I love how 8 out of the first 10 threads in this section (excluding the stickied ones, and including this one) are started by Geek. When I (infrequently as it may be) hop onto the CH board, one of the first things I do is look in the Off Topic section for the latest in Geek's Geekerie. It really is something interesting to find out what's going on with "whitespaces," etc. and it definitely is a change from the normal threads of CH.

What I'm trying to GET at is "thank you" and "keep it up," with a side of ""Thanks for the encouragement.  I was not sure members understood what the issue was with white space.

The potential for white space is very great.  Previous announcements made by the FCC admitted that there is a lot of spectrum space not being well used n the television UHF band.  My criticism of the FCC is based on an early paper that was PUBLISHED by the University of California at Berkeley.  In a nutshell, the FCC has wasted time to make it much too difficult for entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas about how to use this great resource.

This year there have been a few rumors that the bottleneck is going to be broken, But t has not happened. This year, 2012, was supposed to be the year the white space usage would be available fro the public benefit.  One or two success stories are proverbial DROPS in the bucket.

As for me, I started out as the licensed broadcast engineer may need years ago.  When my wife and I took our first trip overseas we we did ld stay for a while and I did not renew my license.  And instead, upon returning , I went into others areas of interest,  including computer programming in Silicon Valley.

There's a lot more to be said about the white space issue, but I am not going to make  comer hope my personal blog.  In fact, I do have blogs of my own. I'll post additional INFORMATION about what white space is in what could be on my own blogs.

Actually, I have great respect for what the Federal Communications Commission has done over the years.  Some of the decisions made by the FCC have not always been well-received.  Yet they have brought us down to this point in  where the quality of television reception in United States is very high and there is an abundant choice of program content available either over the air or over the cable networks.

It is unfortunate that at the present time some small interest groups are blocking something that would benefit the public in general.  Here in the States about 20 percent of the POPULATION lives in what is called rural area. This means that television as well as other forms of mass communication are limited simply because of the laws of physics. 

Satellite television and satellite radio do help some in rural areas. Nevertheless, doing Internet Via Satellite Is a poor choice. Latency issues involved with satellite communication exit very difficult for interactive programs that are becoming popular over the Internet.  But smart use of the white space available could be a real help to improve Internet communication rural townships of the United States.

These same observations apply to some extent and other parts of the world where people live outside of metropolitan areas.

Again, thank you for your feedback.

Here are links to other sites with information related to whitespace thing.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/White-Space-Broadband-Hope-for-Rural-America-119680
A New Alternative Finally Starting to Emerge

http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2012032720864/microsoft-adaptrum-promote-tv-whitespace-for-latin-america-economic-development.html#ixzz1wl79MIWM
Microsoft, Adaptrum promote TV whitespace for LatAm countries