Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District
Home > Legislative Issues > Technology > Broadband White Spaces
Legislative Issues
Technology
Inslee push for more broadband succeeds
FCC sets schedule for freeing white spaces
13 September 2006
Early this week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set a timetable to free up wasted portions of the television-broadcast spectrum, known as white spaces, for wireless-broadband users. The decision came less than one year after U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) won an amendment to digital-television legislation that instructs the federal agency to finish proceedings on the rule proposed in May 2004.
“Thanks to mounting pressure, the FCC is putting an end to the waste of a scarce and valuable resource: prime spectrum,” said Inslee, who also filed a free-standing bill on white spaces in April with U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), another member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “This opens the door for innovators to make new communications devices for first responders, health-care professionals and all American consumers.”
In its announcement dated Monday, the FCC set a timeline for reassigning unused broadcast spectrum by February 2009, after the transition of broadcast television from analog to digital is scheduled to be complete. The plan includes testing to ensure unlicensed devices do not interfere with television and radio services currently operated in the spectrum.
The prime-broadcast spectrum, channels two through 51, has the capability to transmit data over longer distances with less power. It now is reserved primarily for television broadcasting, though a significant amount is underutilized in American media markets. The non-profit, non-partisan New America Foundation estimates that in 2009, white spaces will make up about 50 percent of this spectrum in the Seattle market.
Beyond the work of Inslee and others in the House, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has been pushing to free up white spaces in the upper chamber. Stevens not only filed legislation on the issue with U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), he also included a white-spaces provision in his broad telecommunications-reform bill, which won approval in his committee but hasn’t been considered by the full Senate.