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WiFi Signals In Between Television Frequencies
compgenius3 writes "The FCC unanimously voted today to allow wireless providers to use the frequencies between television stations to broadcast WiFi in rural areas. Broadcasters argue that this will cause interference on television stations but the FCC chairman says otherwise."
Update: 05/18 23:40 GMT by T : compgenius3 points out NAB president Edward Fritts' skepticism of the plan, as reflected in this press release citing fears of intereference to over-the-air broadcasts.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
This will provide millions of people who cannot get wired broadband with an alternative along with a possible cheaper alternative for those of us who can but are too cheap to get it.
Perhaps it will drive the wired broadband prices down as well. That way whoever wins the election can take credit for it.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Doesn't the entire FM range fall between channels 6 and 7? Why aren't the TV stations getting pissed off at the FM stations???
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
on ever TV in town unless you are really close to the cable company when you turn to channel 8 (local information) you can see channel 7 as a shadowy background presence.
Now we won't have quality material on TV
Won't someone think of the children?
It's not enough that the liberal media broadcast a *nipple* during a family show, now they have to fill the bits between stations with the internet, which Fox News told me is full of degrading pornography!.
I for one am angry about this political correctness gone mad, and would like the FCC or DoJ to take some of my rights away in response.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Commercial broadcasters haven't really done much for the spectrum they were given. IMHO there should be substantial taxes on commercial use of spectrum. Theoretically, it would seem that Wi-Fi could deliver much more content than is now done with the spectrum the broadcasters are using. Perhaps we ought to look at completely eliminating the television spectrum and replacing it with Wi-Fi.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Broadcasters argue that this will cause interference on television stations but the FCC chairman says otherwise.
/sarcasm
I'm sure with his broad experience and expertise in the field Chairman Powell should be trusted on this matter. Where do these broadcasters get off questioning the word of a man of such stature in the industry?
Kind of like repeated Slashdot articles:
4 247&mode=nested&tid=103&tid=129&tid=137&tid=188&ti d=193&tid=99
;-)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/14/215
Not exactly the same signal but close.
In all seriousness does anybody else see this as an attempt to lock in an approved set of wireless equipment and keep people form building their own wans?
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Sure there might be some leakage...and the channels may get some interfearance...but that would mean that the networking signal would be getting interfearance too. And hence they will move to a "cleaner" frequency to lessen the problem...so if there is a problem its a problem for both...and hence they will work together to avoid such problems.
I thought my spooky blonde daughter was communicating with poltergeists on channel 17.35. Turns out it was just WiFi.
This way to the egress...
When all stations go digital, will this still be an issue? Can the digital TV hardware compensate / filter these harmonics, spurious signals, and oscillations?
Have you driven by one lately? There are a surprising amount of satellite dishes at some of them. Even before all of the DirecTV and Dish Network varieties there were those behemoth dishes sitting next to the cable spool/picnic tables.
Lower Frequencies = Better reception, wall piercing bandwidth. This is two fold, as your signal is going to simply work "better" for not only you, but john q. hacker sitting outside your building (or say 4-5 stories down inside your building should still get great reception.) Then again, this isn't really being sold as residential grade wireless, but rather transit links to and from customers. This is really where it's going to shine.
If they do come out with AP's that run on this sub 700mhz spectrum, I'd be the first to buy them and ditch the near-microwave oven freqnency of 2.4ghz. That just seems like we're asking for trouble.
the FCC is totally clueless in this iteration. there is a reason the space between TV channel assignments is called "guard bands," it keeps interference from generating third signals in the receivers (heterodynes, if you want to check the engineering details) that fall in the intermediate tuning circuits and mung up the signal. heterodynes with a strong local signal can wipe a whole TV out. and since there is no shielding worth noting in a commercial set, this means whoever puts up a wi-fi is responsible for zoning out the neighborhood.
there would of course be little impact if the darned TV sets were shielded from RF interference. they aren't because it would cost a few quarters to do it, at worst case $5 to the retail buyer when they wave plastic at the best buy counter.
if you have tried to put a cable TV or satellite box under your TV set, you know what I mean; screens full of little electronic worms.
unless FCC mandates retroactive shielding and all future sets being shielded before sale, this will become a nightmare.
ex-broadcaster, ex-ham, ex-recording engineer, I know interference is real and ugly. don't make any more.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
...about tv signals interfering with my wireless.
As long as the interference from the WiFi doesn't impinge on Rupert Murdoch's broadcasting, what does Michael Powell care? This kid has been in the pocket of the big 3 for his entire time as Chairman of the FCC.
If there was any doubt that this new regulation would cause problems for the media giants, there's no way it would happen.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
OFDM is used for over-the-air digital TV, and it is fairly robust to nasties. A digital receiver can eliminate interference to an extent through adaptive processing, or compensate for it through FEC, but you can always get to a point where interference and/or noise will wonk a signal (eg, sun outages in geostationary satellite applications).
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
I, for one, am willing to accept the opinion of the FCC Chairman (read: PHB) over a detailed technical analysis.
Anything to further diminish the viability of broadcast TV, with all of its pesky "fair use" and legalized home recording. Of course, once everything is HDTV, and all receivers everywhere have built-in, FCC-mandated DRM, there will be less to worry about.
[/tinfoil-hat]
dinner: it's what's for beer
They know good and goddamn well that this will cause interference to broadcast TV. Just another way to force people to purchase cable at its ridiculously high prices, or be similarly raped by the satelite companies.
Note: The following is a "Any opportunity to rant about cable companies" rant:
Back in my day, cable only cost $5. Everyone said, "Who would ever PAY for TV? hahah". The cable companies lied about their intentions to raise prices exponentially, until once they locked in monopoly power with 20 and 30 year contracts in some areas.
Nowadays some of you pay excess of $100/month for cable or satelite. $100 per month!! WTF? And you still have to watch commercials!?! And you still can't find anything good on, and channel surf for hours?? hahaha, you tools!
My basic cable bill goes up dramtically EVERY year. Sometime twice a year. If I could get a decent broadcast signal with even a few interesting programs, I would drop this mafioso company like a bad habit.
All that needs to be said to naysayers of this proposal is: DOCSIS, DOCSIS, DOCSIS (a.k.a. cable modem technology).
Cable modems don't hurt analog cable television, and they've been using spare television bandwidth for over 5 years.
Astonishing!!
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
Don't forget TV signals are mandated to be all HDTV in the near future so this might not be an issue in the future...
Currently the relatively few people who use over the air TV vs cable/satellite, should face the facts, that if they want "free" TV they should have to suffer if more people want "cheap/free" ranges to broadcast their WiFi on.
As the article says, the WiFi gear would have to be responsible for scanning the spectrum for existing broadcasts (and other WiFi gear) and finding a quiet spot to use.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
That's one way to get them to move to digital TV faster - crowd them out of the old analog channels.
In those type of cases, I believe the FCC's response is "tough noogies".
With regard to solving th problem of interference, the argument of "switch to a different amateur band" could be equally applied here as "switch to a different TV channel"...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I wonder if this decision, when implemented, will have consequences for other countries.
Even now, my wireless nic allows me to select the place I am in (Europe, Japan, United States), and bases it's channel allowance on that fact.
If this is implemented, I could be "allowed" (by the software) to select a TV channel which is actually occupied in my country and thus pirate that channel with my Wifi-static...
Sure, different software could be delivered for different countries. Heck, even different firmwares. But we all know that that doesn't stop anyone from updating their card to another country-version.
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The FCC has for its entire history put most of the burden on transmitters to avoid interfering with other devices and 50 years ago that might have made sense, today it does not.
The idea was that 50 years ago most use of the airways was broascast and requiring smart transmitters enabled receivers to be dumb (and thus cheaper). Today as more and more use of the airways is bi-directional there is no particular cost advantage to putting the burden of interference solely on either the receiver or the transmitter.
And if you think it's your right to own a cheap TV that can't handle interference because the airways are a public trust, think again. The airways are a public trust and as such each of us have a responsibility to use it wisely and efficiently.
I think a little clarification is in order. Do you want to know how television can be broadcast *using* WiFi? or do you want to know how regular television broadcast can *coexist* with WiFi? In both cases, it is a matter of how you use the spectrum. Concerning the first: HDTV is transmited as a digital signal - nothing more than a bitstream. WiFi is a communications protocol - nothing more than rules detailing how to get data from here to there. Unlike existing over-the-air broadcasting, WiFi is very much bi-directional, so having interactive TV over WiFi is no problem. Concerning the second: Digital TV signals does not necessarily need the 6 MHz allocated for each channel. In fact, broadcasters have the option of simultaneously broadcasting several analog NTSC quality signals that has been digitally compressed instead of a single full-blown HDTV channel with the high definition resolution. This is called multicasting. If a broadcaster decides to scale back the quality of a channel, enough bandwidth could be recovered for other uses - including uploads from a couch potato to where ever.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.