 tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
kudos:5
 ·Fairpoint Commun..
 ·Hollis Hosting
| Whitespace I don't understand need to further reduce over the air (OTA) TV spectrum – doesn’t the whitespace initiative go a long way to address this issue? Whitespace allows unused TV channels to be used for data. UHF TV used to go all the way up to Channel 83. That was reduced to Channel 69 years ago and to Channel 51 in June of this year.
Seems to me whitespace is a good trade-off between broadcast TV and broadband. In urban areas there are lots of OTA stations and multiple forms of wired broadband. So there is little need for additional wireless broadband. In rural areas there are few stations and limited wired broadband making wireless ISPs attractive.
There is concern nearby whitespace transmitters will cause problems due to signal ingress and OTA preamp overload. I assume that is no worse then situation today of nearby TV stations in rural areas.
Wireless carriers are rolling out 3G data service. I am not aware they face a huge bandwidth crunch. They just got much of the spectrum freed up from TV. Mobile wireless services are power constrained resulting in small coverage area with high degree of frequency reuse. That makes them very spectrum efficient.
My understanding is that 10-15% of US households are dependent on OTA, while a larger percentage use OTA in addition to Cable or Sat. While relatively small percentage of total viewers still represents a lot of households. I for one have no desire to trade my once every 20-year capital investment in an outdoor antenna for monthly fee.
/tom |
|
1 edit | said by tschmidt:There is concern nearby whitespace transmitters will cause problems due to signal ingress and OTA preamp overload. I assume that is no worse then situation today of nearby TV stations in rural areas. The issue isn't overload. Rather, it's the inability for a white space device to determine whether there is a TV signal present on a particular channel.
Many rural OTA viewers need high antennas with lots of gain and directivity. A white space device with a "rubber duck" antenna isn't going to know that a TV signal is there, but it is going to transmit a strong local signal and probably overpower the TV signal in the rural area. |
|
 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to tschmidt
said by tschmidt:I don't understand need to further reduce over the air (OTA) TV spectrum – doesn’t the whitespace initiative go a long way to address this issue? Whitespace allows unused TV channels to be used for data. UHF TV used to go all the way up to Channel 83. That was reduced to Channel 69 years ago and to Channel 51 in June of this year. Inother words broadcasters have already given up 40% of the spectrum they had back in before 1983 when TV went up to 83. And most of the spectrum went to the wireless companies who are now asking for more. WTF have they done with the spectrum they currently own? I'd like to see some proof they've used up the nearly 200 Mhz of spectrum they managed to steal from broadcasters before they steal some more. |
|
| reply to tschmidt
I'm all for the presence of white space devices sharing the spectrum. I'm confident that a device can be made to coexist peacefully with TV transmissions, despite what the fear mongerers have to say. |
|
|
|
