What - to alleviate inflammation & irritation ?

The tax revenues created by users and manufacturers of WI-FI equipment far outstrip revenues from auctioning off our air.

The lobbiests, etc are simply interested in stopping competition.

Remember, once you have good Internet brand connectivity, you don't need cable or phone company anymore.

But do you also need Television and Theatre?

Most TV shows can't be made without wireless devices, and the vast majority of theatrical performances can't happen without those same devices.

They are called 'Microphones' .

You may have seen them before - some are big and handheld, others are tiny and have a beltpack.

On the bright side, without them Janet Jackson couldn't have sung at the Superbowl.

Re: "Sense-and-avoid is complex, as it's perfectly possible for a white space device to interfere with a transmitter it can't see if a third party can see both the transmitter and the offending device. " snip

Yes, it is complex, but to be clear, the interference is suffered by the receiver (i.e. the "third party"), not the Transmitter. That's why a database approach (which presumably tells you where the Tx's are, and possibly their theoretical coverage) needs more processing grunt added to make it workable.

The whole point of whitespace is to allow someone other than the local telephone company and its affiliates to have some access to the subscriber. Licensing, in the US, means that it gets auctioned off, and that means it always goes to AT&T and Verizon, who already own the bulk of the commercial-mobile spectrum and who have the money to outbid anyone who could possibly compete with them. So the public benefit would be negative.

Congressman Dingell has spent many years carrying the water of the then-SBC (now called AT&T, having bought the venerable name). He is no real friend of the tech community.

As it happens, there was TV and stage shows long before (illegal and unlicensed) wireless microphones.