Congressman Nadler, You've Been Had!

Congressman Nadler's recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, "We Interrupt This Broadcast" is full of misinformation and verifiable incorrect assertions. Folks like former FCC Senior Counsel, Kenneth Carter, and Matthew Lasar over at ars technica have already taken the piece to task for reading like a spin project of the National Association of Broadcasters. Since I've had a bit more time to address Congressman Nadler's Op-Ed rather than just focus on the propaganda aspects of the piece, I thought I'd provide some primary sourcing to directly refute the main points of his article.

Congressman Nadler claims, "White spaces are the intervals between television channel frequencies to ensure that TV reception is not interrupted by other signals" -- ignoring the white spaces that exist in vast swaths of the country currently underserved by TV broadcasters that have nothing to do with preventing adjacent channel interference. Talk to folks living in rural America and ask them how many TV channels they get on their rabbit ears and compare that with the channels that anyone living in the top metro markets gets. Then do the math
-- are their more channels in New York City than in Greenup, Illinois? If yes, then you're left with an inconvenient truth -- one can clearly put more TV channels in rural areas without causing interference.

But even more than that -- the spacing between TV channels are meant to prevent interference of stations who were using the best analog equipment available (as of several decades ago) and broadcasting at tens of thousands of Watts of power.

Which begs the question, "Is it possible that the spectrum spacing needed to prevent interference by 30-year old technology operating at 50,000 Watts might be more than todays cutting edge digital technology operating at, say, 200 Milliwatts?" If you suspect that answer might be "yes" -- congratulation, not only are you correct, but my good friend, Physics, is here to back you up.

Congressman Nadler goes on to state, "The usefulness of these white spaces is about to be compromised by a proposal before the Federal Communications Commission by some of the nation’s largest technology companies. Microsoft, Google and others are asking permission to use white spaces — free of charge..."

This sin of omission is particularly egregious -- Google got involved years after public interest groups were working to open up the public airwaves to the general public. Don't believe me? Check for yourself -- point your browser to the FCC's Filed Comments search form: put "04-186" in as the proceeding number (box 1) and either "Google" in the "Filed on Behalf of" line (box 4) then click the "Retrieve Document List" button. What you'll see is every document pertaining to the FCC's white space proceedings filed by these organization.

For Google, it looks like their first involvement was in 2007. Microsoft, on the other hand, got involved in 2004 (the year the proceeding actually began).
But what about the "others" that Congressman Nadler so quickly mentions?
Probably some other major corporations, right?

One of them is the New America Foundation, which I work for -- a public interest think tank. But there's also the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm; Consumers' Union, who fight for consumers' rights and publish "Consumer Reports"; Educause, a national coalition of institutions of higher education; Common Cause, one of the nation's largest citizen advocacy organizations; the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, which works to "assure a just and equitable media that gives meaningful voice to diverse peoples, cultures and ideas"; the Consumer Federation of America, a consumers rights group with "a combined membership exceeding 50 million people"; the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which advocates for "media and telecommunications policies that benefit the Latino community; as well as dozens of additional community groups, non-profit organizations, and consumer rights coalitions. Why does Congressman Nadler marginalize this massive public interest coalition, ignore the years of work that these groups have put into supporting White Space Devices, and dismiss their existence as "others"?

And of course we want consumers to be able to access white space free of charge
-- this is exactly why the National Association of Broadcasters, wireless microphone manufacturers, and their allies don't want white space devices to exist. The reason why such a large coalition of public interest and consumer rights organizations support white space devices is because they'll save us money, spur innovation of myriad new consumer products, and (through that
competition) lower the costs of everything from broadband (and media) services to next-generation wireless microphones.

Congressman Nadler follows this up with an entirely paradoxical two sentences, "These devices could disrupt the new digital TV signals that government and industry have spent so much time and money to promote. In my district, which includes New York’s theater district, performers use wireless microphones on these 'unused' frequencies, as do news crews conducting live interviews on the street." Pause for a moment to consider what the Congressman is saying -- these devices could cause disruption, but we've been using them for years. He follows this illogic up by claiming, "in rural areas, white spaces are often used for broadband access" -- where is he getting his information. The first 700MHz radios were only created this past fall -- Ubiquity claims to have built the first ones. As the press report clearly states, "No word on pricing or street date, mostly -- we suspect
-- due to the fact that the frequency it operates on has yet to be made available."

When Congressman Nadler states, "unlicensed devices, like wireless laptops and remote-controlled toys, operating in the white spaces will probably cause havoc to TV viewers, theater goers and sports fans" he must be betting on the fact that physics works differently in the equipment folks in his district use than for the rest of us. And then he descends into the FUD -- TVs will stop working, the low-income and elderly will be harmed, emergency services will be interrupted, productions of Cats destroyed, NFL quarterbacks sacked -- for those of us in the know, these claims are about as ridiculously as claiming that white space devices are going to cause meteor strikes and bubonic plague.

Congressman Nadler continues on his litany of misleading information stating, "last year, when the F.C.C. tested the 'sensing' mechanism of some of these unlicensed devices, none of them detected broadcast and wireless signals consistently enough to avoid interfering with them." Let's take a look at the actual data from the FCC's own report. If a picture's worth a thousand words, let me greatly shorten my article and show you two. The first, I'll call the "Nadler Worldview" -- it gives you half the picture (in this case, Figure 3-4, which is located on page 14 of this report).

As you can see, as long as blinker ourselves and only look at half the data, Nadler is correct... the problem arises when we look at the full picture. But, at -115 dBm, the prototype white space device worked perfectly, correctly sensing broadcasts 100% of the time:

Meanwhile, for those claiming that these technologies are infeasible, I'd recommend taking a look at the Darpa XG project which, among other goals, is "developing technology and system concepts for military radios to dynamically access spectrum in order to establish and maintain communications...access 10 times more spectrum with near-zero setup time; simplify RF spectrum planning, management and coordination; and automatically de-conflict operational spectrum usage. XG technology assesses the spectrum environment and dynamically uses spectrum across frequency, space and time." You might also want to read the Darpa XG press release from 2006 where successful field-testing of the technologies were conducted. For those that would like to get down into the weeds, here's a link to a declassified overview of the Darpa XG project. I would like to see these technologies developed for civilian use. Given the previously successful testing of XG radios, assuming physics doesn't differ, it's clear that white space device technology is feasible for civilian use as well.

You don't hit a man while he's down, so I'm not going to end my post by going after Congressman Nadler, but rather with an offer of help. Personally, I think the Congressman has been had -- either by industry folks who sold him a bill of goods or advisors who didn't do adequate due diligence. In fact, a whole lot of folks have been had -- the NAB and its allies are spending millions of dollars to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about white space devices (and a few million buys a good amount of confusion).

So my offer is this: Congressman Nadler, give me a call, I'm more than happy to sit down with you and your staff, walk you through any questions or concerns you might have, and get you primary sourcing so you can check my assertions for yourself. I've been speaking with a number of Broadway theater groups and found they they two have been sold the same bill of goods -- I'd like to take the time to clear the air, cut through the FUD, and get you the information you need.

In addition, anyone who wants to learn more can download New America Foundation's Policy Backgrounder: Unlicensed White Space Devices and Myth of Interference that I co-authored with my colleague, Michael Calabrese (executive summary is online here).