We’ve seen the debate on white spaces unfold in the U.S. Google brought the concept to national prominence, and a number of fellow tech companies — namely Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Phillips Electronics — came out in support of it. This was, of course, much to the chagrin of cellular operators, who only see it as eating into their lucrative data services. The concept may spread past the U.S. soon, as Canada will consider adopting the technology when it switches to digital TV in 2011.
Why white spaces? The real question is, where to start? First off, there are no wires, so there’s no need to build out vast infrastructure. This opens up the competition. If there were a need to build out towers and other delivery methods, competition would be limited to those with gobs of cash and credit. No infrastructure means less overhead, which means more companies can form and compete, which hopefully means lower prices and more choices for consumers. That’s what our supposed “free market” is all about, right?
Second, it will make best use of existing resources. If these white spaces do not cause harmful interference, and recent studies show that they don’t, then why not take advantage of them? If there is an unused portion that can provide benefit to a population, then it sound crazy not to use it. It’s like Native Americans who hunted buffalo. They used all of the buffalo and wasted as little of it as possible. Same concept with digital TV and white spaces.
“Our founder, Larry Page, calls it Wi-Fi on steroids,” said Jacob Glick, Canada policy counsel for Google Inc., which has been one of the most vocal supporters for white spaces. “For the average person, there will be many more choices on where, how, and how much you pay for your broadband Internet connection.”
It sounds good to me. Hopefully it sounds good to Canada, too.
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