Google is in the news lately for championing the idea of using vacant television channels for wireless broadband internet access. Even though there are tons of vacant television channels already, they will all be vacant next year, when television networks go digital in February 2009.
To me, its a "no-brainer". The airwaves should belong to the people, and its good that such a large part has been allocated to non-commercial ham radio. Now it would be nice if these higher quality frequencies would be available to commercial exploitation by everyone, not just gigantic corporations with large enough wallets to bully their potential competitors and create oligopolies.
The Wireless Innovation Alliance is a group of technology companies lobbying for the white space frequency airwaves to be made available to broadband consumer and business devices. If this goes forward, companies like Meraki which already have great software for rolling out mesh networks, will be in a great position to sell their services.
I certainly hope this happens. I'm curious who will be lobbying against this proposal. From the looks of it, the broadcast networks might be opposed. I wonder what Verizon, SBC, Comcast, Cox, and Cablevision are thinking?
Here's the Free the Airwaves website.
Categories:
- Cablevision,
- Comcast,
- Cox,
- SBC,
- Wireless
