Licence exempt operation on USA TV frequencies

The United States regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering allowing unlicensed radio devices to operate on locally-unused broadcast TV channels.

Their proposals are intended to allow the development of new and innovative types of unlicensed broadband devices and services for businesses and consumers by utilizing vacant spectrum that is particularly well suited for these purposes.

The cable TV industry expressed concern that such devices could cause interference to television receivers connected directly to a digital cable TV service without the use of a set-top box. The concern exists because the portion of TV spectrum that is not used for TV broadcast in a given local area is still likely to be used within the cable-TV transmission system.

Depending on the effectiveness of shielding of a TV receiver’s tuner, emissions within an unused broadcast channel could potentially cause co-channel interference to a TV receiver tuned to a digital cable channel that overlaps that spectrum.

The Office of Engineering and Technology recently published a report on tests to investigate this issue.

The report can be downloaded from http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/
DOC-275668A1.doc

FCC - Unlicensed Operation in the TV Broadcast Bands
http://wireless.fcc.gov/spectrum/
proceeding_details.htm?proid=369

FCC Office of Engineering and Technology
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/