The stream of digital gadgets, technologies, and ideas explored on this blog make it easy to imagine the new media revolution is here.  It isn’t.  The technology isn’t ready.  When the “old media” of television begins transmitting next year on the digital spectrum, there will be extra transmission space for an ultra-fast wireless Internet.  Digital signals take up less airwave space than analog signals.  So the buffer zone of empty bandwidth that prevents two signals from interfering with each other will grow larger. That means more buffer room between signals for additional transmission.  Google, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Samsung and others are working on devices that can reliably detect the digital TV transmissions.  Theoretically the devices will zero in on soft spots between transmissions, using the airwaves empty space to transmit cell phone and Internet data at blistering transfer rates of gigabits per second, rather than megabits per second. 

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to establish a set of guidelines by which the transmission detectors would abide.  Conceivably the devices could be in the market by next year.  However, there’s only so much unlicensed bandwidth available, and those bands – 2.4GHz, for instance – are filling quickly with such devices as cordless telephones. Naturally, TV broadcasters want to reserve to themselves the spectrum for future use.  To that end, they may have been helped by FCC testing that suggests the high-speed Internet of the future can interfere with the television of the future.  Prototype detectors tested last year caused nearby television sets to, well, blink.  Other tests brought reported power failures.

New media proponents insist the broadcasters’ interference concerns are hugely overblown.  Let’s hope so.  Or the revolution could be seriously postponed.

A former national and international print and broadcast journalist, Bill Bartman is now a consultant to media, new media, telecommunications, and information technology. He operates out of Pittsburgh, PA with an office in Washington, DC.

Article Tags: Dell | digital TV spectrum | Federal Communications Commission | Google | HP | Microsoft | Samsung | ultra-fast wireless Internet | white spaces

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