ESPN and the National Football League have offered the Federal Communications Commission a chance to test unlicensed white space devices (WSDs) in a sports stadium. "ESPN and the NFL are available to assist the FCC with this worthwhile and essential endeavor," the two parties wrote to the agency on Thursday. "We strongly believe that field testing of WSDs with wireless microphones under realworld circumstances is essential to ensure that any proposed operation, and the Commission’s rules for WSDs, reflect the needs of new users and provide protection to the incumbent users."

The FCC's Office of Engineering Technology (OET) is patiently reviewing gadgets that detect and tap vacant TV channels to send and receive broadband. A gaggle of manufacturers that includes Phillips, Google, and Microsoft want to make these applications available on an unlicensed basis, but a coalition of naysayers has thrown every conceivable road block in the project's path. Prominent among the alarums is the claim that unlicensed devices pose a threat to wireless mic use, an assertion offered loudly and often [1] by Country Music Television, the County Music Association, the Grand Ole' Opry, and Viacoms' MTV Networks, among other groups.

Reality wireless

As Ars has reported [2], the pro-unlicensed use Wireless Innovation Alliance [3] (WIA) has proposed various workarounds that address these concerns. These include spectrum sensing, sequestering white space gizmos from public safety TV channels at 14 through 20, and providing wireless mics with inexpensive protective beacons (the legal mics, that is; WIA notes that a good deal of wireless mic use is itself not only unlicensed, but illegal).

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