New America Foundation and the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) are advocating that white spaces be opened up for public use. The Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps said recently that “the proper way to allocate this [unlicensed spectrum bandwidth] in the manner that best serves the public interest is to conduct a general rulemaking.” Sascha Meinrath responds in Network World:

...Sascha Meinrath, the research director for the New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program, says that any of the four options for the band laid out by Copps could be beneficial depending on the details. In particular, the ideas he finds most appealing are either making the 2155-2175 MHz band unlicensed or using it to provide a nationwide broadband service free of charge. However, he sees some potential concerns with some of the proposals laid out by M2Z and NetfreeUS. Obscenity filters such as the one proposed by M2Z, for instance, give him pause.

“You’re either providing Internet access -- and the good, the bad and the ugly that entails -- or you end up becoming a government censor, which has incredibly scary connotations,” he says. “Likewise, how advertising works on a free tier is vitally important. Ads should not be intrusive or end up degrading the user experience.”

Meinrath says that auctioning off the band could be beneficial if it correlates mainly with providers’ abilities to provide free service, and not simply their ability to pay. Among the criteria he’d like to see included in any potential auction are “free tier service speeds, buildout requirements and wholesale/open access.”

“Opening the band up for auction a la the 700 MHz block is probably the worst idea of the lot,” he says. “Let’s have an auction that actually generates benefits that people will directly experience...”

New America Wireless Future Program's most recent policy report on the "myths and facts" of white space devices (pdf)

For the complete article, pleave visit Network World's web site.