End of the Spectrum Map? Part deux…

So for the second time, the FCC has stopped updating my data source (the first time was the Spectrum Dashboard, and then I rewrote my scripts to parse the License View data dump).

I’m loathe to rewrite it for a third time (using the direct data dumps from the ULS) mostly because I’m too busy. With 50 hour work weeks becoming more frequent, a wife, and friends I don’t get to see much, I don’t have a lot of free time anymore (when I first wrote this, I was single, all my friends were married, and had tremendous amounts of free time). Its one thing to fire up a python script once every two weeks to download and update the data from the FCC, its another thing to have to dedicate 100+ hours to rewrite the back end from scratch (data processing, cleanup, normalization, store into a DB, generate static data files).

So I think this might be the end, if the FCC doesn’t update the License View dataset ever again. I could care less about their Spectrum Dashboard, that was a difficult tool to use productively. But the raw License View data was much easier to ingest and process – its way more valuable to the community. Lets hope this doesn’t fall on deaf ears.

5 thoughts on “End of the Spectrum Map? Part deux…”

  1. Your efforts are appreciated. It will be a sad day if the Gateway goes. Thank you for all that you put into this site. It is immensely useful.

  2. Really sad to see that you won’t be updating this wonderful site anymore. This was a pretty cool & informative source of info. Please let me know if any donations can be made. Thanks!

  3. The map is currently claiming to be using August 2016 data. I hope this means the FCC has turned the data feed you’re using back on and isn’t a display bug on the site (assuming always has current data).

    I’m not 100% sure though because I read that TMobile recently bought additional 700 MHz Lower A spectrum (primarily) from the C700 and Cavalier groups which isn’t yet reflected on the map. I thought the purchase was a done deal a few months ago, although I suppose the actual license transfers or updating of FCC data themselves could be slow instead.

    1. The FCC is updating their data again. I assume its new license data. It does often take the FCC a while for the transactions to officially close.

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