Expressing concerns that unlicensed wireless devices would interfere with church services, megachurch pastor Rick Warren has urged the Federal Communications Commission to not open up television "white spaces" for unlicensed use when the agency meets on Nov. 4.
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(Photo: AP Images / Jason DeCrow)Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, speaks during a panel discussion on rural development at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting Friday, Sept 26, 2008 in New York.
Warren who leads the 25,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., voiced his objections in a letter sent to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin last week. The letter was sent days after the FCC's engineering and technology office released a report that gave a green light to the Commission to allow unlicensed users to access the unused spectrum.
Allowing new unlicensed devices to enter the picture would interrupt the church's "most sacred time of the week" — church services, said Warren in the letter.
Like thousands of churches across the nation, Saddleback uses wireless microphones during its worship services. New devices could cause interference because in some cases they occupy the same or adjacent channels as wireless microphones.
"If the FCC were to carelessly loosen the standards and open them to these respective frequencies of new unlicensed devices, the Commission will cause immeasurable disruption to our ability to manage static and audio dropouts," wrote Warren, whose church holds 34 services each week.
"Solutions to this situation will cause houses of worship will have to invest unknown resources to battle the interference from unlicensed mobile wireless devices."
Warren joins the National Religious Broadcasters and another well-known megachurch pastor in the "white space" debate. In early October, Joel Osteen, senior pastor of the 40,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston, also sent a letter urging the FCC to block devices with questionable test results to use the white space.
The letters by Warren and Osteen aren't the first time religious broadcasters have sounded off against the use of white spaces. Last October, Osteen and a Saddleback worship pastor were among the church leaders that signed a similar plea to FCC.
Currently, television white spaces go unused, acting as buffer zones between the occupied television frequencies. The debate over how these unused frequencies are used has been intensifying as the February 2009 conversion deadline from analog to digital transmission approaches.
On Nov. 4, the FCC is scheduled to consider a proposal, supported by chairman Martin, that would up the white-space spectrum for unlicensed use.
The upcoming vote has alarmed the National Association of Broadcasters, which has asked FCC to delay the vote to open up a 60-day comment period on the white-space proposal.
The call by NAB is supported by big TV networks, several members of Congress, a slew of musicians — including Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond, the Dixie Chicks, Clay Aiken, and Guns N' Roses, major sports leagues — including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NASCAR, and dozens of other groups.
Google, Microsoft and HP are among the big tech companies and wireless device manufacturers which view the unused frequencies as carrying huge potential for making wireless broadband more accessible to both urban and rural areas.
Those who oppose opening up the spectrum, however, point to less-than-stellar test results that show interference still occurs. According to the recent report, some wireless devices failed to properly detect which frequencies were already occupied by wireless microphones.
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alan, thanks again for your patience and insight into this issue, hope you have a great Lord's Day tommorrow, believer
@believer: Hopefully you won't have to think about this at all, because the technical staff will have chosen appropriate channels. They already have to do this today, but under the new rules they may have to pay a bit more attention when choosing. You'll still have to figure out how to turn the mic on of course. ;)
alan, thanks for your response but as I said I'm a greenhorn in this area, when I preach at a church I either use a normal mike or a lapel mike or one that goes around my ear and in front of my mouth and hopefully I can figure out how to turn them on and turn them off before the invitation hymn. So how will this issue effect me as a preacher?
@believer: To begin with, several channels have been proposed for continued use by existing microphones. In addition, the current proposal includes the ability of microphone users to submit the frequencies they wish to use out of the whole set of bands, which would cause the proposed white space devices to avoid using the channel altogether (obviating the need to sense at all). This combined approach seems to be a good middle of the road approach which would allow existing microphone users to transition from their current technology to something that uses the same next-generation standards as the white space devices themselves. The biggest problem in this debate is inadequate understanding of these genuine technical concerns (and proposed solutions).
alan, being a greenhorn in this area what do you see as a more effective means as opposed to current wireless mikes being used?
@crc: you are incorrect, no such exemption exists (although advocates of unlicensed use of white spaces have proposed creating a safe harbor for microphones)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080618-white-space-group-amnesty-for-illegal-wireless-mic-use.html
@believer: We are stewards of a shared creation, which includes the spectrum used to communicate. The currently used microphones are decades-old technology that is profoundly wasteful. One example of a general statement of Christian stewardship is here:
http://www.crcna.org/pages/stewardship.cfm
alan, a violation of the higher call to good stewardship, please explain?
lf, Rick Warren has personally come out and said he is encouraging people to vote yes on the proposition, to ban same-sex marriages.
Wireless microphones do not require a license to operate because they are very low power. If this were true you would need a license to use them.
You failed to mention that these churches are operating their microphones illegally, and are now brazenly asking the FCC to protect this illegal use rather than trying to find a way to work within the law to solve the issue. Indeed, the law of the country aside, churches' current use of this spectrum is tremendously spectrally inefficient, a violation of the higher call to good stewardship.
Legal details better covered here: http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=16311
It's good that he's concerned about legislation that may affect how churches operate. However, I have yet to see if his church has taken a stand on more important issues, such as California's Proposition 8. Saddleback is in California.