FCC White Space Ruling

Yesterday the FCC made their ruling to allow use of unlicensed white space devices in the broadcast spectrum. This has lots of implications on all of us that use any wireless mics. The FCC ruling opens up the possibility of anyone coming in our facility with a device that could potentially interfere with our wireless mics. They plan to have an online database where we can put in our location and what we are using that will hopefully tell any device that comes in our location what frequencies it can not use. Honestly, I suspect that level of technology will be difficult to implement anytime in the near future. It could be sometime before any of those are actually available on the market. My hope is that the technology will work as promised. Here is part of the ruling.

Wireless microphones will be protected in a variety of ways. The locations where wireless microphones are used, such as sporting venues and event and production facilities, can be registered in [an internet] data base and will be protected in the same way as other services. The Commission also has required that devices include the ability to listen to the airwaves to sense wireless microphones as an additional measure of protection for these devices.

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