Wireless Are we about to get cut from the 600Mhz band?

[JD]

Happened across this page from Sennheiser:
http://en-us.sennheiser.com/spectrum#sthash.N5RTypHi.dpbs

If I read this correctly and it goes through, we can kiss the 600 Mhz band goodbye as well. So much for investing in the "B" band Sennheisers. We need to start writing some letters now if it will do any good...

 

[jkowtko]

I heard elsewhere that the process had stalled for a year or two. But I'm sure eventually it will happen. Writing letters probably isn't going to help .. I would just suggest you make all new purchases in the 500-600 range and you should be safe for at least a few more years after that. And the mfgs will no doubt have their trade-in promotions as well.

Hopefully by then we'll find a new permanent (frequency) home and digital transmission will become the norm Nothing like a deprecation to kick a little butt in the technology evolution process

 

[FMEng]

Writing letters won't help. The FCC has a mandate from Congress, and a big lobby is behind it. Several million comments have been made about net neutrality and yet the Commission hasn't seen fit to drop that proposal yet, either.

 

[rsmentele]

We are such a small player in the bandwidth discussion that our voice goes unheard. The communications companies, the ones with BILLIONS are the ones pushing this, and although Sennheiser, Shure, AT and other large manufacturers are not going down without a fight, they have conceded that the laws will pass and they have to adjust. It means we have to spend money to be compliant, but they also have to spend even more to R&D new products to get around the ever changing laws.

We have reached this point because everyone wants fast cell phone speeds,HD TV, wireless EVERYTHING! exc. With the proliferation of more and more phones and other technologies, it bogs the system. And HD is old news by now and everyone is already talking about 4K.....

We kind of did this to ourselves.

 

[themuzicman]

Yep, it is known as the FCC Incentive Auction, they will be auctioning off unlicensed spectrum starting with Channel 51 and working their way down, leaving the natural white space that occurs at Channel 37 open for all, there was some debate if there will be a second channel open to us but I believe that had been dropped at the request of the cell companies. I've stopped paying a whole lot of attention to it for the moment, the auction will be in early 2016 and it won't truly affect a lot of us until 2018. The auction will sell off a lot of the 600mHz, possibly down to the lower 500's. The period to write letters or to "have your voice heard" is now closed for the most part. Sennheiser had a bill to change the wording of FCC's rules but the comment period is over - in it they argued for the natural white space in 37 plus two open channels in the 600mHz spectrum and let's be real, we are a small small market. Not enough people to make the FCC listen. Most peoples needs will fit into what's left of the spectrum, yea it sucks everyone will have to buy new gear, but it is what it is. It'll really affect people in congested markets (New York, Dallas, Las Vegas), tours, and any show using a ton of wireless (like 30+ channels of RF).

The good news is that you can now license your mics on a non-exclusive basis for 10 years if you are running more than 50+ channels of wireless mic. The last draft of the changes I read specifically said wireless microphones and NOT channels of wireless, which is a huge damper on a lot of peoples parades. It's super easy to get more than 50 channels of wireless with a few wireless intercom packs, it's a little harder to get 50+ channels of strict wireless microphones, even by Broadway's standards. The licenses are essentially self-policed, you'll be added to the registry, and you can tell people intruding into your freqs to turn off or tune away -- though from my experience it is easier said than done and often requires me finding them new frequencies via IAS/RF Guru as I am telling them to cut it out. The two exceptions to this are 1. If the person tuned to your freqs also has a license for the same freqs or is causing intermod due to their licensed freqs, the two of you need to work it out. and 2. News broadcasts can interfere with you.

 

[JD]

The problem I see is that everything is getting crammed into a very small window. For example, the Sennheiser "A" band will still be good, but.... In order to get more into what is available, the format of the channels will have to be changed so the width is smaller. What that means is that (once again) EVERYTHING becomes obsolete! Not sure the manufacturers are too worried about that because they get to sell us all new stuff. The "rebates" for the 700 Mhz equipment were pathetic. I would expect the same for this as well.

 

[themuzicman]

Yep, that is indeed the issue -- and that is why Sennheiser's proposal included two other channels -- you can't use an IEM in the same chunk you are using Wireless Mics, so you need the physical separation of multiple channels to get usability out of all your devices. For the vast majority of users, the remaining upper 400mHz, and majority of 500mHz spectrum will be enough.

The manufacturers are just as riled up about this as we are -- they had no legal obligation to give anyone a refund on the 700mHz wireless, however they did. Sennheiser and Shure have both been lobbying to minimize the damage of the Incentive Auction. They have realized it is an inevitability, but they are working to make sure it's not as bad as it could be. Part of Sennheiser's last motion was to request that the purchasers of the spectrum give every person who needs to buy new gear money to get their new gear so that's sort of cool.

On your comment about Bandwidth needing to become smaller -- companies are working on this as quick as they can, but it is HARD work! We have seen some amazing advances in Wireless technology in the last few years. In wireless ICom you have Radioactive Wireless and their amazing UV-1G wireless intercom system that can fit 30 base stations / 180 beltpacks in the same bandwidth that 1 Telex BTR and 4 Beltpacks uses. On the wireless mic side, just look at packs like the SK-5212 from Sennheiser. The generation 1 pack from just 5 years ago had a switching bandwidth of just 34 mHz. The generation 2 pack from this last year now has a switching bandwidth of up to 184 mHz, and it features twice the transmission power should you want. Both having the exact same footprint and run off of the same single A battery. Progress takes time, and it isn't cheap.

 

[MNicolai]

The summary is, if you're buying wireless microphone systems today and are in a reasonably populated area, buy high-density systems like Shure's ULXD. We already know there will be a number of guard bands available that will be (IIRC) ~4MHz wide, ~14-28MHz worth of guard bands total. I can't speak to equivalent models by other manufacturers but with ULXD's high-density mode, you can cram 30 systems into a 4MHz guard band.

If your systems are in a dense RF environment like NYC or Chicago, you may still be fighting for spectrum, but in more moderately-populated environments you should be able to move your systems into the guard bands without much headache.

What will be killed out pretty quick by this auction are all of the budget-friendly wireless options. While these are fine for a church in a rural area only needing 3 mic's, you will simply not be able to fit enough of these bandwidth-hogging systems into the guard bands, and likely not even into the soon-to-be crammed sub-600MHz spectrum as RF devices move out of the 600MHz band in anticipation of the auction.

The unfortunate reality is that a large number of existing wireless microphone users will find themselves with 8+ systems needing to be swapped out for a higher-density option, and the higher density option will be prohibitively expensive for them. We may begin to see a resurgence of boundary/shotgun/choir microphones in use instead of wireless-per-person applications because you can buy a lot of wired microphones for the cost of 24 high-density systems.

FYI -- Received a notice from Shure last night about their discontinuation of M1 band(662-698MHz) and L4 band (638-662MHz) products.

 

[BobHealey]

FYI -- Received a notice from Shure last night about their discontinuation of M1 band(662-698MHz) and L4 band (638-662MHz) products.

Does that include repair of products in those bands? I have some L4 band SLX I need to have sent in for service.

 

[MNicolai]

Does that include repair of products in those bands? I have some L4 band SLX I need to have sent in for service.

My understanding is no, it does not include discontinuation on repairs. I believe they'll continue service on existing units and that they just want to preemptively reduce the number of units that'll become obsolete or at least difficult to use in populated areas.

 

[BobHealey]

My understanding is no, it does not include discontinuation on repairs. I believe they'll continue service on existing units and that they just want to preemptively reduce the number of units that'll become obsolete or at least difficult to use in populated areas.

Thanks