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FCC Plans to Allow Wireless Networking on Unused TV Channels
RKBA writes "Federal regulators have endorsed a plan to use vacant TV bandwidth for wireless Internet connections. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell says it would 'dramatically increase' the availability and quality of wireless Internet connections -- especially for people in rural areas. Powell says it would be like 'doubling the number of lanes on a congested highway.' But TV broadcasters oppose the proposal. They argue that it would interfere with over-the-air television signals for millions of people. The FCC commissioners voted unanimously to begin the lengthy rulemaking process for the plan."
Anybody who says that Michael Powell is in the pocket of the broadcasters or any other major company doesn't know what they're talking about, and this is the proof for anybody who doubts that.
The FCC is actively looking to recycle frequency space for bandwidth wherever possible. I'm not even sure this is a workable solution... but just the fact that they're even going to open hearings about it is good for the masses.
The wardrivers will be having a blast.
Help Fight SPAM today!
Now all of the interference I get will be in the form of reruns.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Thanks to this, now they will have it all on UHF.
There are what, 69 television broadcast channels available? Even with a high-gain yagi on the roof, I only get a handful in my local area (San Diego) plus another handful from LA and the surrounding areas.
The other 55 or so channels are just static... begging to be used.
I for one welcome our new broadband-in-place-of TV overlords.
'doubling the number of lanes on a congested highway.'
More like putting a bike lane between two lanes of freeway.
Does this mean my TV is gonna get slashdoted somehow?
And maybe Billy Bob from BFE wouldn't be such a dumbass if he had access to the wealth of knowledge and information (not to mention loads of porn) that are available on the Internet.
If some bombed-out city in Iraq can get Internet access, Billy Bob should have it too.
With all the daytime talk shows and nighttime reality shows on now, I'd say that all channels are vacant.
Isn't Channel 1 in the US already used for things like this already?
someone correct me or confirm me if I am wrong.
Two Roommates and a Boyfriend, updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Seeing how the entire TV spectrum is pretty much vacant, this means good things and more bandwidth! Let the porno webcams commence! Out with the bad air, in with the sexually explicit bad air!
How feasable would it be to do the same with the AM radio spectrum? A look at the US radio spectrum shows that a huge portion is allocated twards AM radio.
"....They argue that it would interfere with over-the-air television signals for millions of people...."
;-)
Honestly, can't really see that as such a bad thing! When's the last time you missed something really quality on tv?
That's fairly elitist, and not a very good proposition anyway. How does that work, exactly? Universities say, "Oh, Billy Bob is here, we'd better shut down our website!"
If anything, the internet is being dumbed down by l33t gamers more than by country folk.
The broadcast media industry have a history of opposing technology that has a hair of a chance of affecting their signal--whether or not the science is on their side.
For example, the National Associaton of Broadcasters (and even National Public Radio) opposed extending licenses for low-power radio on the grounds that it would interfere with existing licensed signal--even though most people who really understand this know that it's not the case.
The real issue in these cases is usually not technical--it's about control over the airwaves.
This is great, now after helping national media powerhouses like ClearChannel and Rupert Murdoch take control of radio, cable, and billboards, Michael Powell is going to finish off regional TV stations by drowning them out with wireless internet access. And yes, even with all the empty spaces on the dial, this can and most likely will have this affect. Michael Powell has proclaimed that free TV programming is on its last legs and it looks like he intends to hasten TV's demise. I believe that free TV is an important thing to maintain in the face of rising cable and satellite subscription costs.
...take the unused bandwidth and divert it toward broadcasting shows that havn't been dumbed-down for the masses?
Fist BPL, now this. The people in Washington are just loose cannons. None of these people understand the engineering behind the decisions they are making and therefore their decisions make know sense. This is only going to create chaos in the RF spectrum and it is going to lead too chaos in the market place. Imagine this. You buy brand X wireless router, but it doesn't work. Your friend's in the next state say, it works fine for us. Best buy has mass returns for particular routers in particular cities. Why? Because brand X is close in frequency to the 1MW erp HDTV broadcast transmitter and it's IF on a chip can't handle the overload. Lets have some discipline folks. This so called broadband uber alles is not going to be pretty.
That way viruses can spread faster.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The act of opening up the TV bands to wireless devices could breing about a sharp increase in new business. Similar to the large impact that the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi standards did.
Although a far more heartening prospect is the potential for this to bring more broadband services to remote areas, particularly rural ones, which are often exclusively plagued with dial-up.
UHF covers a massive chunk of spectrum -- from 470 MHz to 890 MHz. Even if you carve out some 18 MHz notches for local UHF channels, you still have hundreds of MHz of usable spectrum. And in rural areas, the full 420 band could be used for some serious wireless networking. With good compression/encoding and high enough SNR, multigigabit wireless might be possible.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This is kinda like what some amateur radio operators are doing with 802.11b transverters to lower the frequency to help in non line-of-sight situations. You can even increase to frequency to evade interference issues.
Frequency Transverters for Wireless LAN Devices
2.4 GHz to 700 MHz Converter
Perhaps we are getting to the stage where the whole allotment of bandwidth is reorganized to me more dynamic and more efficiently used. Maybe in the future, everything could use any bandwidth that is available by modulating everything into a code the receiver will be prompted to listen on. I know this technique is used in the military, sending data over a functional set of frequencies to make it harder to intercept and/or jam signals. But if the whole spectrum is used as well designed highway of communication, with each device made ready to apply this technique, then bandwidth can be partitioned as needed.
Obviously, this would be a huge undertaking and would take years of standardizing before the "switch is flipped" to start it, but the wireless needs of what's currently important could be more effectively used.
TV and such should eventually be sent through cable lines as this would free up a decent chunk of bandwidth. I understand not everyone has cable or even wants it, but it could be a "responsibility" of cable companies to send these signals through cable to anyone who wants it, for free, and as a benefit the cable company can easily offer free cable for a few days to people to try and get them hooked, etc. Or even through satellite, which of course uses bandwidth, but I digress.
I guess my whole point is, perhaps one day we can design a system that uses dynamic allocation of bandwidth and systems that benefit more from a wireless signal can get a priority. I have no idea on where to start with it, or even if it's feasible at all as I have limited knowledge of wireless communications beyond a typical networks class at a university, but maybe some advanced algorithms can be designed to make this work.
Then again, maybe not.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Using unused channels is great, but I would much rather have an ultra-fast internet connection and download movies when I want them.
I don't know wether this is even technologically feasable (maybe have bittorent help out?), but it's not going to happen -- if it did, it would mark the end of TV commercials, and we don't want to see those go away, do we now?
I can still wish, though.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This was one of the driving reasons behind the federal requirement that TV stations broadcast in "digital" and "HDTV" by a certain date. The digital signals take up less bandwidth and the FCC knew all along that they needed more bandwidth for wireless phones. So once all the TV stations switch over, they will be required to surrender their old frequencies back to the government, who will re-allocate them to wireless/cell phones.
I propose exterminating both.
This should be modded up, for tis true. Morons on the internet seem to want to gain knowledge - once you get them there. Jackasses with their pirated windows "boxen" fraggin' away on their broadband connection while their infected machine infects other jackasses is truly the problem. In my experience, there are plenty of intelligent Billy Bobs, but they only know what they are exposed to. The fraggin' jackasses choose to waste hours honing their 1337 fraggin' skills and speading net contaminates. Billy Bobs do only what they can in a rural area, drink beer and try to make their family tree more trunk than branches.
ymmv
"Michael Powell is going to finish off regional TV stations by drowning them out with wireless internet access."
Wow! PBS is on it's last legs. There's just one thing to keep in mind with the "drowning out" part. Nationals get some of their programming from local stations. From news, to entertainment, not all of it is from the top. Also it is quite possible to allocate the bandwith more efficiently, because if you remember TV was made for a technological time over 60 years ago. We can do better.
You added an extra 'm' in "asses"
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I hope this is not an excuse for the FCC to regulate the Internet. Would use of the public airwaves give them an excuse to regulate the Internet the way they regulate television and radio?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I don't know much about networking (so much for my CS degree...), but wouldn't wireless broadband mean much cheaper broadband?
And if so wouldn't that mean that many more people be exposed to the egalitarian influence of the internet? I mean, tell me which has a greater range of political expression--the Internet, or broadcast TV? I say if we can get cheap broadband, then KILL broadcast TV. Broadcast TV is the most elite media of all, in many ways; meaning that it represents Big Money and so therefore propagates status quo memes....
With cheap broadband and cheap LCD computing devices, radical activists would be able to distribute their movies far more easily and widely. Visual media is the best way to propagate memes...
I guess it comes down to whether taking over the TV spectrum for broadband would insure cheaper broadband. Would it?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
...there are conflicting lobbying dollars at work. This should be a colorful (if not altogether ugly behind the scenes) exchange.
A pity that the rulemaking process will be so lengthy... especially if the broadcasters have an say in the matter... and I bet you they will. More of the spectrum should have been put up for auction.
the internet is the next tv, a computer in every house all hooked up to the net is replacing tv, why not use tv's same spectrum while we are at it.
Slashdot: coming to a TV near you!
The drivel that we see online and on TV doesn't usually come from BFE, you know.
Quite a few of us like to live in BFE. I like to be able to work up in the mountains and not in a cubicle
Even with the overly generous assumption you would have 420 1-Mhz bands, doesn't a metropolitan area suddenly become an area where "2 Khz ought to be enough for everyone"? Or am I missing something?
I'm presumimg that we're talking about ranges between radios of at least 10 miles, otherwise its still got an infrastructure/last mile problem to create smaller transmission ranges.
Or am I missing something about this? It seems like you'd want at least a couple of Ghz or a cell structure to ensure that there was bandwidth aplenty.
Wasn't some sort of datacasting part of the original digital TV spec, but kicked out of the US implementation? That certainly happened here in Australia. So, instead of a range of digital TV braodcasting entities, some using HD, some using multiple camera angles and some datacasting, we have a boring set of official digital TV signals with some half-assed wireless networking or something show-horned in.
Your tax dollars at work.
"I guess it comes down to whether taking over the TV spectrum for broadband would insure cheaper broadband. Would it?"
Has granting right of ways to cable companies made cable TV, and Internet cheaper?
Has granting a near monopoly on telephones wires, meant a cheap DSL.
Hint for both cases, to a certain degree compared to what has come before, but the really cheap has been because of DBS (vs Cable TV, and the change of rules), and in the second because of competition against cable internet, and the failure of ISDN.
In other words cheaper broadband will come about because of competition. Were's the competition against wireless internet in rural areas? Certainly not satellite. So it's cheaper than what is, or could have been. But not as cheap as people will want, but what the companies can get out of people without a revolt.
The practice of using the bandwidth of non-present broadcast TV stations is almost the rule in professional audio equipment, such as used at concerts, clubs and even tv stations gathering news.
It is a somewhat questionable practice, but due to the low power of the transmitters it rarely causes interference. The exceptions to this are, for example the theatre districts in major cities, such as New York, where dozens of establishments attempt to operate large numbers (40+) of wireless microphones each, in close proximity, in an enviroment which already has little unused bandwidth in the broadcast TV allocation.
Interestingly, broadcasters can actually file an FCC form to semi "license" their wireless microphones on these frequencies, since they are in the broadcast TV business anyway.
-Mikey P
Yes, there have been many plans for datacasting through broadcast TV, both SD and HD.
For a thorough read on the subject of datacasting in almost any medium, check out The Race for Bandwidth by the late Cary Lu.
-Mikey P
multigigabit wireless might be possible
Excuse be, but how miltigigabit wireles could be possible if the top is 890 MHz ( 1GHz)? Is Nyquist allready dead or so?
You can bet there will another "rider" to this proposal.... the "allow media conglomerates to grab more stations even though congress doesn't approve".
Colin Powell Jr. needs to be thrown out of office along with our idiot president bush.
--A lifelong republication who is embarassed that right wing nuts have taken over my party.
Requirements For Using Wireless Systems On TV Channels
Taking The Stealth Approach
The Bottom Line: Legal Use of Wireless Microphones
The Future of Wireless Part 1: The Challenges Ahead
The Future of Wireless Part 2: Meeting the Challenges
Enjoy
-Mikey P
Hmm.
;-)
Having grown up a fair distance from most of the TV channels (probably no towers were less than 50 miles from us except maybe one), yet being able to view 15-20 channels with a large yagi antenna, I am concerned about this. Well, heck, I'm concerned about HDTV reception too.
I grew up in southeast Minnesota, near Rochester (where the Mayo Clinic is), though the town I was in was one of the highest regions of land in the area. My family mostly pointed our antenna northward at the Twin Cities, from which we could receive eight major channels (well, except when the weather was bad): 2 (PBS), 4 (CBS), 5 (ABC), 9 (was UPN, now Fox), 11 (NBC), 17 (PBS), 23 (now WB, and the infamous originator of MST3K), 29 (was Fox, now UPN). As the PAX network started up, we could sometimes see 41 from St. Cloud.
When the weather was bad, or annoying things like late-running baseball games took up a Cities channel, various other options were available by turning the antenna. CBS stations were also available from Iowa and Wisconsin. There was an ABC affiliate near the Minnesota/Iowa border, and the local NBC affiliate's tower was not far from the border either. Several PBS stations were able to be picked up to the east, west, and south.
Recently, I experimented with receiving HDTV signals with a Linux-compatible pcHDTV card. I was really annoyed to see that we had to directly point our antenna at the transmission tower to have any hope of picking up a signal. In the analog days, it was at least possible to get the gist of what was happening on most channels, even if they weren't aimed at directly by the antenna. Channel surfing at my parents' place is going to get a lot more dull (it wasn't great to begin with
HDTV transmitters (at the moment, at least) put out significantly less power than their analog counterparts. Theoretically, the same coverage is available with this lower power, but as I described, I think the FCC has a different idea of what reception and coverage actually are compared to what I think they are.
Then again, the pcHDTV card probably has a relatively poor tuner, but I definitely worry about it.
I think Michael Powell has said a few times that he things that "Free TV" (over-the-air broadcasts) are going the way of the dodo. Certainly, many people have been more interested in cable and satellite, but there is a loss of local flavor in that arrangement. I certainly credit a lot of my education and interest in science and technology to the availability of several PBS channels in my area. Even now, I live in Minneapolis, where I cringe when I think that only two PBS stations are available (well, you can say that more are available when the HDTV sub-channels are considered, but the programming on those doesn't really interest me at the moment).
Anyway, I just feel that the FCC probably won't properly answer this question. Maybe they will, but I have significant doubts.
The frequency of radio waves has absolutely nothing to do with data transmission speed. Nothing. It is just how many times the electromagnetic wave oscillates every second. The data transmission speed has more to do with the amount of available spectrum you can use, and the effieciency in which that bandwidth is used.
tr
By the way, look at the term bandwidth. That actually originally meant the width of a band, in the EM spectrum. The wider the band, the more data/clearer voice/etc you could transmit, generally.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
This is sheer stupidity. the UHF bands were supposed to be "vacant" by 2000 originally, welcome to america, DTV recievers aparently made of platinum. Besides that, hams will have a field day with this, quite literally. Remember how much stuff "fits" between TV allocations. (The entire FM spectrum is between channel 6 and 7) Think about the size of the TX required, and how much the FCC will have to limit/license this to hell and back? Channel 29 requires 5 megawatts of power just to cover a metro area. (minneapolis minnesota usa for those who know the area) I sure as hell wouldn't want that power bill. Something to think about.
As an old timer who was connected to the internet before most people heard of it, allowing AOL to connect to the internet was the worst things possible.
AOL people generally are so f'ing dumb that they would go into usenet and complain "I've asked nicely, now I'm demanding that you unsubscribe me from this list, or I"ll call the police".
It ruined the internet. Usenet used to be useful. SPAM was geared at AOL users.
Nothing good ever comes of hooking AOL to anything .
And as an amateur radio operator, I'll miss sine waves.
"and I can tell you that the people there are a lot more intelligent and educated than you think"
There would have to be.
I don't know enough to make an informed decision yet.
:)
Hey, I'm just saying what everybody's thinking.
Call me Billy Bob, I'll just go light a candle and read some Aristotle. Maybe hijack some UHF in the mornin, afore I feed the cattle.
...someone would point this out. I was going to if you hadn't thanks. YES, it is exactly the camels nose under the tent they need for official censorship. it's sneaky as all get out, but there it is.
I am also disappointed no one noticed another alternative for those unused channels, ie, make them avaialble for much lower power community TV. Right now any sort of television is expensive, especially from licensing and regulations and whatnot. The main problem with over the air TV and radio is not lack of spectrum, or transmitters and tech to pull off low power broadcasts,it's because the FCC (and local governments)is/are such dinks about it, if they can't make money off of it, they ain't real interested. Even a commercial shortwave station costs beau coup a month for a "license", and there's tons of spectrum available there. You could put up a decent side band low watt transmitter, that still got good range, for under 2 grand maybe,a good one, yet the last I looked it costs 1200 clams a MONTH for a license. (I might be wrong on that, that's what I remember though, I know it's expensive).
Anyway, the point is moot, it's clear that only the big guys will be able to use the spectrum much, except for guerrila ad-hoc mesh networks and guys taking a chance with their low power pirate rigs. They may SAY this new spectrum will be for wireless broadband, but they haven't PROMISED to not charge for it, or to not censor it like they do now. I think even giving them authority over it is a bad idea, but that happened so long ago it's a moot point now, no need to re argue that one.
Bottom line, if the government gives, they can take back or charge or control, and given the politcal climate nowadays, who wants to bet they will be benevolent/fair about it?
Let's not forget what usually happens with road widening. The road is heavily congested with four lanes, and by the time two more are added, the road needs another two or its still just as congested. Highways through really developed areas are being widened every two years or so, some have reached phenominonal widths such as the 12 lane interstate now passing through the center of Atlanta GA and supported by a loop bypass that is at least 6 lanes in most parts, and yet these roads remain on the brink of massive rush hour gridlocks.
Won't broadband access go much the same way? By the time the technology exists and can be widely implemented to move X amount of data over TV bands, won't the demand be for 2X, or more?
Some people have claimed that widening highways is an expensive and very short term solution, and that some real developments of mass transit are both cheaper in the long run and more able to actually grow faster than demand. In the same way, isn't it likely that something else, such as (for just a few examples)laying some good solid fiber optic cable, or modifying the phone company's baseline all digital systems to extend the potential range of ADSL, are potentially much better solutions? I'd even look at Internet over Power Lines before I'd have much confidence in this (well, maybe not).
Who is John Cabal?
Quite frankly, broadcast TV is a dead medium: the sooner it can be replaced the better, and several countries are working on that. I tend to wonder whether digital/HDTV is just as short lived as mini disc was, and the reality is that in the next 5-10 years, we'll be streaming media over IP.
It makes sense for FCC and regulaters to accept, and even push forward, the kinds of technologies that can superceded TV, even if it upsets the TV operators.
Seriously, broadcast TV is increasingly junk and fails to serve the original purposes it did: it's been supplanted by the Internet.
Full speed ahead on the replacements.
The frequency of radio waves has absolutely nothing to do with data transmission speed. Nothing.
That's absolutely incorrect.
It is just how many times the electromagnetic wave oscillates every second
Do you know anything about modulation and keying? Sure we manage to come up with new encodings to pack a few more bits onto each cycle now and then, but data speed is still related to frequency in any practical system.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
you idiot, he wasn't saying that religion programming should be barred from airing because it's religious programming - READ WHAT YOU FUCKING QUOTED ABOVE:
"I'd especially argue that there are certain religious broadcasters who are putting out such unwatchable programs that I doubt the people who are paying for the operation are even watching. I'm not against such operations on religious principal, but the idea that if nobody is watching, you're wasting the bandwidth."
he can't spell 'principle' for shit, but you totally twisted around what he said to suit your own 'anti-religion'-bashing mindset. reread this bit again:
"There should be a minimum standard that should be attained by all TV stations for a signon-to-signoff ratings average. Even a religious or shopping program can survive, but there has to be at least some interest in the community in order for the station to keep on the air."
now shut the fuck up and eat my ass, you just got served.
If the devices aren't required to be licensed, how can they force them to have "smart radio" features? Being low power isn't enough smarts to eliminate all interference.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
DOCSIS (your cable modem) uses unallocated space in the cable access band (quite a bit of it) to transmit data, and I've yet to see anyone complain about their cable television quality (apart from how much static is there originally).
Also, most analog-allocated bandwidth will be replaced by HDTV bandwidth, so there will be lots of space in the airwaves when it's made mandatory in a couple of years.
The FCC has been trying to push HDTV and digital (which aren't the same thing) for years. By tying too many things together, they make it an expensive upgrade for the consumer and the broadcaster. And by requiring broadcasters to handover their analog whenever digital exceeds a certain amount, they provide a huge disincentave for the broadcasters to cooperate.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Well, let's do a little back of the envelope calculation here. A digital TV signal payload is about 20 Mbps and uses 6 MHz of spectrum. This is a reasonable approximation of what a wireless ISP would be able to relibaly use as well. The channels the FCC may be allowing for use here are 5-51, excluding 34. So, best case, we have 45 channels worth of available spectrum. Multiply by 20 Mbps per channel, and you get a best case bitrate of 900 Mbps. Not quite a gigabit, but substantial nonetheless.
For those interested, do a search for a technology called CDMA or carrier division multiple access. It's one of those ideas too far ahead for most people to get it. Basicly, you can have an almost limitles number of communication channels over a sufficient bandwith range. I wish some future wifi standard would use this concept.
Why do {advertisers|broadcasters|marketers|media distributors|lawyers} constantly make specious arguments like this? It only detracts from their credibility when they legitimately take issue with something.
Wait, nevermind... Most people's don't have the attention span to notice.
"The GOP is the evil party, the Democrats are the stupid party, and bipartisanship is when they join forces to do something both evil and stupid."
-- Stephen Johnson
Am I the only one who thinks that once the FCC sees the Internet available over public airwaves, they will start to get all snippy about "obscene" content, and then will declare a "War on Internet Obscenity"...or "War On Internet Porn"...or just plane-ole "War on the Last Bastion of Free Speech"
I'm mostly joking, but seriously...I think we need to keep the FCC and Little P. away from the Internet...I'd prefer they stayed away from my TV and Radio too, but I guess I'm just all *liberal* like that...I like it when people can say whatever they want to without worry that they will be fined or imprisoned by the government.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
its faster to bittorrent a show than to watch it. we dont need terristial broadcasting anymore.
bye bye. pack up your vacumn tubes and go home now tv broadcasters.
For years, broadcasters have been insisting on "adjacent channel protection", to "protect" TV sets with crappy tuners from interference. That's the main reason TV bandwidth utilization is so low. Now it's coming back to bite them.
Do you know anything about modulation and keying? Sure we manage to come up with new encodings to pack a few more bits onto each cycle now and then, but data speed is still related to frequency in any practical system.
The speed of light is the speed of light, at 900MHz or 2.4GHz.
Fools who still back Bush after all he's done to destroy their country will watch the news, and listen to their more "informed" friends. Like the friends of the original poster, who take his naive appetite for the "good" Bush seriously, because he's "smart" (he posts to nerd websites, after all). That's why it's worth pointing out the fallacies when they sprout, while they're in the light of day, before they descend back into the murky depths, under the rocks where this vast zombie Bush army lives.
--
make install -not war
The FCC should open the bandwidth unused by broadcasters to the more equitable (and increasingly more popular) digital network protocols, especially unlicensed and local. But thinking Michael ("Colin Jr.") Powell as elevated humans over corporations in his agenda under BushCo is a delusion. We're much more likely to get spectrum access turned over to users like you and I under President Kerry than under Return of Bush Jr. (we're be more likely under Colonel Klink, but he's not running, thank the TV gods). So let's not kid ourselves about what we're getting in the package with this announcement from Powell's FCC.
--
make install -not war
That's absolutely incorrect.
No, it's correct. Transmission speed is a function of bandwidth and signal to noise ratio (see Shannon's Law).
For example, you can broadcast at the same rate with the same received signal to noise ratio on channel 4 (66-72mhz) as you can on channel 22 (518-524mhz) because both channels are 6mhz wide.
Granted, there is more room for more bandwidth at higher frequencies...
You can carry more information at 2.4Ghz though. Think of it this way if you use each peak to carry one bit of information then the frequency of peaks affects the data rate.
900 MHz = 900 M bps 2.4 GHz = 2400 M bps
To see how different encoding system work AM, FM PCM look here
No, it's incorrect.
You can't put 1Gbit/s worth of data on a 400MHz carrier. One billion bits per second can not be shoved onto four hundred million cycles per second.
If I understand things correctly, and I may not, then the highest-bandwidth signal that can theoretically be put on a given carrier frequency is equal to half of that frequency.
But who would like to have his traffic travelling miles around the country being exposed to millions of other users! Even if it's encrypted, blah, blah, blah, your information is in the ether available to everybody.
"Evil thrives when good men do nothing"
Look what happened when Lynndie England got access.
Sheeeeeesh.
mod parent up ... regionalization _will_ rule the world!
whatever happened to keeping it real? where my mod points bitch!?
_*_
____/\/ --- \/\____ "slashdot, i don't give a fuck!"
BigBrother hates broadcast television because people own the air-waves. This is yet one more way to force antenna owners to get cable. Cable users are controlled more easily via that whole DMCA angle. HDTV was another push in direction of phased-out public access by forcing people to buy DRM TV sets to replace their obsolete antenna based systems.
My TV reception just continues to get worse and worse. One station in particular only comes in when the weather is bad. I hate rooting for
bad weather. The last thing I need is for some yahoo with a wifi kit destroying my reception because I'm deemed to be too far away (60miles) to deserve reception.
> Why, a skip could open up, and then we could be getting porn from German broadcast TV
Or, a region 1 movie clip might broadcast in region 2.. The MPAA would have a total shit fit
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Obviously, you do not.
You know, I have heard for the last 5 or 6 years how Everything that Michael Powell and The FCC does is meant to get better service to rural Areas.
Living in Central West Virigina. People are still waiting for the improvements to our telecommunications service.
Meanwhile it seems that every other decision Mr. Powell and his FCC have made has enriched big corporations and managed to ignore the fact that everything that he has done has not improved Rural service of the Telecommunication industry to this part of West Virginia.
I would love to see regulation get more.. open.
What do I mean?
No "auctions".. or it just becomes about profit.
The airwaves belong to the PEOPLE, and we regulate and license them to make efficient, effective use of them, as everyone can't use the same bands at once.
So.. we dedicate some bandwidth for this, some bandwidth for that, and set the rules. I'm fine with that.
Given the current state of technology... there is no reason we cannot have MORE bands open to the public for general use, within limitations, as we have with the ISM bands.
2.4Ghz ISM is a dirty slice of spectrum, and a small one.. and we've done wonders with wifi & other technologies in it.... what would happen if we had a slice, similar in operation, that had many times the bandwidth?
Yes, nothing is that simple, there is interference to worry about, yadda yadda yadda, but does anyone really think we need to guarantee massive quantities of spectrum to cellular companies and television stations and radio stations, and leave ourselves on the receiving end of everything? After all, it's OUR spectrum.
I could use this if it were significantly faster than the dial-up that I'm stuck with right now. I live in one of those magical areas where I'd be too far away from a DSL router for it to work, and setting up Cable would be financial suicide for any company.
If it'll get me broadband of some sort, I'm all for it.
does anyone remember 'wavetop', the name of a product which shipped with m$ around 98. its purpose was to allow 'internet content' providers access to Television's PBS (public broadcasting systems) networks around the country, by 'broadcasting' limited internet services (using push technology) using the 'un-used' portion of their (pbs's) carrier (band).
:)
So basically the internet was being 'broadcast', although only a small, pre-determined amount, to peoples tv's (via the pc, using a tv card of course).
i forgot all i learned on my researching this idea (which was, you have to admit, a decent try at least by m$) to bring something knew and interesting to everyone, including those out in the boonies. it failed i suppose, because profit was not made 'fast enough' for the megla-maniacs to keep this interesting idea going until it was financially successful.
basically it allowed someone with a pc and m$ 98 to view a limited part of the InterNet, such as; news, sports and assorted other data on their computers-- which had a tv card installed. the computer's software (wavetop) would select the correct 'band-width'(channel) to show the users requested programming on the monitor.
it will be interesting to see if/how any of this 'old' push/pull tech makes it back with this renewed adventure into the tv spectrums by the fcc.
hopefully 'mike p.' will venture from what he does best, that is, 'try' and monitor the 'good or bad' material the masses should be 'allowed' to see, instead of having them decide to see/hear it on their own accord.. and give this apparent knew found life for parts of the tv/radio spectrum which are obviously not untilized to the max.
when i tested wavetop for the first time several months ago during my research and exitment about the product/idea, it was alot of fun... but no cigar. the program would not find a 'carier' for my local pbs tv station. but i do plan on 'playing' with it alittle more, maybe using linux (which is open to manipulating programs like wavetop) to see how/if this new idea being talked about by the fcc will possibly work.
although the business (model)for wavetop tech did not survive long, and has been poo-pooed for several years now, google still brings up several hundred pages referring to it when: *wavetop* is entered as a search item. here is a start:
http://www.current.org/in/in704w.html
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
This is very very wrong. The amount of data is set by Shannon, as described above, and is linear with bandwidth.
Shannons law is that the maximum Capacity C is
C=B*log(1 + S/N)
If its on the cable waves then can't they tax it?
There are plenty of FM stations that I listened to for years. In the past 5-10 they have, one by one, been trmpled by other licensed stations resulting in the reception of neither one reliably. When I call the FCC to complain they say "tough, you weren't supposed to be able to recive that station in the first place." This is all with my unmodified car radio.
Now the only stations I seem to be able to receive are clear channel... Coincedence?
Hey StanLeverLock, Where are you? We're in gassaway and we're trying to change this. email me. frozen_osiris@hotmail.com
Sure it can. Modems, for example, have done multiple bits per baud since they passed 2400bps. The only limit to how far you can go with this is signal to noise ratio.
the highest-bandwidth signal that can theoretically be put on a given carrier frequency is equal to half of that frequency.
No, the highest frequency that you can sample is equal to half of the sampling rate.
You are confusing Shannon with Nyquist. Read up on both. Also read up on the term 'baseband'.
what happens when someone wants to start a new station and they cant because all of the open frequences are taken up?
StanLeverLock, where are you located? I'm with a non-profit using 900mhz gear to reach around our hills and into the areas people live. The community itself is the only party that can bring high speed access to remote areas, forget waiting on commercial interests as there's no money in it for them. It will only be volunteers like us, so this is a huge step in the right direction, but lets hope that the equipment costs are somewhat reasonable.
No, your method doesn't work because you haven't considered the spectrum of frequencies generated when you encode the data.
The figure you are groping in the dark for is called bandwidth. The signalling rate is proportional to the range of frequencies, not the carrier frequency which is the pure signal you start with.
2.4GHz is the carrier frequency. The carrier frequency does not determine the signalling rate: the bandwidth does. At first it looks like you could encode more data on a 2.4GHz carrier than a 900MHz carrier, but this is only because there's potentially greater bandwidth around 2.4GHz. In practice you cannot use all of that bandwidth.
In your example, if you encode one bit of information on each "peak" of a 2.4GHz signal, and then look at the spectrum of the resulting waveform, you will see that it has energy in the range 0-4.8GHz. That's the minimum - if you switch between different size peaks abruptly at the zero crossings, it will have higher frequencies than 4.8GHz, too. This is something that happens when you take a pure sine wave and modulate it.
If you transmit that, you'll interfere with other radios over that whole frequency range. That method of encoding data produces a signal which affects radios tuned to any frequency in the rather wide range. We say this kind of signal has a wide band.
In practice you cannot transmit that signal, because no antenna is capable of it. If you try, at the receiver you will see a highly distorted form of the signal.
Wi-Fi devices operating in the 2.4GHz band actually have about 14 channels to choose from: the channels are based on carrier frequencies only 5MHz apart. To avoid interference, this means a Wi-Fi device may use only 5MHz of bandwidth as an absolute maximum for one channel. The data is packed in a clever way into multiple "bits per peak", in such a way that the transmitted energy spectrum is confined to a narrow band clustered around the carrier frequency. (The encoding is also designed to be robust against distortion in the atmosphere and electronics, and so the receiver can compensate for reflections from buildings and moving objects.)
The TV UHF band is interesting, because the 400-700MHz band offers a wider bandwidth than is presently available for Wi-Fi communications. It also has different propagation characteristics through the atmosphere and buildings. I'm not sure how those affect the potential applications.
Enjoy,
-- Jamie
tv spectrum is also on a lower frequency, less prone to being attenuated from vegitation.
most promising
For instance, down here in Los Angeles, we have on VHF channels 2 (KCBS), 4 (KNBC), 5 (KTLA (WB)), 7 (KABC), 9 (KCAL (ind.)), 11 (KTTV (Fox)), and 13 (KCOP (UPN)), leaving 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12 as "between" channels that are unused in the basin - OTOH, there are stations in Palm Springs, San Diego, and Tijuana (I think XETV uses 6) that use those frequencies. But, VHF may be non-optimal anyway for Wi-Fi.
So you go to UHF. Again in LA, we have 18 (KSCI, which broadcasts a lot of asian and mid-east stuff), 22 (KWHY I think, en espanol), 28 (KCET (PBS)), 30 (KPAX? (PAX)), 34 (KMEX (en espanol), 36 (a local station for USC), 40 (KTBN (TBN)), 46 (KHSN (Home Shopping Netwk)), 50 (???? (Public or PBS, not sure), 52 (something en espanol), 56 (KDOC (Ind., probably public)), 58 (another foreign language channel), and 62 (non-english again). So there is nothing above channel 62.
And does anyone ever use Channel 83 outside of the realms of cable television?
Then you have the issue of broadcast frequencies. I recently learned that England's radio services go all over the AM (MW) spectrum, on any old frequency; here, stations are interspersed every 10 KHz. Likewise, FM stations are interspersed every .2 MHz, and only on the odd .1 MHz allocations. This makes more sense to me as it generally prevents intermodulation for extremely high power transmitters.
Point being, there are open frequencies that can be used for the purpose - so what's the problem?
This sig no verb.
Ok, having my ham license, I'll try to explain this *fact* (you *can* transmit gigabits/second over hundreds-of-mega-hertz-channels) in simple terms:
Let's look at a soundcard. For simplicty, let's only look at one channel with the settings: 44KHz sampling rate, 8 bit per sample.
According to _nyquist's sampling theorem_, the maximum frequency you can sample with your soundcard is the sampling rate/2=22KHz. In other words, the bandwidth (in physical terms, on the frequency axis, here is a source of confusion!) of your signal is 22KHz, you could e.g. lift your soundcard's output with a carrier into the radio frequency range. For example, it may occupy the range from 1,000 KHz to 1,022Khz in the electromagnetic spectrum. [Admitted, with popular modulation methods, you'll get sidebands and similar things, but these are not of interest here].
Now, let's see how much data will be transferred (in bits per second) through your soundcards output. As defined, each sample has 8 bits, this means that you have to provide 22Khz*8 bits=176 kilobits*hertz=kilobits per second to your soundcard's analog-to-digital converter. If the signal will be sent over a radio antenna, 176 kilobits per second will go through the 'ether'. In a 22KHz wide channel!
If you would have no noise at all in your system, you could receive and decode the signal at the other end and you would receive this stream of 176 kilobits per second. This is clearly more than the 22KHz channel width. Now of course, every real signal path injures every signal and you will get a non-infinite signal-to-noise ratio. This will constrain the amount of data you can transmit.
BTW, I think there is (like this 600 year moore law mentioned recently on slashdot) also a limit for the amount of data you could push through the electromagnetic spectrum - constrained by ionization effects (f low, but already reachable value).
Arggh. /. ate my less-than- and greater-than- signs!
So I can just put an antenna on my roof and plug the cable into a cable modem, hmmmm whoops wrong channel, I don't want Rosanne!
If you pay your taxes you support terrorism!
While I'm not sure what exact impact allowing wireless networking on unused stations would allow, I so feel the spectrum of unused channels, while varied per area, is large enough that a few unused channels in areas could be used without major interference. I do know my 2.4 ghz cordless went bezerk after I got a 802.11b access point in my house.
The reason I think the FCC priorites are skewed is I live in the DC metro area, Manassas Virginia to be exact. For anyone who's really studied broadband, they may know that Manassas is the testbed for BPL, which delivers broadband over normal power lines. This is achieved by sending a wideband signal that uses 2 - 80 mhz. This is all fine and good in theory because US electricy has a frequency of 60hz. However, powerlines are unshielded. I am one of the few in the area that happens to be a HAM enthuiest. This means the entire shortwave band is prebby much dead. Standing on a corner trying to pick up WWVB on 10mhz, all I hear is static, it does have a pattern and changes as use increases.
The FCC has pretty much turned a blind eye to our complaints, with most groups saying the interference caused doesn't interfere with any government sources or emergency bands, so therefore it's not of important.
The FCC is supposed to PREVENT this kind of interference. 5 years ago they were preventing 56K modems to connect at more than 53000bps because they felt it might cause interference, but they've licensed a technology that KNOWINGLY causes problems, and they're about to propose NEW rules that POTENTIALLY will ruin the TV band. I look at this NOT from the off-the-air aspect, since 95% of people have cable or satellite for thier signals, but, it's also look at the idea that no cable system is 100% shielded from outside interference, so cable users, espically those who have a mixed analog/digital setup (such as the local Comcast system here) MAY possibly see some interference, espically if they live near a transmitter site. I do know that even on the cable band, it gets into UHF signals around around the mid 60's (broadcast channel 20 is cable channel 72, with cable channels being expressed as the band channel, not the channels on addressable converters). Weather anything will actually happen, not sure. I only bring this up becuase it seems the FCC is ignoring the older technology that has been in place for years in order to push newer technology on the people. I'm all for progress like this, but I think there needs to be more extensive testing.
Or will soon be.
With enough bandwidth video on demand will replace cable TV as we know it. TV viewing is going down Internet use going up. Phone, TV, internet are all just data. Cable companies are already adding PVRs to their digital cable service. Think of those as in home caches and or even as a gian P2P system. Didn't get the last SG1 I bet some one did.
This is already the state of the art in large towns. THis could allow it for rural areas. There is a lot of cheap nice homes that are out in the boones. This could realy change the idea of location location location
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.