The Economist points out that, as a result of the congressional vote to extend America’s payroll tax cuts, the government will sell licenses to airwave space for use by wireless providers. These are frequencies that travel for miles and penetrate into buildings. This is just what the wireless providers need to reduce the "spectrum crunch" 6that started with data-guzzling iPad and tablet computers.
The FCC also intends to reserve some television UHF band (itself "white space" between channels) for use by the public.
The FCC’s intention is to encourage Wi-Fi innovation with these new available frequencies, a policy called "Super Wi-Fi" (or, technically, IEEE 802.22). The greatly expanded signal range, however, is a two-edged sword. In crowded urban Wi-Fi markets, the 60-mile signal strength would be jammed with users and slow transmission speed drastically. And power will be limited to 40 milliwatts to avoid interference with television signals. In the country, though, Super-WiFi would be cheaper and faster than current systems delivering broadband as is currently done on cable or DSL.
The Economist states:
"So far, AT&T has built some 30,000 hotspots to help cope with the tripling in data traffic it has experienced over the past year, with a further tripling expected in the year ahead as the iPad 3 hits the market along with dozens of slicker Android tablets. Altogether, there are now 1.3m hotspots across America, a figure that is expected to grow to 5m by 2015, reckons Informa Telecoms and Media, a market research firm based in the United Kingdom. Like other mobile carriers, AT&T considers unlicensed white space as an ideal way for hauling data back from the hotspots it has built in neighborhoods to its cellular network, without having to use its own precious spectrum.
"Indeed, backhaul looks like being the biggest single application for white space. At Rice University in Houston, Texas, home to the first residential Super Wi-Fi network, white-space is used to carry data back from a series of conventional Wi-Fi routers scattered around the campus. In the future, white space will have other, more prosaic applications—such as linking machines autonomously to other machines in a so-called "Internet of things".
Then comes "real" Super Wi-Fi – "Gigabit Wi-Fi" (technically IEEE 802.11ac) which is three times faster than existing Wi-Fi. It will operate exclusively in the five gigahertz band and move data-intensive file such as high-definition video.
Today, users must discover, register and access a Wi-Fi network manually. In the future, a system called "Passpoint" from the Wi-Fi Alliance may automate this process, which would result in a network something like a parallel system to the existing cellular one. But, at least, the new spectrum for Super Wi-Fi will lead to fewer dropped calls, a more reliable way to roam without being dropped, and a speedier way to download movies.
Summarized from:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/02/beyond-wi-fi
The FCC also intends to reserve some television UHF band (itself "white space" between channels) for use by the public.
The FCC’s intention is to encourage Wi-Fi innovation with these new available frequencies, a policy called "Super Wi-Fi" (or, technically, IEEE 802.22). The greatly expanded signal range, however, is a two-edged sword. In crowded urban Wi-Fi markets, the 60-mile signal strength would be jammed with users and slow transmission speed drastically. And power will be limited to 40 milliwatts to avoid interference with television signals. In the country, though, Super-WiFi would be cheaper and faster than current systems delivering broadband as is currently done on cable or DSL.
The Economist states:
"Indeed, backhaul looks like being the biggest single application for white space. At Rice University in Houston, Texas, home to the first residential Super Wi-Fi network, white-space is used to carry data back from a series of conventional Wi-Fi routers scattered around the campus. In the future, white space will have other, more prosaic applications—such as linking machines autonomously to other machines in a so-called "Internet of things".
Then comes "real" Super Wi-Fi – "Gigabit Wi-Fi" (technically IEEE 802.11ac) which is three times faster than existing Wi-Fi. It will operate exclusively in the five gigahertz band and move data-intensive file such as high-definition video.
Today, users must discover, register and access a Wi-Fi network manually. In the future, a system called "Passpoint" from the Wi-Fi Alliance may automate this process, which would result in a network something like a parallel system to the existing cellular one. But, at least, the new spectrum for Super Wi-Fi will lead to fewer dropped calls, a more reliable way to roam without being dropped, and a speedier way to download movies.
Summarized from:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/02/beyond-wi-fi
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