A coalition of tech giants—Microsoft, Google, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Philips—are lobbying the US Federal Communications Commission to “allow idle TV channels, known as white space, to be used to beam the Internet into homes and offices”, reports Washington Post. First the FCC has to be sure that the service would not “bleed outside its designated channels and interfere with existing broadcasts”. According to the article “several analysts said a TV-spectrum system might make the most sense in rural areas, where high-speed Internet access via phone or cable lines is expensive to deploy. Small companies might build some towers, beam white-space spectrum to farm homes and cabins, and connect it to an Internet provider”. Of course, the downlink is only one part of internet access, the uplink is just as important.
Google joined the coalition to give it options should big ISPs and telcos start charging Internet companies higher prices to move their content more swiftly to consumers.