Wireless Is it possible to be FCC spectrum auction future proof?

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I got to talking with a friend about if you were going to buy wireless gear right now, what would you get to try to be future proof against FCC auctions? Below are my observations of the options. What do you think? What would you buy to be "future resistant"?

-Upper 500mhz band... Year right. I give it 4 years until they auction that one off too.

-470mhz to low 500mhz like Sennheiser A1 for Shure G3 bands. I have the feeling it's a little safer than the upper 500mhz range, but not much. You might get 7 or 8 years, but it's going to be sold off soon too.

-900mhz. Safe. The FCC isn't going to auction it off, but it's full of baby monitors, walkie talkies, and a variety of other consumer products. Plus it's limited in size so you can can only up to 5 mics in this range, not 15. It tends to be lower quality gear.

-1.92-1.93 ghz "DECT" band. Safe from FCC sales, but most cordless landline phones operate here, lots of potential complications.

-2.4ghz Safe from auction. But full of bluetooth and wifi issues.

-5.8ghz It's legal. Is there anything made that works in this range?

VHF 54mhz-470mhz- There are a lot of reasonably priced products in this range and they are relatively safe from FCC issues. But I don't know of any real pro-quality products in the VHF range.

900mhz Part 74 licensed products. Not available to most of us

Sennheiser Band 1G8. 1,785-1,800 mhz Are these legal in the U.S.? I don't think so, but it would be cool.


So all of that said, I'm sadly stuck with saying if you need pro-quality gear you are probably best to stay in UHF at this point with a mic that goes down to 470 mhz... but there's a good chance it won't be legal for long. If you only need a few mics and your space has a fairly large campus keeping you isolated from other devices, then perhaps a 900mhz or 2.4ghz will do the trick.

What is your opinion, I know a lot of you have followed this closer than I have and I'm sure I've made some errors in my assumptions above.
 
One added thought:

How many years before I retire, and this becomes someone else’s problem?

Once I receive my current order for 26 Sennheiser A1 and A band (spread across multiple rooms) I’m gambling on this one.;)
 
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Buy now. You have the longest stretch of time available before the next auction starts. We're 10 years out from when 700MHz happened. Not sure if you have another full 10 years moving forward, but I'd say it's unlikely we'll see another major auction in the next several years. The FCC had a hard enough time drumming up cash-ready bidders on this auction which is why more spectrum wasn't repackaged than there was.

Meanwhile, all of the wireless manufacturers are working on even higher density systems. For most users outside of major metropolitan areas, you can handle an entire production so long as you can find a 6 MHz slice of spectrum to sit in.
 
Meanwhile, all of the wireless manufacturers are working on even higher density systems. For most users outside of major metropolitan areas, you can handle an entire production so long as you can find a 6 MHz slice of spectrum to sit in.

This is a really interesting point. Although it leads me to think wait as long as you can because the manufacturers will get even better at cramming more mics into less space.
 
I don't think any more TV spectrum is going away for the foreseeable future. There just isn't any left unless they do away with broadcast TV altogether. That isn't politically practical, at least for now.

As the frequency goes down, it gets harder to fit an efficient antenna into a phone. Since users are unlikely to accept phones with antennas sticking out or telescoping, it's unlikely the wireless carriers want to go below 600 MHz, even if they could get the spectrum.

If you want to be really paranoid, Shure is making some systems in high band VHF. It's pretty safe because VHF is useless to the wireless carriers, and most TV engineers don't want to move from UHF to VHF. The downside for mics is larger receive antennas. Most places have several, empty VHF channels.
 
Meanwhile, all of the wireless manufacturers are working on even higher density systems. For most users outside of major metropolitan areas, you can handle an entire production so long as you can find a 6 MHz slice of spectrum to sit in.

With spectrum efficiency comes modulation scheme complexity. Generally speaking, the more bits per bandwidth, the more fragile the communications channel becomes. There's no free lunch in physics. There have to be some trade offs to these systems in terms of reliability, or lossy coding, or latency, or something else.
 
This is true. More accurate statement would be that higher density is here. Now it just needs to be more financially accessible.
 
Welll.....

Not all of the 600mHz spectrum that was available after the incentive (reverse) auction was successfully licensed; IOW there are bands in the 600mHz range that remain available for mobile device use (in all but the top 10 or so markets, anyway) and they will be the first to be offered in the next auction.

Congress mandated that the FCC make "more efficient use" (meaning, put more money in the US Treasury) of the relatively less densely used UHF TV bands. It's the folks who want to stream video (in either direction) that are the bandwidth hogs. The people in the audience all streaming the same performance to their FaceSpace identity thieving service, or watching Netflax, are the reasons we lost the 600mHz band... and the carriers win a little bit and the content creators win a lot. Most of us won the manadate to replace not-yet-amortized wireless mics...
 
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Welll.....

Not all of the 600mHz spectrum that was available after the incentive (reverse) auction was successfully licensed; IOW there are bands in the 600mHz range that remain available (in all but the top 10 or so markets, anyway) and they will be the first to be offered in the next auction.

I believe this is where we are sitting with our Sennheiser system. I want to say 626-662. I have read conflicting reports of the legality of this slice that we currently occupy, but there we are.

Edit: Maybe I shouldn't admit to this on the internet...
 
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I believe this is where we are sitting with our Sennheiser system. I want to say 626-662. I have read conflicting reports of the legality of this slice that we currently occupy, but there we are.

Edit: Maybe I shouldn't admit to this on the internet...

We've gone back and forth about certain minutia of FCC regs but in general:

You must cease to use transmitters capable of tuning to the frequency range auctioned by the FCC - IOW, from 618mHz on up to 698mHz, and you must cease when the licensees "go hot" with testing. Most of the spectrum was licensed by TMobile and there is a pinned sticky thread at the top of this forum that points to outside resources regarding the TMobile roll out.

While there are a couple of slices in the 600mHz band where wireless mic operation will still be allowed the transmitters must not be capable of (and they must be recertifiied as "type-accepted" by the manufacturer) tuning outside those allowed frequency ranges. Sennheiser has not indicated that they are willing to flash new firmware in their transmitters, nor have they indicated this can or will be available for end users to do. My bet is on "no" to both.

The previously announced transition deadline of 2020 is when all new services must be on air; it is not the date when YOUR venue, company or house of worship must be in compliance - you must be in compliance when TMobile fires up the new equipment in your geographic location. You cannot cause interference to a licensed service without risk of prosecution, confiscation of offending transmitters, and potentially preventing you from holding FCC licenses or permits in the future... never mind that the new mobile service will create havoc with your wireless in random fashion that will get worse as time goes on with more mobile devices capable of using the 600mHz spectrum.
 
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Sounds like it's time to write some grants.

Well, it's been time; who are we kidding.
 
Several manufacturers are offering deals with trade ins right now. If you can afford to buy during those offers, you might save some money.
 
I got to talking with a friend about if you were going to buy wireless gear right now, what would you get to try to be future proof against FCC auctions? Below are my observations of the options. What do you think? What would you buy to be "future resistant"?

-Upper 500mhz band... Year right. I give it 4 years until they auction that one off too.

-470mhz to low 500mhz like Sennheiser A1 for Shure G3 bands. I have the feeling it's a little safer than the upper 500mhz range, but not much. You might get 7 or 8 years, but it's going to be sold off soon too.

-900mhz. Safe. The FCC isn't going to auction it off, but it's full of baby monitors, walkie talkies, and a variety of other consumer products. Plus it's limited in size so you can can only up to 5 mics in this range, not 15. It tends to be lower quality gear.

-1.92-1.93 ghz "DECT" band. Safe from FCC sales, but most cordless landline phones operate here, lots of potential complications.

-2.4ghz Safe from auction. But full of bluetooth and wifi issues.

-5.8ghz It's legal. Is there anything made that works in this range?

VHF 54mhz-470mhz- There are a lot of reasonably priced products in this range and they are relatively safe from FCC issues. But I don't know of any real pro-quality products in the VHF range.

900mhz Part 74 licensed products. Not available to most of us

Sennheiser Band 1G8. 1,785-1,800 mhz Are these legal in the U.S.? I don't think so, but it would be cool.


So all of that said, I'm sadly stuck with saying if you need pro-quality gear you are probably best to stay in UHF at this point with a mic that goes down to 470 mhz... but there's a good chance it won't be legal for long. If you only need a few mics and your space has a fairly large campus keeping you isolated from other devices, then perhaps a 900mhz or 2.4ghz will do the trick.

What is your opinion, I know a lot of you have followed this closer than I have and I'm sure I've made some errors in my assumptions above.

There's really no way of future proofing in this area. Just try 500mhz. Hopefully it'll stay
 
The question then becomes... Do they care?
My guess is no.

Who do you expect to care? Seriously.

Congress, in passing legislation, directed the FCC to make money from inefficiently used spectrum, to wit the rather huge slice of spectrum allocated to broadcast TV. In most markets that spectrum was vastly underutilized and the trivial amount broadcasters paid the US Treasury to use it put it squarely in the FCC sights when *mobile device* connectivity suppliers (ATT, T Mobile, Sprint, etc) and content creators/distributors (Hulu, Netflix, Time-Warner) wanted lower frequency bands (to penetrate buildings, mostly) to distribute Fifty Shades, Desperate Housewives, etc to consumers who no longer wanted to be tied to a TV set.

I can assure you that NONE of those folks give a damn about "our" wireless mic situation. Understand that while touring theatrical productions are a US$1BN industry, it pales in comparison to the dollar value of the folks who produce video content, who sell the portable devices and the companies who deliver that content to the devices. "They" care even less about community theater, houses of worship and other unlicensed users of RF spectrum.

Ultimately the people driving this spectrum grab are consumers - your family members, your neighbors, your coworkers. Anyone who streams content to a mobile device is implicit in this and there's nothing... nothing... that can be done about it until you change the human behavior of the masses. The same motivation that puts people in theater seats - entertainment - puts those mobile devices in their hands.
 
Who do you expect to care? Seriously.

Congress, in passing legislation, directed the FCC to make money from inefficiently used spectrum, to wit the rather huge slice of spectrum allocated to broadcast TV. In most markets that spectrum was vastly underutilized and the trivial amount broadcasters paid the US Treasury to use it put it squarely in the FCC sights when *mobile device* connectivity suppliers (ATT, T Mobile, Sprint, etc) and content creators/distributors (Hulu, Netflix, Time-Warner) wanted lower frequency bands (to penetrate buildings, mostly) to distribute Fifty Shades, Desperate Housewives, etc to consumers who no longer wanted to be tied to a TV set.

I can assure you that NONE of those folks give a damn about "our" wireless mic situation. Understand that while touring theatrical productions are a US$1BN industry, it pales in comparison to the dollar value of the folks who produce video content, who sell the portable devices and the companies who deliver that content to the devices. "They" care even less about community theater, houses of worship and other unlicensed users of RF spectrum.

Ultimately the people driving this spectrum grab are consumers - your family members, your neighbors, your coworkers. Anyone who streams content to a mobile device is implicit in this and there's nothing... nothing... that can be done about it until you change the human behavior of the masses. The same motivation that puts people in theater seats - entertainment - puts those mobile devices in their hands.

Couldn't have said it better!
 

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