The battle over white spaces spectrum has gotten religious. Joel Osteen, the millionaire preacher from Lakewood Church, wrote FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, asking that the white spaces spectrum – the unused spectrum between television channels – remain out of the hands of Google and its ilk, for fear that his ministry will suffer wireless microphone interference if the spectrum is opened.
"Wireless microphones allow pastors and musicians to interact more closely with members of our congregation," said Osteen, in the letter to Martin.
But even if Osteen has God on his side, he may not have the law. Wireless microphones must operate under a broadcast license in the U.S., and a huge percentage of them – in karaoke bars, schools, convention centers and churches – are illegal. (No word on whether Osteen's Lakewood Church has a license for wireless microphone use.)
As tech companies such as Motorola, Google and Microsoft, lobby the FCC
to open up the spectrum, the microphone issue has become particularly thorny.
"We're certainly aware that there are hundreds of thousands of wireless microphones operating without being licensed," says Robert
Kenny, a Federal Communications Commission spokesman.
There are mixed opinions on whether wireless microphone users or manufacturers are to blame for the problem, but it needs a solution, says Steve Sharkey, senior director of regulatory and spectrum policy at Motorola.
"Those [wireless microphones] should never have been there, but they are there now, so how is the FCC going to handle it? Are they going to strictly enforce the rules and move those users out of the spectrum
or are they going to extend the eligibility for wireless microphone licenses?," says Sharkey.
Some people argue that the wireless mic users are to blame and it's the FCC's responsibility to kick them out, while others think the manufacturers should have explicitly explained to consumers that they need a license to use a wireless microphone.
"The vast majority of wireless microphone users have no right to use the broadcast white spaces," writes Harold Feld, vice president of non-profit telecom public interest firm Media Access Project. "In theory, the FCC should be sending out SWAT teams and busting every
Broadway theater, business conference center, and megachurch that filed in the white spaces proceeding and confessed to a federal felony. But the reality is more complicated, especially as most of these folks have no clue that they are spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on systems that make them 'radio pirates' subject to confiscation of equipment and a fine of $11,000 per violation per day."
Under the Media Access proposal, filed on behalf of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, illegal wireless mic users would be granted amnesty, while manufacturers are investigated for "willfully and knowingly marketing and selling wireless microphones to unauthorized users for ineligible purposes."
Photo: Flickr/Houstonian
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