ISP Planet says the FCC has some spectrum and everyone wants a piece of it.

As part of the migration of TV broadcast from analog to digital, spectrum previously allocated to UHF and VHF broadcast (and little used) might be opened to other users.

The spectrum under discussion (according to the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, dated May 13, 2004, p. 28) is 76 to 88 MHz, 174 to 216 MHz, 470 to 608 MHz, and 614 to 698 MHz. For WISPs, what’s important about this spectrum is that it’s better than what’s available now.

The spectrum currently available to WISPs is the worst possible spectrum. In their (89 page) response to the FCC (pdf), J.H. Snider and Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation along with their Media Access Project lawyers Harold Feld and Andrew Jay Schwartzmann point out that WISPs have achieved an astonishing amount in this awful spectrum:

“Some commentors in this and other FCC proceedings have argued that unlicensed allocations are somehow inimical to investment and innovation in spectrum technology. The record strongly suggests otherwise. Consider that in the mobile telephone bands, occupying 170 MHz of spectrum, there are at most 25 manufacturers of equipment, whereas in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band, occupying only 83.5 MHz there are at least 500 manufacturers.

Moreover, the mobile telephone bands occupy prime (low frequency) unencumbered spectrum, whereas the unlicensed band is known as the “junk band” because it is shared with hundreds of millions of devices, such as cordless phones and microwave ovens, that emit incidental radiation in this band as a byproduct of their operations.

WISPs know well that a further disadvantage of the 2.4 GHz band (and the reason it’s used by microwave ovens) is that it interacts with water, making trees and other water-filled objects a barrier to signals.

So the spectrum that the FCC is examining is valuable because it could make service possible in areas where it was difficult before, such as rural, wooded valleys or, conversely, dense buildings with a significant amount of plumbing.

Carl Stevenson, chairman of 802.22 says, “Using higher frequencies would require six to eight times as many base stations for equivalent coverage. Nominal base station coverage radius [at 700 MHz] would be 30 to 40 kilometers” [18-25 miles].

WISPA wants all Wireless ISPs to file form 477, the Local Telephone Competition and Broadband Reporting form, which is due March 1st, 2007, so the FCC has a full accounting of their strength.

Bush appointee Kevin Martin generally favors large telecom and cellular companies, perhaps because they’re the ones who pay the bills in law firms such as Richard Wiley’s. Martin may have a certain sense of entitlement — after his duties at the FCC are over — and doesn’t want to mess up his chances by acting like some kind of public policy wonk.

Or is that entirely too cynical?

Related DailyWireless articles include; FCC to Rural Users: 700MHz is the Ticket, White Space Redux, Senate Testimony on 700MHz Sharing, Satellite Repeaters: Grounded in Reality?, McCain Wants Commercial 700 MHz for Police, Soma 700MHz in Wisconsin and Oregon’s $500 Million Statewide Wireless Network.