FCC Will Test Internet Over TV Airwaves, Again

Weather Storm writes "According to MSNBC.com, the FCC will try again to test prototypes on Jan. 24 for transmitting high-speed Internet service over unused television airwaves. The devices were developed by Microsoft and Motorola, among other corporate partners, and will be tested in laboratory and real-world conditions for three months. 'Last year, a high-technology coalition — which included Microsoft, Google Inc., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. among others — submitted prototypes they said could transmit broadband Internet service over unlicensed and unused TV spectrum, known as "white spaces." Television broadcasters and the wireless microphone industry say such devices could interfere with programming. The Initial prototype testing failed last July because the devices did not reliably detect and avoid TV programming signals and could have caused interference. If the tests are successful this time and the devices are approved, the coalition plans to introduce commercial devices for sale after the digital television transition in February 2009.'"

Comments

During peak times

[kcbanner]

Innocent TV watchers were bothered by flickering images of the internet appearing on their TV.

Re:During peak times

[weak*]

But not-so-innocent TV watchers were pleased to view free prOn.

Detection should be easy

[crow]

TV broadcasts use a fairly wide frequency band. Just define one small part that is restricted to just TV, and make sure there is no signal on that portion, then use the rest. Of course, you have to recheck periodically, as there may still be some stations that go off the air at night, and you would need to stop using that frequency when they come back on.

Re:Detection should be easy

[Shrubbman]

Well the last time I checked most stations that 'go off the air' really don't, they just switch from actual programming to some really annoying tone squealing over a test pattern.

Re:Detection should be easy

[Wingnut64]

I read your comment twice before I realized that it wasn't a joke about the declining quality of television programming.

Detection is a nightmare

[SlappyBastard]

Can you even imagine handling TV signal detection in an are like the Northeast Corridor? Anywhere from Richmond, VA to Portland, ME there are so friggin many channels that when you include out-of-DMA channels there simply is no real white space.

Understand that a channel in the eastern US can be reasonably expected to be detectable up to 100 miles away. For example, I live in central Pennsylvania, and even without atmospheric effects with a decent antenna I can get channels from eastern Ohio.

Point being that the device is going to pick up a lot of channels. Also, since it is presumed to be mobile, that device will have to shift channels.

Channel-shifting is where the real nightmare occurs, especially in cities. With path interference, you have total signal dead zones that are three feet away from strong signal. The device could pick a channel, celebrate and start transmitting right into a zone where there would be perfect TV reception and never be able to detect it because of a dead zone.

Trying to avoid this sort of interference in a practical application is impossible.

Rural internet is sort of a joke anyhow

[SlappyBastard]

A lot of companies in rural areas won't bother running what really amounts to the last mile of lines needed for DSL and cable. The reason is simple -- they will never recover the cost of running the line.

Presently, asynchronous satellite service is the only rural high speed internet available.

A ground-based synchronous wireless system circumvents some of that trouble, but the TV signals are sitting in the only bandwidth useful for reaching down into valleys. The truth is, VHF channels 7 and 8 are the plum spots. They have great range. They are at a low enough freqeuncy that they curve with the shape of the earth, while being high enough that they don't just suck in nearby electrical interference.

TV sits in the coveted spot.

Re:Rural internet is sort of a joke anyhow

[MacarooMac]

Point taken.

Over here (in "Little Britain") a large 'rural area' probably equates to a small city park in N. America - so net accessibility in remote regions is not such a big issue: we simly don't tell them the internet exists.

Re:Rural internet is sort of a joke anyhow

[Kaeles]

Not true, The ISP I work for offers a wireless connection to last mile customers.

Towns of 300 - 400 people is what we mostly aim at, and We offer decent speeds at least.

Anyways, I used to work for a satellite based ISP, and it just doesn't cut it quite the same.
I know we can do a 20 mile link with 20mbps throughput and recover the cost within 6 months if we have 20 customers.

The big companies aren't even worried about the customers or trying to recover money, they just don't care to take ANY time to spread broadband to rural areas. Its too much of a pain for them.

Re:Rural internet is sort of a joke anyhow

[SlappyBastard]

Have you ever looked at the TV reception issues in an area like Alaska? That's some fun.

There are parts of the rural mountainous US where you have to use a 10' satellite dish to get anything, and that's from local channels that are rebroadcast off of satellite. There's an old joke that the state bird of West Virginia is the C-band satellite dish.

Re:Rural internet is sort of a joke anyhow

[Jewfro_Macabbi]

Yep - Alltel - their voice packages are a bit higher than their competitors - by about ten or fifteen bucks a month - but their service does have this great advantage of working - even in remote, rural areas.

Re:Rural internet is sort of a joke anyhow

[morari]

Satellite internet is hardly a solution for those of us who don't want to live in overcrowded, noisy, polluted areas of the world. Even the best satellite internet has poor upload speeds, annoying lag (it does have to travel to and from space, after all), bandwidth limits, and flaky service during rain and snow (and sunspots). Besides, if you live in a valley or on the wrong side of a ridge, your line of sight could be less than desirable and ruin any chance of having even that kind of connection. If you're one of those people that like to watch television however, I'd always recommend satellites over cable, despite some usability issues during bad weather. :P

Companies won't run the extra bit of line because they are lazy and don't want to put out what amounts to relatively insignificant amounts of money for eventual profits. That is exactly why we need laws passed to force cable and telephone companies to remedy the problem, instead of avoiding it altogether. Saying that "hicks don't want internet" is ridiculous. We have electricity and telephone access, which were thought to be relatively unimportant outside of urban areas not too long ago. Heck, most of us even have county water nowadays (though I still prefer my well for safety purposes)! Yet some places don't even have cable television, let alone any sort of broadband.

Re:Rural internet is sort of a joke anyhow

[Chandon Seldon]

Have you priced out just fixing the problem by buying a real connection?

T1 lines are damn cheap now - I frequently see prices around $400/month. Optical lines start in the low thousands. All it would take is a couple neighbors and setting up a WiFi or even DSL co-op becomes competitive with what you'd expect DSL/Cable to cost.

Now, that may not be the right answer for getting internet access occasionally at your parents house - but it absolutely is for anyone personally lives somewhere where the telcos won't provide service (or won't provide good service).

What, no revenue?

[Wireless Joe]

Isn't that basically what the upcoming spectrum auction is about, transmitting data over unused TV licenses? Except in this case, of course, the FCC doesn't get to collect $billions for the privilege, and Microsoft et al get a free pass to use basically the same resources that the teclos are getting ready to write big checks for. Sounds like the FCC is not meeting its fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders, uh, I mean constituents.

Re:What, no revenue?

[zoltamatron]

Not exactly....The FCC is about to auction off all the analog broadcast TV bandwidth when all stations go digital in early 2009. The bandwidth avoidance that these internet boxes will have to do will be greatly reduced when all the analog TV is gone.

Mmm.. BBS over HAM

[eyenot]

I wish there was more information about all of this. Specifically, I wish the FCC would be able to give us a template for the upcoming changes to all forms of bandwidth and how they are intended to be used in the future.

I remember something a fear years ago about the switch to HDTV somehow opening up a range frequencies on the FM dial, and the FCC talking about maybe loosening restrictions on licensing for broadcast in the FM spectrum. I haven't re-heard any of that since.

I also remember, while I was studying the use of power lines as FM transmitters (apparently the signal is periodically flattened, though, by the transformers), the FCC mentioning something about using the power lines to double as internet. This was just after the DSL market leveled off, I remember. Anyways, there was a lot of talk about how to get that done, and special switches to go around transformers, or something. I haven't re-heard any of that, either.

I never liked DSL, btw. It seemed like the public was being duped into agreeing that they have no business using modems that fast without paying the phone companies for compensation. That's my impression based on the way the phone companies handled 14.4s and 28.8s. With 14.4s they started saying "you need to tell us if you are using your phone line for data communications; there's an extra fee." They tried to justify that by saying the fee paid for keeping the line more free of noise, which simply wasn't true. I remember a number of SysOps actually letting the phone companies know they were running BBSs off their low-calling-plan phone lines: they still had just as many checksum errors as they ever did, usually because they lived in the rural areas. Then when 28.8s came out, the phone companies started it all over again, except this time their gripe was that the higher throughput was a drain on the company's resources and they needed proper compensation, and threatened that if they found anybody was using their phone line for data without telling them, they would automatically flip you into the higher-paying mode. My impression then was that enough businesses and day-traders had told the company they were using their lines for data and ponied up the extra charge, but found that their signal wasn't any less noisy than usual, and got pissed and complained. Anyways, then DSL came out, and it was the same thing all over again, except that this time the phone companies had the jump on the technology and the right to use it on their lines. They were especially tight-fisted with who's allowed to so much as own a DSL modem, or if they couldn't manage to monopolize that market they were working out exchanges that required the company's leased and serialed modems. I have a question about that; when everybody's onto coaxial and the phone lines aren't being used for data any more, what will all of the "extra bandwidth" there be used for? Not voice: too many people are using cellphones for even their most casual home use, it's just more practical. What good will the phone lines be to us once they aren't getting used?

About the TV band again. I started reading up on it and learned that Japan had gone digital TV quite some time ago, but was still using the same airspace; they just managed to use compression to fit around two digital channels into the same bandwidth as one of our analogues. Why didn't America ever go into that same system, given how much Americans love both television and varieties? It seemed obvious to me, some time later, that twice as many channels are twice as hard to corner and monopolise. Some may say that deals couldn't be worked out so that manufacturers believed Americans would go out and buy replacement sets; but I still say any deal with a lucrative outcome eventually gets made by somebody, and it was simply obviously more lucrative to keep things tight-gripped rather than allow the market to be widened. We still have our "Big 3" today even though things have changed oh-so-much; when the hell are those disinfo mouthpieces going to fail and just go away?

Re:Mmm.. BBS over HAM

[jimrob]

As I recall there was a lot of opposition to BPL because it interferes with the HAM radio spectrum.

Acutally, it interferes with the entire radio spectrum. When the plan was first announced, the military was one of the most vocal opponents of the plan. I don't know if they still are or not, as I haven't heard much about their opinion lately.

The ARRL, a sorta-NRA of ham radio, has recently filed a case with a federal court over BPL. The gripe is that the FCC relaxed their rules regarding Part 15 emissions (radiations from unlicensed transmitters) to allow BPL to operate.

Here's a page at the ARRL about BPL: http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/

Here's a couple YouTube videos demonstrating the type of RF garbage these things emit all over the RF spectrum:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HDSQJ8zOnhQ

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pdcY0Eetvsw

Re:Mostly benefits rural areas

[stranger_to_himself]

But yeah ... I fully expect to see wireless-laptop-wielding cows the next time I pass through a rural area.

But will they run Hurd?

Makes Perfect Sense

[nick_davison]

I've just signed up for fiber optic to the home. My TV signal is now getting delivered over my internet connection as IPTV - which should free up the TV spectrum to deliver internet - which I can then get IPTV on.

I think my head hurts. But I'm pretty sure we invented perpetual motion somewhere in there.

then the FCC would decide everything

[purpleraison]

I hope I am wrong about this, but if the internet gets transmitted over TV airwaves, wouldn't the FCC automatically gain authority to censor anything they dislike or dictate is 'offensive' -- just like they do with television and radio in America?

Re:then the FCC would decide everything

[calebt3]

Clearwire isn't bound by those laws. This broadcasting will be happening on the same frequencies as TV, but it won't be in a format a TV can make sense of.

Re:Who cares about tv

[aywwts4]

You obviously don't have an HD TV.
The best quality HD is all OTA

Re:Try you local cellular providers

[Jewfro_Macabbi]

Satellite internet has horrible terms of service - and serious latency issues. Cellular providers cover many under-server rural areas now - I was pleased to learn of the option. It doesn't have the inhibitive installation cost of satellite service either. I'm connecting with speed between 700 and 1000kbps - with downloads speeds around 120kbps/upload speeds around 20kbps. The service is 29.99 unlimited (doesn't count against airtime minutes/no caps) using a tethered phone or 59.99 per month unlimited using a wireless USB modem. It's performs well - I've experienced no outages in over a month of use. Anyone more knowledgeable - the cellular broadband is a type of radio service? Is this something more like a "mesh" network?

"cognitive radio" is the magic term

[MasterRat]

I work in this field for one of the corporations involved in this work with the FCC, and am involved in cognitve radio for TVWS work. If you do a search of the internet using the phrase "cognitive radio" you will get a better idea for how the systems will work. There will be lots of small access points (initial generations of the systems will be about the size of a cigar box). Mobile stations (endpoints such as phones) will function in one of two modes, either tethered or in peer-to-peer.

The trick to make it work cleanly is geo-location information being available to the devices (mobile stations, access points, et cetera) and a map/database of known (authorized) transmitters in the TVWS frequency range in the areas. Its also highly likely that policy-based management and autonomics will come into play to control the mobile stations and the access points.

This is a big deal folks, it will revolutionize the way we comunicate and interact with each other and world around us. Look for papers authored by Joseph Mitola (DARPA Scientist who coined the phrase "cognitive radio") -- the guy is truly a visionary.

Your cell phone works, right

[speedlaw]

This system will work decently. Spread spectrum radio is common today in your cell phone, your wireless house phone, and every wifi card everywhere. the concept of a defined frequency for a defined service is on the way out. Much like DC electricity, it was used for a lot of reasons, but as time goes on, a smart radio system will become common. The six megahertz needed for an analog signal is today like using a steam engine for commuter rail. You can do it, and it works, but it's not a clean or simple solution. With the advent of microchips and strict time sequences, cognitive radio is an easy deal. It also solves the problems of too many users for a limited amount of discrete frequencies. the idea of frequency allocation is because up until now, you could only be one per frequency. The prime real estate was given to TV way, way back when. It is no longer 1940. TV has some interference issues when the band opens, but you are dealing with megawatt transmitters in prime locations...I can get Philly when conditions are right here in NYC, but that's not "the market". Leaving the white spaces unused is like deciding that Ohio can't grow corn because Wisconsin is.

Re:Who cares about tv

[drsquare]

The best quality HD is all OTA

There's HD over the air? Oh wait, I live in the UK, where we're lucky to get any signal at all without paying £500 a year to Murdoch...