Hi everyone, > Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:26:54 -0800 > From: "Marlon K. Schafer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [WISPA] Wireless industry slams NAB's white space > 'misinformation' > To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I've sent a note to WIA and asked if they'd be interested in a discussion > focused on finding common ground between them and us. > > It's my belief that WISPA needs to fight tooth and nail to keep personal > portable devices out of the whitespaces band. At least at first (really > forever as far as I'm concerned). > > Anyone have a problem with that as a firm stance? > marlon
I'm all for firm stands, but not for self-destructive ones. Having been working on white space devices since 2004 and been here in DC working daily on the issue since last August, I can tell you that what Marlon is proposing would play directly into the hands of the same telcos that would love to eliminate competition from folks like independent WISPs. NAB doesn't want _any_ unlicensed devices -- whether portable or fixed -- they're interested solely in a) no access to this spectrum and b) licensed access if the first notion fails. If you jettison unlicensed portable devices you will lose the political support of both the industry players as well as the public interest community working to open this spectrum. At which point you'll have WISPA fighting against NAB (who'll then go to the telcos and say "Hey, you can have regional and/or national spectrum access if you join our side"). Unlicensed portable WSDs might not be the optimal solution for WISPA (though I think that's debatable), but access to this spectrum would be a huge boon to WISPs across the country. What's being proposed would put WISPA on the wrong side of this battle, hurt our chances to get _any_ access to the spectrum, and may inadvertently end up harming WISPA members. This is an incredibly complex political issue; more importantly, WSDs are built to be spectrum-aware, which means that a lot of the messiness we've seen in 802.11 will be alleviated -- keep in mind we're also talking about a huge swath a spectrum with propagation characteristics that are quite different from 2.4 and 5GHz. I'm just worried that WISPA is about to weigh in on something without doing the necessary due diligence to know the ramifications of these actions. In the meantime, I would encourage folks who are interested in learning about WSDs to read New America Foundation's policy backgrounder: http://www.newamerica.net/files/WhiteSpaceDevicesBackgrounder120607.pdf In solidarity, --Sascha -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
