Vacant airwaves spur TV-tech turf battle

By Dibya Sarkar

updated 4:43 p.m. ET April 7, 2008

WASHINGTON - Ten months before the nation flips to digital television, technology companies and TV broadcasters are fighting over the virtual remote, with different ideas of what to do with the unused airwaves.

Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others on Tuesday are launching an advertising and lobbying blitz to convince Capitol Hill that these unoccupied airwaves, or "white spaces," could be used for affordable high-speed Internet service, greatly benefiting rural areas and spurring competition and innovation.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Tech companies say the technology is there to allow low-powered, unlicensed devices, such as cell phones, laptops and BlackBerrys, to operate in the empty spectrum without interfering with over-the-air TV programming and wireless microphone signals.

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to figure if the technology can do this, although several publicized tests have failed.

Such stumbles are exhibit A in the case TV broadcasters are making against opening up white spaces. The broadcasters, who've aired their opposition through an equally aggressive lobbying campaign, say if such use is allowed it will interrupt, namely freeze, TV pictures. Viewers could be stuck staring at Paula Abdul's face while this week's winners of "American Idol" are announced.

Programming disruptions are why broadcasters want white-space access to require a license. They've proposed auctioning off the spectrum for licensed use that could turn the white spaces into a private estate instead of a free public park.

That's not what lawmakers will be hearing starting Tuesday.

Over the next several weeks, members of the Wireless Innovation Alliance, will tout white-space benefits to lawmakers, who they say are not getting the full picture because their opponents — namely the National Association of Broadcasters — are playing politics and spreading lies.

"We want science to play it self out at the FCC. Broadcasters don't. They want politics to mess up science," said alliance spokesman Brian Peters, who's a lobbyist for the tech trade group Information Technology Industry Council.

When the nation makes the switch to digital TV in February 2009, broadcasters will occupy channels 2 through 51. But almost half those channels in some cities will remain fallow, especially in rural areas where there are fewer broadcasters. Those white spaces are considered valuable because they can travel long distances and go through walls.

But the white spaces are not completely empty either. Many licensed wireless microphone signals — popular in sports venues, concerts, Broadway theater and even houses of worship — have used them for decades.

There's "virtually no record" of microphone signals interfering with TV broadcasts, said Mark Brunner, a spokesman for Niles, Ill.-based Shure Inc., one of the country's largest makers of wireless microphones and other audio equipment.

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