Filed under: Wireless

Whitespace internet has long had heavyweight industry backing from the likes of Dell, Microsoft, and Motorola, and while those companies and several others have been lobbying Congress and the FCC through staidly named groups like the Wireless Innovation Alliance and the White Space Coalition, it looks like Google is sick of the red tape — it’s launching a petition drive aimed squarely at consumers called “Free the Airwaves.” Yep, Google’s cribbing its whitespace marketing from Pump Up the Volume — and while that’s certainly enough to convince us, we’ve got a feeling it’s not going to sway anyone else’s opinion until this semi-vaporware tech is actually demonstrated working outside of an FCC lab. Put up or shut up, El Goog — or at least play a Descendents song or two.

[Thanks, Zoli]

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

The stumbling blocks keep piling up as the white space networking struggles to get off the ground: it looks like the manufacturers of healthcare equipment are set to join NAB in opposing the technology. Wireless medical telemetry devices like heart monitors have been operating in broadcast white spaces since the late 80s, and manufacturers like GE Healthcare say that the Microsoft- and Google-backed white space networking initiative could potentially “directly interfere” and “prevent patient monitoring.” For its part, the FCC has set aside all of channel 37 for medical telemetry devices in 1998 after interference from a nearby TV station shut down the system at Baylor University Medical Center, but it wasn’t mandatory, and hospitals that haven’t made the switch could face millions of dollars in upgrade costs. That’s not say that medical telemetry concerns are a problem that can’t be solved — the new Google push includes a channel 37 exception, for example, and there are some other compromise solutions on the table — but it’s seems like there’s no end of issues for a technology that hasn’t really even been demonstrated working yet.

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Filed under: Wireless

The 700MHz auction is over, but that doesn’t mean the days of high-stakes spectrum drama have come to a close — just like we’d heard, Google today began a renewed push for white space internet. Backed by Microsoft, Philips, Dell, HP and others, white space transmissions are designed to fit in between TV signals on channels 2-51, but there’s just one little problem — the stuff doesn’t really work yet. That’s all about to change, according to Google: the company says it’s done its own testing and will submit a proposal for an enhanced system to the FCC soon — hmm, that could explain that secret test 700MHz network on the Google campus we’ve been hearing about, no? What’s more, in an effort to open up the white space market and bring some competition to the broadband scene, Google says it’s willing to provide free technical assistance and reference designs to other would-be white space providers wanting to get in on the action — sort of like white space Android. Of course, all of this hinges on the FCC actually approving the tech, but if the 700MHz open-access drama showed us anything, it’s that Google is pretty adept at playing the system to get what it wants from Uncle Sam.

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