Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Are you ready for Feb. '09?

I have been on a crusade about wireless for several years. Warning churches about the up coming FCC sell off. The bidding has started and most of the blocks have meet the minimum bid price. You have until Feb. 2009 to get things OUT of the 700Mhz range. I have yet to understand why some people thought they could get the FCC to change its mind as they are set to get about 15 billion dollars from this sale. Yes, money talks.

Here is why churches need to pay attention, any current devices in that range will be illegal to use after Feb. ‘09. It will be like having an unlicensed radio station. While you may not, at first, have interference issues, you should stop using them simply because its the law. I suspect that it will take very little time in the large metro areas for these frequencies to get used up. If nothing else it will force churches to get out.

My suggestion at this point is that you go TODAY and tell those in your leadership that all your current wireless systems that are in the 700Mhz range must be replaced before Feb. ‘09. Make a plan, tell them how much it will cost and start setting aside money. I am a recent hire at my church so we are behind. I am currently working on a plan for our church and we have so many wireless systems its going to cost a fortune.

I would love to hear about your plans.

4 Comments:

Blogger James Attaway said...

My thought is this: what's going to happen to all those wireless devices in that range? Are they just going to be thrown out? Is there a think-tank or company somewhere that's trying to find a way to recycle the parts at least? The problem with these things being made in developing nations so cheaply is that it might not be worth it to harvest the parts.

Any thoughts???

2/12/2008 10:48:00 AM  
Blogger Jason said...

James,
There was some discussion at one point from Shure about upgrading their upper end systems to get out of the 700Mhz. As far as I know now, no company is going to try this. Honestly, it would cost so much to replace the main boards in these systems, you might as well buy new ones.

2/14/2008 01:02:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I checked w/ Shure today. They said "Sorry, no dice" to my question about a change of frequency. Seems like it might be a good business opportunity if someone could figure out how to do it cheaply.

2/15/2008 10:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just received an update that they are replacing the 700 banwidth line with the psmr400 that will be in the 900's. Hopefully they will be able to even keep this range secure
Blessings
Scott

2/17/2008 03:57:00 PM  

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