Important information on white spaces regulation by FCC

September 15, 2010 Trackback IC0902 Action news by Action Chair

Important information on FCC regulation activities on white spaces by Action IC0905 Chair, Arturas Medeisis, and Vice Chair, Oliver Holland

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Dear colleagues,

A bit of news regarding regulatory developments on White Spaces in the USA and Europe.

In the USA, the FCC is considering updates to TV White Space regulations at their next meeting later this month (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-To-Vote-On-White-Space-Broadband-110217). Rumours abound, transparent also from the language of some of proponents of unlicensed White Space Device (WSD) applications such as WiFi (http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/09/moving-forward-on-white-spaces.html), that the FCC is seriously considering permitting operation of WSDs without the spectrum sensing requirement (i.e., only using the geo-location database). There are mutterings that there are many representations against this, with some people even threatening to sue. Needless to say, it is quite possible that the FCC meeting on the 23rd September will set a critical precedent.

Meanwhile in Europe, there are strong signs that Ofcom in the UK may follow the FCC’s example. Moreover, Europe’s CEPT ECC Project team SE43 is finalizing their draft ECC Report on technical and operational requirements for WSDs. To read the draft (along with some other interesting SE43 working documents) you can visit www.ero.dk/download, and proceed to select group SE43 (disregard the username/password box), then the SE43#7 meeting. The draft report is in sub-folder TempDocs, filed under the reference “Temp2R2” and its executive summary and conclusions in separate document named “Temp8”. Interestingly enough, in the context of FCC deliberations, the draft ECC report also notes current doubts in regulatory circles as regards reliability of spectrum sensing in autonomous WSD deployment, therefore one could only wonder what would be the eventual ECC decision and how it might be impacted by the FCC ruling.

Naturally, we shall follow all these developments closely and may be discussing the outcomes at future meetings as well as a possible honing of research directions.

Best regards,

Arturas Medeisis & Oliver Holland

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