Google revives push to get free airwaves
Google Inc.’s wireless strategy could be summed up this way: Why pay for something you can get for nothing?
The Internet giant is making a renewed pitch to regulators for free access to what may be the last great swath of airwaves -- the unused spectrum between broadcast TV channels. Google says its use of those airwaves could give consumers faster and cheaper wireless Internet access.
Google turned its attention to TV “white spaces” after it failed to win any spectrum in the recent auction by the Federal Communications Commission that raised $19.1 billion. Analysts said the company probably did not want to win any of that spectrum. Google provided the minimum $4.6-billion bid on a large nationwide group of spectrum licenses ultimately won by Verizon Wireless in an effort to ensure that those airwaves be required to be open to any device or software.
Such open access would allow Mountain View, Calif.-based Google to deliver ads to people surfing the Web on their cellphones and tap into the wireless market without spending billions of dollars to license the spectrum and build towers to transmit the signals.
“Right now they don’t think they need to own a network,” said Blair Levin, an analyst with brokerage Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., who called Google the “happy loser” in the auction.
Google and other large technology firms, including Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc., want the FCC to open up the white spaces for use by portable gadgets, creating a sort of WiFi on steroids. “This is a large amount of untapped spectrum and you’ve got people in Silicon Valley and lots of smart entrepreneurs just itching to find ways to use it,” said Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecom and media counsel.
FCC officials are intrigued by the possibilities and have been testing sample devices to see if they could sense and avoid TV signals. The results have been mixed.
Broadcasters have been opposed to the idea, contending that opening up the airwaves to new gadgets could cause interference with television signals just at the time the industry is making the switch to digital TV, scheduled for February. Unlike on traditional analog TV, where interference causes static or fuzziness, digital pictures can freeze or be lost entirely if another signal is broadcast on or near the same channel, said David Donovan, president of the Assn. for Maximum Service Television, an engineering trade group of TV broadcasters.
The devices also could interfere with wireless microphones used in sporting events and at concerts, which broadcast on the white spaces, leading the major professional and college sports leagues to warn against allowing the devices as well.
In an attempt to overcome concerns about interference, Google briefed reporters Monday about a proposal to use technological protections to sense and avoid TV signals.
“The value of the TV white space to all Americans simply is too great to allow this unique opportunity to be blocked by unfounded fear, uncertainty and doubt,” Whitt wrote to the FCC in a six-page filing Friday.
But broadcasters said Google’s proposal showed that the technology wasn’t ready. Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, said allowing mobile devices to use the TV white spaces “continues to be a guaranteed recipe for producing interference and should not be allowed under any circumstances.”
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