I learned the other day that the Commission had terminated a couple of proceedings that might have cast some light on all this spectrum policy wrangling. 

One had to do with receiver standards.  It's very hard to move towards using spectrum more efficiently if you're stuck dealing with a bunch of dumb legacy devices.  (Even if devices could just promise to receive IP packets that might make them smart enough.  But a lot of devices can't yet do that, of course.) 

The other had to do with interference.  If you don't have any measurements for interference, it's hard for anyone to discuss what it means or how much is too much.  Someone can always claim that planes just might fall from the sky if someone else does X or Y.

Because the incumbent carriers (both telcos and television broadcasters) are perfectly happy with dumb-but-customized devices and can work out their own interference deals behind closed doors, they don't mind having these proceedings end.  But their absence makes it harder for the rest of the ecosystem to predict the future and attract investment.  Many years of work went into these two proceedings.   (I see that Harold blogged about this eons ago.)

We can't move all of communications into the internet model - the "indifferent transport" model - using the white spaces without piercing this darkness.