innovation," driving billions in industry investment.
Leading technology companies, including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc., are eager to develop the market. They say television white spaces are ideally suited for broadband because they are able to penetrate walls, have plenty of capacity and can travel several miles.
Just like the spectrum used by Wi-Fi, white spaces will be available to users for free, with no license required. The FCC hopes they will help ease strain on the nation's increasingly crowded airwaves as more consumers go online using laptops and data-hungry smartphones.
Computer maker Dell, for one, envisions white-spaces networks that will be able to send streaming video and other multimedia content to electronic devices around the home, deliver broadband to rural areas that currently lack high-speed Internet access and create "large-scale hot spots."
"By opening this broadcast spectrum for Internet use, the commission is helping to unleash a whole new class of mobile wireless broadband services with applications that are nearly limitless," Dell Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dell said in a statement.
Although the FCC first voted to allow the use of white spaces for broadband nearly two years ago, the plan ran into serious opposition from television broadcasters worried about interference with their over-the-air signals. Wireless-microphone manufacturers and users raised similar concerns.
by Joelle Tessler Associated Press Sept. 24, 2010 12:00 AM
Unused TV signals to go to broadband
