Google and Microsoft agree on White Spaces

It's been less than a week since the 700mhz auction winners were revealed, but already Google is making its' next move, and treading close to territory that Microsoft has stepped in before and failed: that of so-called White Spaces, the signal "between" the new DTV channels. 

The focus of Google's latest lobbying effort is the so-called "white spaces" portion of the TV spectrum, the unused slivers that lie between regulated TV signals. A coalition of US technology companies, including Google, has argued for some time that those pieces of spectrum could be assembled to support a new high-speed wireless service.

Technical challenges have hindered that effort and reinforced claims by US broadcasters that a new service would interfere with the surrounding TV signals.

Most embarrassingly, a Microsoft device failed FCC tests last year, although the software company said later that part of the machine had been broken and a repaired version had operated adequately.

Google proposed Monday what Mr Whitt called a "belt and suspenders" approach to the technology. Along with the controversial "spectrum sensing" approach used by Microsoft and others, which tries to identify which parts of the spectrum are in use to avoid interference, it backed a Motorola plan that would prevent a device from transmitting on a particular wave length until it had received a specific "all clear" signal from a local transmitter.

Google also went further in suggesting that parts of the spectrum should be off-limits entirely.

Could the two giants get along on this issue? We'll see...