Spectrum

Wires, Wireless Everywhere at Convention

The NY Times follows some of those wires (and wireless signals) around the DNC's FleetCenter home: This thorough report by Seth Schiesel follows some of the complexity managing wired and frequencies at an event of the scale of the DNC. After reading this article, I'm amazed that anything manages to work. Other stories in this vein indicate that thousands of miles of wire were pulled for this week, while the RNC venue in New York might top 40,000 miles because of some slightly longer distances involved in two spaces being used.

The Wi-Fi problem is clearly explained, and it appears that the planners did hope to reserve space for Wi-Fi. I'm guessing that the wireless equipment used by camera operators is incredibly noisy, spewing out far more than is legal out-of-band (slop-over) signal. Because Wi-Fi has such a low amount of legal signal, it's very likely that the electronic newsgathering (ENG) is treading all over its neighbor's space. There should be at least a few clear Wi-Fi channels.

The network is apparently geared to handle the equivalent of 3,000 T-1 lines--but tell that to my buddy who not only didn't get his paid-for T-1 line drop, but was told there was nothing that Verizon could do about it.

Political Conventions Ban Wi-Fi?

Political blogger 601am.com has been told there will be no Wi-Fi on the Democratic National Convention and Republican National Conventions floors: We don't have this confirmed yet, but Aaron Bailey of 601am.com, a staffer for a publication covering the conventions, was told by several authorities that Wi-FI interferred with "broadcast television signals" and was thus banned.

This rang a bell, and I contacted Tim Pozar, a microwave expert who recently joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation's staff. Tim writes extensively about the Part 15 FCC rules which govern use of unlicensed bands, such a the 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) band in which 802.11b and 802.11g (the two most popular Wi-Fi flavors) perform their magic.

Tim noted that Electronic News Gathering (ENG) is a licensed -- and thus priority -- use of a part of the 2.4 GHz band. ENG is used to send signals from television cameras to remote trucks or studios. The Part 74 ENG use is licensed, which means that unlicensed Wi-Fi users can suck eggs if they don't like being banned. Tim suggests that the frequency coordinator for the venues made a big stink about this as likely every ENG channel will be in use in the conferences. They don't need unlicensed "mucking" up the band. Tim has written this paper about licensed uses that overlap unlicensed bands.

Tim notes that 802.11a, which uses the 5 GHz band, could have been deployed successfully, but few people have 802.11a or 802.11a/g cards. It's still not common technology because of its lack of backwards compatibility and shorter range at the same power outputs.

More on this story as we receive information from the field. I'm especially curious to see if newsgatherers who create their own software base stations or plop Linksys access points onto the expensive Ethernet drops they pay Verizon for will be hunted down and shut off.

FCC Gives Nextel Spectrum Shuffle Approval, But Does Nextel Approve?

Reuters reports that the FCC commissioners voted 5-0 in favor of what sounded like a Nextel plan to reorganize an ugly band: Nextel owns tiny slices of a very ugly chopped up range in the 700 and 800 MHz, and their proposal was to reorganize it so that the public-safety purposes to which other slices are put can be consolidated and provided with more reliability.

For their part, Nextel would receive a contiguous range in the 1.9 GHz band, and be less likely to cause interference in public-safety bands--which many blame not on Nextel but on the equipment used for fire, police, and emergencies--and have an easier time in providing cellular coverage at those higher frequencies.

The FCC values the deal at $4.8 billion, but will give Nextel credit for $1.6 billion in returning the lower-band frequencies. Nextel has to put up a line of credit for $2.5 billion to cover relocation costs, which are allowed to exceed that amount. If Nextel's final bill is less than $3.2 billion, they have to pay the government the difference.

Nextel's response was muted; they had wanted to pay $1.36 billion. Other cellular operators were complaining that the deal gave Nextel too much; it looks like the FCC chose this approach to make it worthwhile to public safety without letting Nextel off the hook.