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Google Tests White Space Spectrum For School Broadband In South Africa

Posted by Soulskill on from the spread-cat-pictures-far-and-wide dept.

judgecorp writes with news that Google is beginning tests on white space spectrum to deliver broadband internet access to rural communities in South Africa. "White space has the advantage that low frequency signals can travel longer distances. The technology is well suited to provide low cost connectivity to rural communities with poor telecommunications infrastructure, and for expanding coverage of wireless broadband in densely populated urban areas. ... Ten schools in the Cape Town area will receive wireless broadband to test the technology. During the trial, we will attempt to show that broadband can be offered over white spaces without interfering with licensed spectrum holders. To prevent interference with other channels, the network uses Google’s spectrum database to determine white space availability."

33 comments

  1. Learn about the LORD of HOSTS... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Mainly in efficiency - it runs in Ring 0/RPL 0/PnP Kernelmode (on Windows), as merely a filter for the IP stack (no overheads of more driver layers OR browser level slower less efficient addons):

    21++ ADVANTAGES OF CUSTOM HOSTS FILES (how/what/when/where/why):

    Over AdBlock & DNS Servers ALONE 4 Security, Speed, Reliability, & Anonymity (to an extent vs. DNSBL's + DNS request logs).

    1.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program). A truly "multi-platform" UNIVERSAL solution for added speed, security, reliability, & even anonymity to an extent (vs. DNS request logs + DNSBL's you feel are unjust hosts get you past/around).

    2.) Adblock blocks ads? Well, not anymore & certainly not as well by default, apparently, lol - see below:

    Adblock Plus To Offer 'Acceptable Ads' Option

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/12/12/2213233/adblock-plus-to-offer-acceptable-ads-option )

    AND, in only browsers & their subprogram families (ala email like Thunderbird for FireFox/Mozilla products (use same gecko & xulrunner engines)), but not all, or, all independent email clients, like Outlook, Outlook Express, OR Window "LIVE" mail (for example(s)) - there's many more like EUDORA & others I've used over time that AdBlock just DOES NOT COVER... period.

    Disclaimer: Opera now also has an AdBlock addon (now that Opera has addons above widgets), but I am not certain the same people make it as they do for FF or Chrome etc..

    3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF (non-mozilla/gecko engine based) family based wares, So AdBlock doesn't protect email programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows "LIVE" mail & others like them (EUDORA etc./et al), Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.

    4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 5-7 next below).

    5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, OR make you reach them faster since you resolve host-domain names LOCALLY w/ hosts out of cached memory, hosts do ALL of those things (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw -> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082908-kaminsky-flaw-prompts-dns-server.html for years now). Hosts protect against those problems via hardcodes of your fav sites (you should verify against the TLD that does nothing but cache IPAddress-to-domainname/hostname resolutions (in-addr.arpa) via NSLOOKUP, PINGS (ping -a in Windows), &/or WHOIS though, regularly, so you have the correct IP & it's current)).

    * NOW - Some folks MAY think that putting an IP address alone into your browser's address bar will be enough, so why bother with HOSTS, right? WRONG - Putting IP address in your browser won't always work IS WHY. Some IP adresses host several domains & need the site name to give you the right page you're after is why. So for some sites only the HOSTS file option will work!

    6.) Hosts files don't eat up CPU cycles (or ELECTRICITY) like AdBlock does while it parses a webpages' content, nor as much as a DNS server does while it runs. HOSTS file are merely a FILTER for the kernel mode/PnP TCP/IP subsystem, which runs FAR FASTER & MORE EFFICIENTLY than any ring 3/rpl3/usermode app can since hosts files run in MORE EFFICIENT & FASTER Ring 0/RPL 0/Kernelmode operat

    1. Re:Learn about the LORD of HOSTS... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      $10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

      * POOR SHOWING TROLLS, & most especially IF that's the "best you've got" - apparently, it is... lol!

      Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING !! We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.

      Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?

      Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.

      If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.

      I will give $10,000.00 to frost pister who can disprove MyCleanPC. Evil crapflooders ignore this as a challenge would indict them.

      Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.

      Humans fear to know natures simultaneous +4 Insightful +4 Informative +4 Funny +4 Underrated harmonic SLASHDOT creation for it debunks false trolls. Test Your HOSTS file. MyCleanPC cannot harm a File of Truth, but will delete fakes. Fake HOSTS files refuse test.

      I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.

      If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!

      You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusiv

  2. Damn it, Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    White space, huh? Is Google bringing apartheid back to South Africa!?

    1. Re:Damn it, Google by idunham · · Score: 0

      You got it backwards.
      They're using it to benefit the blacks, which must mean desegregation.

    2. Re:Damn it, Google by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

      Well, the white having to make space, is part of black empowerment.

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    3. Re:Damn it, Google by Sigg3.net · · Score: 1

      No no. It's only white Lebensraum for our signals...!

      --
      Defining Statistics and Social Research
  3. sounds like... by Myself337 · · Score: 2

    They have something to prove to the FCC. I for one welcome our low cost wide range broadband overlords.

    --
    I'm poor. Please donate. http://albanypcs.com
  4. Surrender it immediately and improbably! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    I demand you give it to me! Right now! I wanna fuck it off! I want to deposit loads of my little white tadpoles friendly directly into your bare bayer aspirin hole!

  5. Microsoft already doing it in Kenya by PineHall · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft is already using a whiite space network in Kenya to bring 16Mbps broadband powered by solar panels to towns without electricity.

    1. Re:Microsoft already doing it in Kenya by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's just fabulous, for Kenya. Personally, I could use a little bit of that high-tech sort of broadband connectivity right here in central Missouri. Do you realize just how badly dialup sucks? My spell checker doesn't even know that word "dialup". Sheesh.

    2. Re:Microsoft already doing it in Kenya by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's it, I'm moving to Kenya.

    3. Re:Microsoft already doing it in Kenya by crutchy · · Score: 0

      Microsoft now owns the Kenyan government

      Kenya is now just a Microsoft subsidiary, and Ballmer can use Kenyans to alpha test all future versions of Windows

    4. Re:Microsoft already doing it in Kenya by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only in Kenya!

      http://www.weebls-stuff.com/songs/kenya/

  6. DIgital people never learn by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2
    Tropo Ducting

    Meteor burst

    General propagation

    Most digital people seem to think that all frequencies act the same, or in this case, lower frequencies travel farther than higher frequencies.

    Some even seem to think that Bandwidth is infinite.

    This project smacks of BPL, (Broadband over Power Line) who's promoters seemed to think that you could impress Radio signals onto Power lines without interference to other services, and other services would not interfere with BPL..

    The lowest Television channels, in the VHF portion of the band, are known as the "magic" band by Amateur radio operators, because the frequencies some times act like much lower frequencies, with long distance propagation, and some times like higher frequencies, with strictly line of sight distances. And there is noise also. The old school TV stations used a lot of power for a reason. Get that signal to noise ration as high as possible. And a meteor burst noise is going to disrupt digital immensely, and they happen all the time.

    What ever could go wrong? There is a reason why those Gigahertz frequencies in use work for wireless. They are much more quiet, they specifically have much shorter range, which keeps everyone from interfering with everyone else, and the bandwidth is inherently higher at those higher frequencies. Look up Shannon's limit, and spare me the phase modulation infinite bandwidth bs, because the bandwidth become infinite - but the power need is also infinite. This is probably a Government Grant make some money for failing trick.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    1. Re:DIgital people never learn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, many people seem to think the laws of physics don't apply when talking about radio frequencies. And many of them seem otherwise intelligent!

      I suspect the governments will fall prey to companies wanting to sell hardware that will use those frequencies, and then those governments will eventually have to rent or purchase other frequencies to get clear channels for what those frequencies used to be used for. Or maybe they'll just have to purchase back all those devices they allowed to be sold.

    2. Re:DIgital people never learn by crutchy · · Score: 1

      i'm pretty sure BPL was only limited because of transformers being in the way

      BPL works fine for LAN within a home or business

    3. Re:DIgital people never learn by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      This project smacks of BPL, (Broadband over Power Line) who's promoters seemed to think that you could impress Radio signals onto Power lines without interference to other services, and other services would not interfere with BPL..

      BPL tried to use a bunch of frequencies modulated over the power line. Of course, BPL proponents never considered that power lines were excellent antennas. That resulted in interference to the airwaves. This is a problem as power lines are NOT shielded.

      The lowest Television channels, in the VHF portion of the band, are known as the "magic" band by Amateur radio operators, because the frequencies some times act like much lower frequencies, with long distance propagation, and some times like higher frequencies, with strictly line of sight distances. And there is noise also. The old school TV stations used a lot of power for a reason. Get that signal to noise ration as high as possible. And a meteor burst noise is going to disrupt digital immensely, and they happen all the time.

      What ever could go wrong? There is a reason why those Gigahertz frequencies in use work for wireless. They are much more quiet, they specifically have much shorter range, which keeps everyone from interfering with everyone else, and the bandwidth is inherently higher at those higher frequencies. Look up Shannon's limit, and spare me the phase modulation infinite bandwidth bs, because the bandwidth become infinite - but the power need is also infinite. This is probably a Government Grant make some money for failing trick.

      Except that "white space" uses unused TV channels. A vast swatch of the VHF and UHF spectrum has been allocated to TV. Since not everywhere has all channels in use (most places probably are lucky to have single digits channels available OTA), that gives a wide swath of unused spectrum available. White space won't interfere with 6m or 2m or 440 operations because TV isn't there.

      Indeed, it's why white space is trialed outside of the US - the FCC has been trying to encourage white space development, but the problem is stepping on legitimate broadcasters. Proposals have included a GPS database (Google has agreed to host it), but the problem is how to bootstrap it - a fixed database will get old quickly (and products may sit on shelves or unused). And you need a data connection to get an update. And you can't just blindly transmit because it could interfere when you try to get the update.

    4. Re:DIgital people never learn by s122604 · · Score: 1

      They did not say they are using VHF low. They are most likely using VHF HI (>175 MHZ), or UHF frequencies between 400-700MHZ.
      These frequencies are in a "sweet spot", traveling much better than > 2GHZ signals and don't get hammered by Sporadic E, Meteor scatter or other weird propagation effects as much as lower frequencies.

      Although from TFA, the hop they are doing is 6.2 miles. With decent towers and highly directional antennas on both ends, 2.4ghz could work.

    5. Re:DIgital people never learn by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      i'm pretty sure BPL was only limited because of transformers being in the way

      BPL works fine for LAN within a home or business

      also/quote> What the issues with BPL were was that running the signals along the power lines acted as an antenna. Not a good antenna, but an antenna none the less.

      The digital signal is a radio frequency wavelength signal, So it can escape from the line. Other signals can get into the line, also.

      Hams regularly communicate around the world on HF with microwatts of power.

      In tests, a one watt signal into a loaded whip at around 27 MegaHertz would shut adow all BPL for blocks around, imagine Ham radio operators who typically transmit at 100 Watts or more. and the BPL interfered with licensed services even though they used notch filters to keep the digital signals away from those services. I believe th eproblem was intermod, with two signals mixing to create a third, something else digital engineers often don't know.

      It was basically a bad idea championed by people who didn't understand RF.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    6. Re:DIgital people never learn by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Although from TFA, the hop they are doing is 6.2 miles. With decent towers and highly directional antennas on both ends, 2.4ghz could work.

      And there you have it. One other thing that they might not have thought about is that longer distances automatically limit th dnumber of channels you can use. That short range is a big plus.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    7. Re:DIgital people never learn by Sigg3.net · · Score: 1

      Also, African elephants make excellent wifi APs!

      According to BBC elephants communicate long distance by thumping (yeah, like Dune). Add that to the mesh network controller and you're all set!

      --
      Defining Statistics and Social Research
  7. In other news... by TankSpanker04 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Looks like Microsoft is doing basically the same thing in Kenya:
    http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/solar-power-and-white-spaces-bring-internet-to-towns-without-electricity/

  8. YOU IFAIL IT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    liitle-known

    1. Re:YOU IFAIL IT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      is there at least a female version of this?

  9. White Space? by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Doesn't the specific white space they are using determine its long-distance performance, not just the fact that no one is currently using that frequency band?

  10. Frequency? by quenda · · Score: 1

    TFA is short on detail. TV whitespace could be anything from 40MHz to just under the 850 and 900 MHz bands widely used for cellular internet connection.

  11. won't that f up all the elephants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just postin for the heck of it, but don't the elephants use that space ?

  12. Google spectrum database by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    How is Google spectrum database fed? I did not find the information on their site.

    1. Re:Google spectrum database by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

      Uhm, with a RF spectrum analyzer?

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    2. Re:Google spectrum database by ve3oat · · Score: 1

      If they are setting up communications transmitters in a foreign country, shouldn't Google be asking that country's national telecommunications administration which channels are clear to use and which are not? It probably never occurred to Google that every country in the world has its own version of the U.S. FCC, and for the same reasons that the FCC exists, that is to regulate such things as frequency allocations, exact channel assignments, transmitter powers, emission bandwidths, etc etc. Many countries have different regulations than the U.S.

    3. Re:Google spectrum database by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      You mean they deployed sensors everywhere in the US?

  13. Why not a tower? by evilviper · · Score: 1

    Here's a crazy question... Are the lower (white-space) frequencies really worth all the efforts? We're talking about UHF TV frequencies here, which generally only go up to 60 miles, really only slightly beyond line-of-sight (VHF can do quite a bit better). Outside of heavily wooded forests and dense urban cities, how much benefit are they getting out of these frequencies, versus needing to site their WiFi antennas better (ie. higher up), or having twice as many base stations repeating the signal?

    Is the benefit of slightly better range with the lower frequencies really worth buying custom equipment, rather than commodity $35 off-the-shelf APs? Neither the stories on Google or Microsoft's efforts with this tech actually say a non-trivial amount about the tech.

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    1. Re:Why not a tower? by redneckmother · · Score: 1

      Here's a crazy question... Are the lower (white-space) frequencies really worth all the efforts? We're talking about UHF TV frequencies here, which generally only go up to 60 miles, really only slightly beyond line-of-sight (VHF can do quite a bit better). Outside of heavily wooded forests and dense urban cities, how much benefit are they getting out of these frequencies, versus needing to site their WiFi antennas better (ie. higher up), or having twice as many base stations repeating the signal?

      Is the benefit of slightly better range with the lower frequencies really worth buying custom equipment, rather than commodity $35 off-the-shelf APs? Neither the stories on Google or Microsoft's efforts with this tech actually say a non-trivial amount about the tech.

      From what I've read, the primary advantage of using white space (802.22) is provisioning sparsely populated areas without building expensive point to point infrastructure. I have high hopes for the technology(ies). My only available 'net connectivity is via satellite (blech!), with its high latency, low throughput, punishing data caps, and unreasonable expense.