Could Next-Gen Cell Phones Interrupt a Football Game?

It's fourth and goal and the home team's football quarterback can't get through to his coach on the sideline; the cast of a Broadway musical goes silent mid-show; a television news crew has to scramble to dig up cables that let reporters broadcast live on location--all because you tried to use your fancy new wireless device to download streaming video from the Internet, and it knocked out nearby wireless microphones.That has not happened yet, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is concerned enough with the possibility that it is having doubts about opening up "white spaces"--the slots of unused bandwidth built into the spectrum to keep broadcast signals from interfering with one another and to provide bandwidth for licensed wireless devices such as wireless microphones--to new, unlicensed cell phones, computers and other wireless devices that benefit from faster data downloads than those available today through Wi-Fi connections. The FCC is only going to grow more concerned as the deadline approaches in February for broadcasters to move from analog to digital TV, opening up more white spaces. [More]

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