Network World

... "Apple is neither a [spectrum] licensee nor an ISP; it's not regulated by the FCC except to the extent that its devices, like all devices that radiate, need to be certified as complying with FCC's technical rules," said Michael Calabrese, director of the wireless future project at the New America Foundation. ...

"We favor using any underutilized spectrum as long as you're not interfering with the incumbent," says Benjamin Lennett, policy analyst for the organization's Open Technology Initiative, which works to spur universal and affordable wireless broadband access.

Lennett explains that the FCC has started building a geolocation database that a wireless broadband device could ping to find TV white space that it could use. "We'd like to see that expanded anywhere where large swaths of [wireless] bands are not being used," Lennett says.

The New America Foundation Wireless Future Program wrote in a working paper that this has given the mobile operators "…enormous power over equipment design ...

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: