The FCC has some spectrum and everyone wants a piece of it. As part of the migration of TV broadcast from analog to digital, spectrum previously allocated to UHF and VHF broadcast (and little used) might be opened to other users, depending on the outcome of the FCC's latest inquiry, FCC proceeding 04-186 ("In the Matter of Unlicensed Operation in the TV Broadcast Bands: Additional Spectrum for Unlicensed Devices Below 900 MHz and in the 3 GHz Band").

The spectrum under discussion (according to the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, dated May 13, 2004, p. 28) is 76 to 88 MHz, 174 to 216 MHz, 470 to 608 MHz, and 614 to 698 MHz. For WISPs, what's important about this spectrum is that it's better than what's available now.

The spectrum currently available to WISPs is the worst possible spectrum. In their (89 page) response to the FCC, J.H. Snider and Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation along with their Media Access Project lawyers Harold Feld and Andrew Jay Schwartzmann point out that WISPs have achieved an astonishing amount in this awful spectrum...

WISPs know well that a further disadvantage of the 2.4 GHz band (and the reason it's used by microwave ovens) is that it interacts with water, making trees and other water-filled objects a barrier to signals (see Up Hill and Down Dale)...

In the conclusion of his policy paper, Spectrum Policy Wonderland: A Critique of Convention Property Rights and Commons Theory in a World of Low Power Wireless Devices (.pdf), the New America Foundation's J.H. Snider writes:

Licensed property rights to spectrum are hugely valuable. To paraphrase a former FCC Media Bureau Chief, most spectrum licensees would rather kill their mothers than give back their spectrum. They will thus fight unlicensed property rights tooth and nail. The fact that the public barely understands the nature of spectrum and shows almost every sign that it could care less is equally problematical. The combination of special interest zeal and public apathy is an explosive political combination that, as long as it lasts, will inevitably result in special interest spectrum politics that unduly favors the licensed over the unlicensed property rights model. To the extent that law and economics are not on the side of licensed property rights holders, there may be hope that these political dynamics will one day change.

For the complete article, please visit the ISP-Planet website.