Google’s White Spaces Database Gets Certification From FCC

Google just announced that its White Spaces database has received its final certification from the FCC.

Google has been running a trial in South Africa, and in March announced that it reached a milestone in getting a public trial with the FCC. Here we are a few months later, and it appears to be good to go.

“This is an exciting step forward,” Google Access Principal Alan Norman writes in a blog post. “With FCC certification, we can do more to help make spectrum available. We are ready to work with leaders in the wireless industry—those developing certified devices that can talk to a database—to help them gain access to TV White spaces spectrum to help bring new technologies and services to market.”

“Our database has already helped to show that there is available spectrum out there–if you know where to look,” adds Norman. “For example, we used the database to help visualize available spectrum in Cape Town, South Africa and Dakar, Senegal. And, with spectrum sharing enabled by a database, multiple users can share spectrum, accessing what they they need when they need it, and allowing others to use it when they don’t.”

Meanwhile, Google is looking to expand Internet access around the world by sending a ring of balloons into the sky around the world.