The in-between is where it’s at…

NPR had an interesting piece about leftover TV spectrum this morning. With all broadcast TV going digital in the USA, by February 17th 2009, that leaves a big chunk of “whitespace” in the spectrum.

At least one company is pushing to offer wifi access in this space which, as the NPR reports suggests, would be great for remote and isolated areas who still rely on dail-up. The White Spaces Coalition is pushing for this but there seems to be a lot of diverse opposition, including Dolly Parton.

My ideal set-up would be that the telco’s just become gatekeepers. I pay you a flat fee and can browse, view, upload, download, or listen to whatever I want on the web, using whatever device I want. The constraint would be the hardware limitations of my device – not where/what I was browsing and how much bandwidth it used.

With this, WiMax, and a slew of other technologies, 2009 looks to be a very interesting year to be connected.