My column for Gotham Gazette, "The Fight Over Broadcasting's 'White Space'" contains a recap of the debate over white spaces that has raged in New York for the past few months. It also offers a rundown of some of the key points in the FCC's 130-page decision and an explanation of what this could mean for our city.

If you would like to read the full text of the FCC's decision, you can download it here.

People's Production House commends the Federal Communication Commission on their vote to allow unlicensed access to the unused portion of the television airwaves know as white spaces. The FCC's 5 to 0 vote in favor of opening the white space spectrum is a significant step towards delivering lower-cost, high speed Internet across the nation. It will help to close the gap between those who have Internet and those who do not.

"This is a victory for everyone who uses the Internet and for those who would like to," says Kristofer Ríos of Peoples' Production House. "Wireless inernet acess is cheaper and easier to use. White spaces will give us an affordable alternative to over-priced Internet from the cable and phone companies."

People's Production House was a part of the national grassroots effort in support of opening whites spaces for unlicensed use. The grassroots efforts engaged and mobilized a coalition of citizens, rural and urban media just groups, good government groups, and consumer advocates to weigh in on the importance of unlicensed access to the spectrum. 

The FCC vote on Tuesday was a victory for the national grassroots effort against corporate control of public resources and brought together urban and rural communities to make a positive difference on policy. People's Production House hopes that the FCC will continue to support advancements in technology that will make it easier and affordable for Americans to access the Internet.

People's Production House is a national media justice organization based in New York City. It provides young people, immigrants, and low-wage workers with a comprehensive education for the information age, combining media production, media literacy and media policy.

Rural and urban groups who work on digital divide and media access with remote and traditionally marginalized communities are telling the FCC their constituencies would be harmed by further delay in the Commission's vote on “white spaces.” They want the FCC to reject pressure from broadcast lobbyists who are trying to extend a process that has already dragged on for nearly five years.

Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies, said, "The United States ranks 17th in broadband access in large part because of the poor access rate in our rural communities. This lack of access places rural communities at the margins of full civic participation and development. The use of vacant television channels for broadband deployment is a perfect way to help rural America and our nation as a whole catch up. But we've got to act now."  

Concerned that the FCC vote on white spaces will be sidelined by the Presidential election, the Main Street Project has spent the past weeks urging other digital divide activists to call their congressional representatives and write to the FCC demanding no delay on making white spaces available for rural access at the FCC meeting on November 4.

Amalia Anderson of the Main Street Project said, “Only a third of rural residents have access to broadband at home.  We need the FCC to open up white spaces (vacant channels) and create an opportunity to bring broadband to under-served rural communities and help close the digital divide.  In this age of the iPhone and Blackberry, more than 20 million of our fellow citizens — the vast majority in rural areas — still use a dial-up telephone line for Internet access!  In rural parts of the country, more than 75% of TV airwaves sit vacant.  Making these airwaves available for Internet access must be a priority.”

The Center for Rural Strategies and the Main Street Project, together with eight other groups across the country working on bridging the digital divide in rural places are joined together as “The Rural White Space Campaign.”  These include: Main Street Project;; Native Public Media; Mountain Area Information Network; Southern California Tribal Digital Village; Access Humboldt; Center for Rural Affairs; Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; HandMade in America and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Urban Media Justice Groups also see hope in making white spaces available to the public.   "Big corporations sometimes think a broadcast license is a monopoly on free speech. Granting unlicensed access to this portion of the public airwaves affirms that we all have the right to speak and listen,” People’s Production House Policy Director Joshua Breitbart, said. “Because the TV dial in New York City is so crowded, the only good use for the TV white spaces in urban areas is low-powered unlicensed devices.  Otherwise New Yorkers won’t get any new benefit from the white spaces.”

Only 26% of low-income residents in New York city have a broadband connection at home.

People’s Production House, along with Media Alliance of San Francisco, the Media Mobilizing Project of Philadelphia, and the Texas Media Empowerment Project based in San Antonio, has filed an official comment to the FCC stating that the best use of the newly available frequencies would be in the low power unlicensed regime in order to create room for more wifi-type devices. To counter the National Association of Broadcasters’ lobbying of congress to delay the FCC’s vote on TV white space, PPH is holding a call-your-rep day today with some of their members. 

Broadcast engineer and long-time advocate for opening up the public airwaves for public use, Pete Tridish of the Prometheus Radio Project sees no reason for the FCC to delay its vote:  “The broadcasters who are fighting "white spaces" are a one-trick pony.  Every time new technologies come along that challenge their business models and allow more competition, the broadcasters run to the government and beg them to put the genie back in the bottle. They want to keep the airwaves away from everyone who does not already own a tv or radio station. But this is 2008, not 1928, and technology will soon bring us to the point where everyone can share the use of the airwaves. Instead of using channels that belong to one company, new devices will be able to route through unused radio channels the way packets move over open connections across the internet. Broadcasters, whose business model is to own the channels and choose what goes over them, will stop at nothing to postpone the day when the American public benefits from the advent of ubiquitous electronic communication for everyone. Just as they blocked most of the LPFM service because it would open up an opportunity to get a radio broadcasting license  for all sorts of people, the broadcasters would like to stop this new technology before people realize what the airwaves can be used for if these businesses  are no longer the gatekeepers.”

Thank you to Dharma Dailey for writing this.