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First White Spaces AP Gives Grandma the Internet
alphadogg writes "A Houston restaurant worker is the first user of a prototype wireless access point using low-frequency signals in the so-called White Spaces between unused UHF digital TV signals. The access point was set up in the home of a grandmother and homeowner who had never had a reliable Internet connection before the White Spaces spectrum created one. Widely but wrongly dubbed 'Super Wi-Fi,' these lower frequencies can reach further and penetrate buildings more easily than standard Wi-Fi radios, which implement the IEEE 802.11 specification."
I always knew grandma would find the unknowable other in vast negative space...
rip grandma :(
I took White Spaces AP in high school. It saved me a lot of time in college!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Is this some kind of racist WiFi?
Interesting tech. Would be nice to see it employed more.
But nothing in the article about transmission speeds.
Or potential distance covered, and interference with other white space devices.
Unreadable most ever headline.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Hope shel will not cut the cables ;-)
....
Thinking about it, there is no cables this time :-)
Have a Station that I created myself using CB Radio as a half-duplex physical layer for low-rate TCP/IP communications by modulating through my Soundcard, getting reliably around 500 Baud 3 miles range with 2-watts: it's enough to send fax-like messages like what NOAA Wether stations do on storm alerts.
Working on migrating to RS232C to use a simply timer circuit and make it audible with a little peizo-electric speaker setup, to free-up my Soundcard.
Anyone remember Wavewhore that would use an actual ISA-bus TV card to modulate across the same frequencies of Television to get internet access directly from the root Station allocations? Too bad we're all paying for it now.
"Maggie Smith, a former restaurant worker, has died from advanced colon cancer as a result of being one of the first to use the portable WiFi hotspot device. Smith at the time thought he was advancing technology when volunteering for the device. Unfortunately the manufacturer didn't do enough radiation analysis and didn't realize that the device created frequencies that caused her to fart uncontrollably and induced Irritable Bowell Syndrome as well. This ultimately led to colon cancer which ended her life. Manufacturers for the WiFi device could not be reached for comment."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
That's some damn good marketing.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
My local small ISP can't compete with the local wired broadband providers. He still provides some dial-up and hosts servers and web sites to stay afloat.
We, the customers, are getting screwed by the landline providers and would gladly jump ship if there were any kind of reasonable competition. For instance, my daughter lives in another city and can get a good, cheap data plan with her phone. She gets her internet by tethering to her phone, and she pays less than we do.
The conventional equipment to provide wireless service is too expensive for the small ISP. If this new technology is cheaper to buy and cheaper to install, we'll buy him the stuff because we hate the landline guys that much.
How could it be cheaper to install? Better penetration of trees and buildings means the equipment could have better range. That means you wouldn't need as many repeaters/base stations. I'm guessing the installed cost could be as little as a quarter of the existing equipment. (If you get twice the range, you get four times the coverage. Yes, I do realize that the ultimate limit is determined by signal to noise ratio.) I would also predict that, within a year, we will have enough experience with the new technology to know for sure.
I can't find anything in any of those links that describes technical details of Whitespace wifi? Max bandwidth? Positives/Negatives? The Wiki article talks about a suit filed by broadcasters against the FCC for licensing this tech, as they assert devices in these frequencies cause interference, but says a result was expected Feb 2011...with no update.
-Styopa
UHF => Ultra High Frequency. Yet, somehow the spaces between are channels are "low frequency". Perhaps they mean low bandwidth, as each unused channel in only about 6MHz. Alternately, this could just be a redefinition of what "High Frequency" is.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
This is disappointing. I thought this was going to be a troll about Burkas.
Lower frequencies do NOT penetrate better than higher frequencies. If they did we'd be using radio waves to look inside of our bodies instead of X-rays.
The poster copied something from the article: "using low-frequency signals."
:\
What does this mean? We are talking about UHF here, so they obviously aren't low-frequency signals. Do you mean low-bandwidth or low-amplitude signals? Slashdot is "News for Nerds," and such details truly do matter for those of us who are actually nerds and are trying to learn or understand something from the postings here.
Parent raises a great point
"...low-frequency signals in the so-called White Spaces between unused UHF digital TV signals"
"Cool, what's UHF stand for?"
"Ultra High Frequency"
"But you just said they were low-frequency signals."
"I know...."