The Votes are In: 5 - 0 in Favor of White Space radio!

Woo hoo! In a fantastic victory for companies like Voyant working in the white space radio (WSR) field, the FCC voted 5 - 0 today to open the "white spaces" created by unused TV channels. We'd been expecting this great news, but it's nice to finally see the vote come down our way.

While a lot of companies make radios, the WSR rules mandate that unlicensed users of this spectrum also be able to sense licensed users and not interfere with them.

Think of it like an automobile driving merging onto a highway. The driver doesn't just need to operate his/her car. The driver also needs to watch for the traffic already on the highway and make sure that he/she merges into an open space, as opposed to crashing blindly into traffic.

The means that companies making radios for WSR applications need more than just radio expertise: they need sensing expertise, as well. It's exactly this kind of intersection between two disparate fields that we're interested in.

Besides being great news for Voyant, I think that this is good public policy, as well. It's a step to opening up a world of new applications. The buzz phrase seems to be "Wi-Fi on steroids," but even beyond the hyperbolae, it really does create a new physical layer for Internet applications. Of couse the service providers aren't happy: they control the existing physical layer. A new free-for-all of new physical-layer providers and do-it-yourselfers is about to begin. And we're positioning Voyant to supply the tools for this growth.

Posted by VoyantCMO at 7:23 PM