The Great White Space War of 2008 continues today as Bill Gates personally joins the last-minute lobbying effort over at the FCC. Gates and Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie (who have partnered on the issue before) will lobby FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell today on the issue of unlicensed white space devices just weeks after Google cofounder Larry Page also made a rare trip to DC to lobby the FCC in favor of the plan.

The support of Gates and Page for white space devices extends far beyond personal interest; both of their companies have devoted extensive work to the white space idea, and both have done so for the same reason: they like connectivity.

On a conference call with reporters today, Mundie said that Microsoft supports white space devices for the same reasons it supports WiFi: constant connectivity is good for Zunes, Windows Mobile, laptops running Windows, and the new generation of Windows Live web applications. Google, likewise, knows that more connectivity means more potential users of its services, especially if that connectivity extends to entirely new users, such as rural residents who currently lack broadband access.

But in the wake of the recent FCC engineering report on various white space prototypes, the broadcasters have been fighting back. They want an additional 70-day comment cycle before any further action, while the white space backers (and FCC Chair Kevin Martin) are currently hoping for a November 4 vote.

In an FCC filing made Friday afternoon, white space backers derided the call for additional delay. "After more than four years, multiple notice and comment periods, multiple rounds of lab and field testing, and over 30,000 filings by the public, broadcasters now accused the Commission of a rush to judgment on the white spaces," said the filing. "They do so on the thinnest of pretexts—that the Commission somehow has denied them a 'meaningful opportunity' to review and comment on test data that they watched [the Office of Engineering Technology] collect, and about which they have already made no fewer than 16 oral and written presentations on the record."

Mundie stressed the theme again today, arguing that there is "no justifiable reason" for further FCC delay on the matter. The main reason given for this claim is the openness of the FCC testing, which Mundie called "the most open testing perceiving that the FCC has ever done." The testing schedule was made public and observers were welcome to attend; in fact, the broadcasters had technical observers at most of the tests in question and they had "every opportunity to review the OET test results in real time as they unfolded."

Getting Congress involved

As the vote nears, both sides are also dragging Congress into the matter. John Dingell (D-MI), who heads the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent a letter to the FCC last week in which he asked agency officials to respond to questions about accountability and peer review of the test data. The letter does not appear to be particularly hostile (it praises the "careful approach to the technical issues" taken by the FCC), but it does have questions about how the agency would handle interference concerns once white space devices are in the field, why the FCC declined to pursue a licensed approach to the spectrum in question, and why peer review of the recent testing results was apparently not done.

Senators have also involved themselves in the issue. Last week, John Kerry (D-MA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) wrote a letter of their own to the FCC in which they urged the agency to "consider the benefit of allowing the unlicensed use of these airwaves" and to move forward with mobile, unlicensed white space devices.

Meanwhile, Google has stepped up its own efforts in what has become an increasingly political campaign. The company posted a call to action on its Official Google Blog last Thursday, and it also sent an e-mail to supporters, asking them to enlist their friends in the effort. The Google-backed FreeTheAirwaves.com, which hosts an online petition that will be sent to the FCC, has now attracted 20,000 signers.

Four years gone

The high-powered, election-style campaign (coincidentally, the FCC vote is scheduled for Election Day in the US) comes as white space backers badly want to close the deal they have spent four years negotiating. Mundie made this point plainly today, noting that Microsoft believes in the issue so much, the company actually built prototype white space radios years ago, even though such work won't result in a commercial product from the company and even though Microsoft isn't in the radio business.



Microsoft's busted prototype

Those prototypes famously "failed" in FCC testing in 2007, though Mundie calls this characterization of those tests "pretty silly." The power supplies on early Microsoft prototypes did fail, but Mundie notes that the boxes had been built years before as a proof of concept, and he says that Microsoft engineers didn't think they would need to survive for years. New, second-generation spectrum-sensing radios from vendors like Motorola were also included in the latest testing.

For broadcasters that oppose the white space effort (or at least demand significant restrictions on the devices), four years of delay, debate, and FCC deliberation matter little; as the debate rages, the broadcasters can simply continue about their business as usual. For white space backers like Google and Microsoft, though, used to working quickly and iteratively on fast-moving projects, four years of engineering and lobbying work must feel an eternity; that sense of Job-style long-suffering certainly came through in Mundie's comments today.

His argument might best be summed up by the closing lines from last week's FCC filing in which white space backers pleaded, "After four years of deliberation resulting in one of the most voluminous records in the Commission's history, the Commission can and should proceed with the vote scheduled for its November meeting. By doing so, the Commission will enable Coalition members and others to begin the process of creating a new market for innovative products and services that will benefit all Americans."