Slashdot Mirror
Google Looks to "White Space" Spectrum
Nerdposeur writes "After maneuvering the major carriers into agreeing to open access rules via the recent spectrum auction, Google appears to be looking into a new area of spectrum that could provide internet connectivity. 'In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission, the Internet leader outlined plans for low-power devices that use local wireless airwaves to access the 'white space' between television channels. A Google executive called the plan 'Wi-Fi 2.0 or Wi-Fi on steroids.' Interestingly, Google has Microsoft, Intel, and others on their side in this one. Was this spectrum their target all along?"
Get your biggest competitor for bandwidth to spend all of their money on the spectrum you don't want by executing a feint in that direction, and then taking over the spectrum you really wanted.
It's almost like someone who reads those business books that are based on military strategy actually figured out how to apply the military concepts to competition...
Nope, actually this: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DIZ/is_11_13/ai_72270397 Which may be seen as an early extremely limited trial of this (depending on how you look at it).
The only big problem left to solve before true high speed access would be available to nearly everyone is the method of distribution. Using existing service wiring is problematic. Telephone wires aren't adequate due to bandwidth and signal / noise problems. Running networking over power wiring is not workable; it has all the problems of using the phone wiring but much, much worse. Running networking over the cable TV systems is the most functional - but cable doesn't go to every town and house and not all cable systems are compatible.
There's been a push to "wire" the country with glass fiber. They've even got it all the way to the house in some areas. As they build out the fiber networks they'll gradually reach more and more customers. But there's a BIG problem here: there's a huge number of houses and apartments to cover. The phone and electric systems grew up with the country, as each new home / subdivision was created these services were connected; essentially, the phone company took 100 years to get wiring to every residence.
To start out now and try to connect every residence - the magnitude of this problem is staggering. Assuming 100 million residences, if the army of installers could run fiber to and connect 10,000 residences every day - it'd take over 27 years. And that assumes the installers would be working 7 days per week. I'm not even going to try to estimate the cost of doing this.
If workable and reliable long-range wireless networking is developed / proven - and there's RF bandwidth that it can use - this could connect large number of residences inexpensively and quickly. Just plug your network cable into the "network radio" and you'd be online; no army of installers required. This would make it possible to make high speed access available to almost everyone in much, much less than 27 years.
I'm glad to see that Google is putting their resources behind making this a reality. It's not going to be easy to make this kind of technology work reliably but there's some very bright people at Google and if anyone can find a solution they can.
In fact, as people have become more skilled at gaming Google, and Google is the only show of note in town, search has actually got worse.
Oh I don't know about that. They went through a stage search returns being buried in junk pages. That's gone now, or substantially so. Certainly I no longer have the problems I used to.
You're sort of making the assumption that the internet is static, so google aren't moving.
What's really happening is the internet is a constantly seething morass of junk, exploits, and bot created pages who's sole intent is to gain control of your machine. In the face of that I'm surprised google still manage to sift through the shart and produce useful results.
This article http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-has-google-done-in-search-lately.html disagrees with you. It may be from last year, but I've seen other search related features show up on that blog.
In fact, that blog is on my list and it seems like they are always coming up with extras to add into their search. Little extra things you can click on when the search results in a stock symbol or dated item.
Also, have you taken a look at Google labs experimental search?
I'm not saying some competition would be good, but it isn't as stagnant as I think you would make it out to be. This link http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/faster-google-search-on-your-mobile.html shows another more recent search improvement they've done recently
It is the big $$ broadcasting companies and the regulators that are opposing the WSD because they fear any competition.
Check out the lecture at http://videolectures.net/kiblix07_meinrath_wtrr/ (the WSD part starts at around 42:00)
This idea is horribly dangerous for anyone running a PA. That "whitespace" is where wireless mics run. They use UHF/VHF frequencies to communicate between the receiver and the mic itself. I recently toured the Shure Plant in Niles IL and they pointed out that these whitespace devices are causing an extremely large amount of harm to something that's already standardized to run in the whitespace. I don't know, it really kind of worries me that my wireless mic systems won't work anymore, or that, when I go to a concert, the artists will be limited to cable length.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Wireless Internet is desperately necessary. WiMAX and 3G are well on their way. And once you have reliable wireless Internet access, suddenly your costs are going to go down. It's just like what happened with cable and satellite TV. Before satellite, cable companies used to make you wait home all day for their technician to decide to show up or not. Now they've got it down to about an hour.
And anyway it makes sense: the Internet is a shared resource, and there are a lot more opportunities for competition through the air than there are laying cables. Laying cables to every location in the US is costly and a huge barrier to entry for competitors. It's a horrible system from a market standpoint because we realize that not every cable company can come along and lay their own version. So, instead we let companies bid on who gets to control those lines, and to prevent them from having a monopoly we have artificial impositions like requiring Verizon to provide a basic message rate so that other companies can resell their DSL. Speakeasy, roadrunner, aol, etc. don't all have their own phone lines running to your house. They have to share that part.
Wireless Internet access is the logical step we need to connect people better.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."