This is a fun story that says volumes about the psychological difference between the lords of today’s technology — Microsoft, Google, Intel — and the lord’s of yesterday’s hot technology — the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).
NAB and the Association for Maximum Service Television’s (MSTV) are launching a new advertising campaign intended to create FUD over the pursuit of unlicensed T.V. spectrum – called “white spaces.” Microsoft, Google, Dell and Intel want the FCC to open white spaces to both licensed and unlicensed wireless devices and services. This would allow those spaces to be used for all kind of nifty new wireless devices. NAB insists that unlicensed devices operating on white spaces would cause interference with TV channels operating between channel 2 and channel 51 – that is all of the ones available over the air. (Does anyone even get their TV that way anymore? Who among the folks without cable and satellite would be the ones using some fancy wireless device from Microsoft or Dell?)
The guys in the white hats – The White Spaces Coalition – the outfit that includes Microsoft, Google, Dell and Intel — claim the NAB is delusional. Although a test of a device submitted by Microsoft for study did indeed show that it interfered with TV station signals, Microsoft later claimed that the prototype was damaged and operating at a “severely degraded level.” (Paranoid thought here – would the NAB testers have damaged the device before testing it?)
In any case, NAB will do what it does best. The association announced this week that it will create an ad campaign that warns people that such devices, when they materialize on the market, could – gasp! – disrupt people’s TV viewing.
From an internetweek.com story on the topic:
In a statement to announce the ad campaign, NAB Television Board Chairman Alan Frank, president of Post-Newsweek Stations, said television watchers expect more than they get from the likes of Google and Microsoft.
“Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable; broadcasters do not,” Frank said. Consumers know that computers unexpectedly shut down. TVs don’t. TVs work and people expect them to work.”
So, which set of folks should a poor consumer, eager to while away the hours in front of some kind of video screen, believe? Will the latest nifty gadget cause an inability to watch CSI? Will the need to watch CSI mean derailing R&D efforts to invent the Next Big Wireless Thing? All we can say is, stay tuned for more. See also Microsoft questions FCC’s ‘white spaces’ decision and Social networking for your television
