Wireless Audio Devices (Score 2, Informative)

Stories like this one make my head spin. For some reason, people simply can't seem to get the engineering issues through their heads.

Prototype devices tested by the FCC earlier this summer were shown to be capable of detecting Digital TV stations. However, they were not even close to capable of detecting wireless audio devices such as microphones, in-ear monitors, wireless intercom systems, and IFB devices. You may not realize it, but these devices are all around you, and chances are, they are mission-critical devices for television stations (think about reporters in the field), theatres (from your local high school to The Phantom on Broadway), professional sports (almost all professional sports games use copious amounts of wireless intercom and microphones), houses of worship (if you go to church, chances are you are in the vicinity of wireless microphones), concerts (almost all concerts rely on wireless microphones and in-ear monitors these days), and many other people.

All it takes is one single white space device to fire up on top of one of these wireless audio devices to knock it off the air, and there is no good solution - we cannot go digital, because of power and fidelity concerns; we cannot go to another band, because there are no real options (and because of the cost - it would cost my theater $50,000 to refit our space); and we cannot simply go "off the air."

Let us be clear as well about who will be using these white space devices. They will NOT be used to provide rural broadband (as one person noted above, this need is already covered by 900 MHz devices), at least in the beginning. The first devices to market will be gadgets like the iPhone that everyone will see as a "must have." It will work like Wi-Fi, but will cause far more interference because it will be everywhere - in church, in the theatre, and at the game.

All of this is not to say that it is impossible for white space devices to work together with wireless audio devices. All that is required is for white space devices to not transmit on top of a wireless audio device. In the future, wireless audio devices may be able to avoid other devices by themselves, but for now white space devices must bear the burden of not causing harmful interference to other users of the space (some of which are currently not licensed, and some of which are actually LICENSED for operating in the TV band!) But this is an engineering challenge, and not a political one. Let us hope that the FCC realizes this, and listens to its own engineers - and not politicians, lobbyists, and naysayers.