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207 These spaces will get even bigger on February 17, 2009, the legally mandated day for TV broadcasts to go completely digital, freeing up more of the airwaves. (Digital signals take up less airwave space than their analog counterparts.) Tech companies see huge opportunities in these radio-frequency buffer zones. The slices could allow computers, cell phones and other wireless devices to transfer gigabits of data per second (compared with Wi-Fi's megabit-per-second speeds), thereby supporting mesh networks, broadband access in remote areas and wireless hot-spots. "You may want to call it Wi-Fi 2.0 or Wi-Fi on steroids," said Rick Whitt, Google's Washington, D.C., telecom and media lawyer, during a recent press conference held to promote the effort. In March, Google filed a petition with the FCC stating its support for white-space-sensing tech- nology – such as that proposed by rival Microsoft. Google's interest in wireless technology stems from the company's desire to promote its open-source Android operating system and software for mobile devices, which Google hopes will be available by this fall. But broadcasters do not want to invest in a digital infrastructure only to have cell phone and Internet traffic infringe on their channels, essentially making digital TV no more reliable than the analog sets that depended on tinfoil-wrapped rabbit-ear antennas. So before Google and the others can exploit white spaces, they must get permission from the FCC, which wants proof that they can efficiently pinpoint and use them without disrupting broadcast signals or other devices (such as wireless microphones) that already rely on these open frequencies. Five compa- nies – Adaptrum, Microsoft, Motorola, Philips Electronics and Singa- pore's Institute for Infocomm Research – have submitted prototypes to the FCC. Each of the devices – which represent a form of so-called cognitive radio – tries to identify a slice of pristine airwave space wherein a wireless device could operate without blocking other signals. So far none of them have received approval. Although some of the prototypes can detect the presence of TV and wireless microphone