Urgent Communications Tech Talk

In This Issue

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Talking Points

TV white spaces: New frontier could be especially helpful in rural areas

In wireless communications, spectrum inherently is the lifeblood of operations. Without spectrum, all the technology in the world is worthless in terms of establishing and maintaining a wireless network.

This reality makes last week’s launch of the first network operating on the unused frequencies between active TV channels, known as TV white spaces, in the small town of Claudville, Va., extremely notable. U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) — chairman of the House subcommittee on communications, technology and the Internet — called the deployment a “milestone” in rural broadband deployment.
Currently, no rules have been established for the TV white spaces. Because the TV channels that are used vary from location to location, that means the available white spaces also differ between geographic regions. This makes the spectrum less attractive to auction as licensed airwaves.

But the biggest push — helped by the lobbying efforts of large companies such as Dell, Google and Microsoft — is to have the TV white spaces designated for unlicensed use. Read More

In the News

Panel tries to clarify narrowbanding mandate

Entities operating radio systems between 150 MHz and 512 MHz should be preparing to meet the Jan. 1, 2013, deadline to migrate their systems from 25 kHz channels to 12.5 kHz channel efficiency or equivalent, panelists said today during a webinar hosted by Urgent Communications. Read More

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