When you change channels on your TV set, you probably don't notice the "white spaces" between them. That's because they're not officially there - at least for TV broadcasts.
But in a few years, they might be another path from your home to the Internet - one that's potentially faster and cheaper than the broadband your cable or phone company provides today.
In fact, the only stumbling blocks between you and this cheap, high-speed wireless service are the cable, telephone, wireless and broadcast industries - all of whom have good reasons to oppose it. And one other minor item - somebody has to prove that white space wireless transmission actually works.
You haven't heard about this so far because the discussion has taken place among the same group of corporate geeks, bureaucrats and politicians who quietly hatched the scheme to switch the country from analog to digital broadcasting next February. But I predict that white space wireless will bubble its way into the public consciousness the way today's short-range Wi-Fi did at the turn of the century.
What's it all about? Well, white space is the industry's term for the unused portion of the radio spectrum between current analog TV channels. When our traditional broadcast system was established (a process that concluded with UHF in the 1960s), the government left unused frequencies between the channels to keep broadcasters from interfering with one another.
That was smart then, and for decades there was no reason to tinker with the system, even after broadcast equipment and TV tuners improved to the point where the precautions weren't strictly necessary.
Today, however, the broadcast world has been turned upside down by the switch from analog to digital transmission. I've written a lot about this: The most obvious impact is on TVs that receive signals over-the-air with an antenna instead of by cable, satellite or fiber. These sets won't be able to get digital broadcasts without a converter box.
The flip side of the conversion is that the government will take back the so-called 700 megahertz spectrum, which you and I know as UHF channels 52 and up. Like the rest of the TV spectrum, it's prime real estate for broadcasts that have to travel long distances and penetrate walls. That's why Verizon, AT&T and other wireless outfits recently bid a record $19.6 billion to use various chunks of that spectrum once the switchover happens.
