First Public White-Space Network Is Alive 97
An anonymous reader writes "The first public white space network officially launched on Wednesday in Claudville, Virginia. It uses sensing technology from Spectrum Bridge with software and Web cams supplied by Microsoft and PCs from by Dell. The project was funded the TDF Foundation. White space networks use unlicensed television spectrum and have been called 'WiFi on steroids.' They offer more bandwidth, over larger areas, than does WiFi. IT companies duked it out with broadcasters for years to get white spaces approved by the FCC. They finally got the FCC's nod in November, 2008."
Is this statement misleading? (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone correct me if I'm mistaken, but doesn't lower frequency (30mhz to 300mhz) mean less bandwidth? I could see bonding several channels at once to achieve a higher bandwidth, but doesn't this mostly offer greater range?
As a broadcast engineer... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's Obvious Where This is Heading (Score:5, Interesting)
Webcams? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why Claudville? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why Claudville? According to the Wikipedia page, there are around 20,000 people in the entire county. And according to the FCC DTV maps, they can only expect to receive two (!) TV stations, both from the Winston-Salem, North Carolina area. See here: (enter Claudville, VA) http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/ [fcc.gov]
That is perhaps why they are testing it there. Its not hard to avoid active TV channels if there are only two.. and they are on adjacent RF channels (31 and 32).
-molo
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be interesting to see whether the use of this spectrum white space "commons" will be effective.
Possibly stupid questions (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Using Television Spectrum (Score:3, Interesting)
In other news, the residents of Claudville VA are no longer able to watch distant stations in Roanoke due to these internet devices broadcasting over the channels.
The FCC Chairman's comment - "You're not supposed to see out of market stations anyway." One of the local viewers replied, "Now I only get 5 stations from Salem NC, where I used to get 10 from both Salem and Roanoke. They took away my channels."