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Australia's Outback Could Get Web Via TV Antenna

Posted by Soulskill on from the hope-they-broadcast-the-sites-you-want-to-see dept.

disco_tracy writes "Australia began switching off its analog TV signals in June and the transition to digital-only transmission is expected to be complete by the end of 2013, five years before the roll out finishes for the NBN. The leftover analog spectrum could be used to deliver Internet to people living in remote areas. Unlike 3G networks, which lose download speed with more users, the analog signal would provide a consistent speed no matter how many users there were."

1 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Awful article by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't have time for a full writeup, but read for some reasonable info. This is intended for areas where the user density is very low, so low that the users are at significantly different angles from the base station, and multiple steered beams can be sent to different users at the same time. They can get about a 6x gain in capacity that way.

    The "reuse of analog" simply means that existing VHF antennas at the user end will work. This is useful, because in remote areas, people already have big towers with fixed antennas pointing in the right direction. The base station antennas change drastically, the modulation scheme changes, the user interface boxes are new. Only the user end antennas remain. But that's the item that's a pain to replace in the field.

    The guy behind this is a serious RF guy, worth listening to. He can probably make this work.