More restrictions coming for the wireless band

[Andrew Smith]

Looks like the available frequencies for use for wireless mics will be shrinking again thanks to the FCC "repack" process. You can read a very in-depth TVTechnology article on it here.

Most interesting paragraph from the article is:

“My partner Geoff Shearing and I went to the FCC on multiple occasions on behalf of the broadcast and production communities, and tried to enlighten them as to how many wireless microphones and intercoms were out in the United States,” said Stoffo. “When we first went, the FCC thought there were less than 1,000 wireless in the entire country. Actually, at that time there were closer to 2.5 million devices, and that caused a couple of jaws to drop.”

So glad I'm here in Australia where frequency concentration isn't such an issue, but also for gear that uses digital transmission on the WiFi frequencies.

Andrew

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

Looks like the available frequencies for use for wireless mics will be shrinking again thanks to the FCC "repack" process.

This should not be a surprise to anyone in NA. The sale of the 600 mHz band has been planned for years. The 600 mHz band was set for auction back in 2015, in a similar process to the way TV broadband spectrum in the 800 mHz band and the 700 mHz band was sold before. Most all of this chunk of frequencies is being sold to wireless carriers (cell phone). The "great repacking" going on now is to move existing TV stations out of the 600 mHz band down into the 500 mHz band so that cell phone towers can operate in the spectrum they have newly bought. IOW, TV broadcasting is effected by this just as much as the use of wireless mics is.