14 DAY TRIAL // Google, along with its partners, is supporting an initiative that is supposed to bring wireless high-speed Internet to every home, for an affordable price. The method is somewhat unusual, although the search giant has been promoting it for five months now, and it consists of allowing Internet providers to use the white spaces between the frequencies that are already employed by TV and satellite microphone providers.
"Our nation typically uses only about five percent of one of our most precious resources. Unlike other natural resources, there is no benefit to allowing this spectrum to lie fallow. The airwaves can provide huge economic and social gains if used more efficiently, as seen today with the relatively tiny slices utilized by mobile phones and WiFi services." said the company in a plan filed to the Federal Communications Commission.
At the moment, the agency is conducting some tests with its own equipment, to determine if indeed the use of white spaces does not interfere with the functionality of the other segments of the spectrum. Google assures us that the governmental organization has no reasons to doubt the efficiency and safety of the method.
As Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media counsel says on Google's Public Policy blog, the technology is 100% sure, because it "relies on the use of geolocation databases, beacons, and/or safe harbors. Taken together, these protection mechanisms remain technically unimpeachable, whether or not the Commission's current testing process produces adequate data to validate a spectrum sensing-only approach. Moreover, no WSD will - or should - come to market unless the FCC can verify that the device does not interfere with TV or wireless microphone signals."
If the commission decides that the method is secure and the benefits brought by the technology are well worth the possible risks of an overlap in frequencies, a great number of Americans, and, in time, people around the world, will have access to cheaper and faster Internet.