While existing companies control access to the internet it is with some contention that I see people regardless of the portal created through to internet access should have "free access" to this. Currently Governments hold the rights to auction so anything that is derived or sold by the government rightfully belongs to the people.
White space in telecommunications refers to unused frequencies in the radio waves portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
National and international bodies assign differing frequencies for specific uses, and in some cases license the rights to these. This frequency allocation process creates a bandplan which in some cases for technical reasons assigns white space between used bands to avoid interference. In this case, while the frequencies are unused they have been specifically assigned for a purpose.
As well as this technical assignment, there is also unused spectrum which has either never been used, or is becoming free as a result of technical changes. In particular, the planned switchover to digital television may free up large areas between 54MHz and 698MHz. Various proposals including those from the White Spaces Coalition suggest using this bandwidth to provide broadband Internet access. However, these efforts may impact wireless microphones and other technologies that have historically relied on these frequencies.
It is with some insight then that if this is currently free then such attempts to build new devices to access this without using current patented technologies would then be invited under the auspice of a open source and competitive standard to allow such an expression by the peope?
The White Spaces Coalition
The White Spaces Coalition consists of eight large technology companies that plan to deliver high speed broadband internet access beginning in February 2009 to United States consumers via existing 'white space' in unused television frequencies between 54-698 MHz (TV Channels 2-51). The coalition expects speeds of 10 Mbyte/s and above, and 50 to 100 Mbyte/s for white space short-range networking.[1] The group includes Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Philips, Earthlink, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics.