After a five-hour delay, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved a rule that gives conditional support to the production of white spaces devices.

White spaces devices "should be of enormous benefit in solving the broadband deficit in many rural areas of the country," said Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps. "Ultimately, this careful threading of the needle between the path-breaking new and the tried and true old is going to reap huge benefits for the American people."

Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein agreed. "White spaces are the blank pages on which we'll write our broadband future," he said.

It is a "giant leap for American consumers to be able to use the untapped white spaces," said Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell.

The vote would allow the production of white spaces devices that use sensing plus geo-location at 100 milliwatts of power. The FCC would have to certify all devices before they go to market.

Devices that use sensing alone must be submitted for additional FCC tests, and that approval process would be open to the public. Approved devices would have to operate at a maximum of 50 milliwatts of power.

Sensing devices scan spectrum for unused channels while geo-location cross references a user's location with a database of licensed spectrum users in the area to make sure white spaces devices do not interfere.

What are white spaces? When TV stations switch from analog to digital signals in February 2009, unused spectrum - or white spaces - will emerge, and companies like Microsoft and Google want to use it for mobile broadband. Broadcasters, led by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), argue that such activity could disrupt TV signals and wireless microphone transmissions.

The FCC's Office of Engineering Technology (OET) released a report last month that approved the use of white spaces devices, and Tuesday's vote approves those guidelines.

"The FCC must recognize that technology cannot stand still," Copps said.

Though NAB actually supports the production of white spaces devices that combine sensing and geo-location, it has reserved its fire for the possibility that the FCC might approve sensing-only devices down the line.

NAB had been lobbying to delay Tuesday's vote until after a public comment on the OET report, an effort that had gained the support of various entertainment and sports groups, as well as politicians.

White spaces advocates said that FCC testing - which has spanned four years in total -- had been more than adequate and that a rule needed to be in place in order to take advantage of white spaces after the February transition as soon as possible.

Commissioner Adelstein agreed with NAB on this issue, though he ultimately approved the rule in its entirety. The process was "not a model of transparency" and the final result was "something of a rush," he said.

It "creates unnecessary resentment [and is] not the process I would have undertaken" but because the OET includes "engineers of the highest caliber" who gave their support to the rule, "I will approve the policy and with great enthusiasm," Adelstein concluded.

Republican Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate praised the potential for white spaces to bring broadband to rural areas like her home state of Tennessee, but also raised some concerns and ultimately dissented in part.

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