14 DAY TRIAL // Digital inclusion, access and innovation can all be kicked up a notch through Super Wi-Fi, opined Dan Reed, corporate vice president, Technology Policy Groups, Microsoft, in the Redmond company’s most recent message designed to reiterate support for opening up broadcast TV bands to unlicensed use.
Reed’s message is addressed to the members of the United States Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, who apparently also hold the power of giving green light to unlicensed spectrum access.
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) authority already decided to allocate spectrum for unlicensed use in the broadcast TV bands, but the Joint Committee need to preserve that decision.
In Reed’s view, licensed and unlicensed spectrum are complementary, each with its own benefits, and this should be clear down to frequency allocation and government policy.
The software giant also argues that Super-Wi-Fi will not only build on the success story of plain vanilla Wi-Fi, but also help solve the increasing need for connectivity caused by the exploding volume of devices.
“What makes the TV broadcast bands important? Little spectrum below 3.7 GHz is currently made available for unlicensed use, and the TV band is the last opportunity for the foreseeable future to obtain unlicensed spectrum below 1 GHz,” Reed said.
“Signals operating in these bands can travel farther using less power than those at the higher frequencies used by Wi-Fi, and they can penetrate walls and other obstacles – opening the path to a new “Super Wi-Fi” better suited to rural areas than existing Wi-Fi.”
Reed seems confident that communication innovations will promptly follow Super Wi-Fi, once it’s available, and notes that there are already a number of developers building and certifying such devices.
Microsoft is in fact one of the database administrators deemed by the FCC to oversee that Super Wi-Fi devices would not interfere with broadcast television.
“Economic forecasts, as well as accelerating market activity, demonstrate that use of unlicensed spectrum is critical to the future development of our nation’s wireless capabilities,” he said.
“If this opportunity is not seized, the U.S. could lose its global competitive edge in unlicensed technologies and services as countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Finland, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and China move ahead.”