College Coaches Face Wireless-less Future; CoachComm Offers Alternative

By Ken Kerschbaumer
Will
geolocation of college stadiums protect college coaching staffs from fans’
using unlicensed wireless devices and, potentially, disrupting coaching
communications? Possibly, but CoachComm, a leading provider of wireless
coaching systems, has taken an approach that beats the problem of audio
interference to the punch: moving to the 2.4 GHz range of spectrum.
“Allowing
unlicensed devices into the white-space spectrum is the next in a series of
dominoes,” says CoachComm president Peter Amos, “and it’s a death blow.”
Grant
Teaff, executive director, American Football Coaches Association, says the
association is aware of the impending problems, but the AFCA does not meet
until January. “We know this won’t eliminate the use of wireless headsets, but
a lot of coaches will have to do something,” he says. “Probably 90% of Division
1A schools and more than 50% of Division 1AA use wireless systems.”
Wireless
systems have become a major part of college sports, allowing coaches to roam
the sidelines without having an assistant carry headset cables behind them. In
addition, referees use them during replay situations to communicate with the
replay booth upstairs.
And while
larger college programs will be able to afford to buy new systems, many smaller
schools will face a financial challenge.
That is
one reason CoachComm has already made the move to 2.4 GHz. Even without
unlicensed consumer devices, Amos found that equipment operating within the
white-space spectrum was under attack and, increasingly, difficult to
coordinate. Transient users like cheerleaders or sideline reporters could make
it tough for coaches on the sideline to communicate with coaches in the
coaching box upstairs without some sort of interference.
“Today,
about 50 Division 1A football teams are using non–white-space technology,” says
Amos. “If you are an end user today, you have to take real deep breath before
you write a check for systems that operate in the white-space spectrum.”
Amos says
competitors “slam” CoachComm’s use of 2.4 GHz spectrum because the spectrum is
unprotected. “But there are very stringent rules to make sure devices in the
spectrum play nice together,” he says. “The risk is that the bandwidth could
get saturated, but that typically doesn’t happen in a stadium environment.”