Spectrum Spats: Chatty Cars, Busy Broadcast Airwaves
In my humble view the FCC needs to set aside spectrum specifically for machine to machine communications (M2M) and the industry really needs to set some standards for use of those wavelengths. (Encryption, keys/certificates required, IPV6 with full certed Machine addresses only, protocols supported, etc. etc. - spoofing a machine to talk to another machine ought to be hard to nearly impossible, and traceable.)
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that wireless operators view spectrum as a scarce and precious commodity. That’s why there’s always dissension over who gets it and for what purposes.
The latest spat is between the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) , over the FCC’s plan to sell wireless operators TV airways to free up the spectrum for 4G LTE next year. (See FCC Could Block Sprint/T-Mobile Spectrum JV.)
The NAB claims the FCC is hurting the business of those stations that don’t participate in the auction by reducing their coverage area anyway. The FCC’s rule allowing the change would cause viewership to shrink “after the FCC ‘repacks’ TV stations into a shrunken TV band,” the group writes, in a petition for review filed with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.