Great Britain’s TTP is making use of unused TV broadcast spectrum to deliver high-speed broadband service in rural areas. The so-called “white space” is license-exempt radio spectrum that exists between licensed broadcast spectrum. TTP says that more than 100 MHz of prime UHF white space radio spectrum exists in most rural locations, and that it can deliver data at speeds comparable to those of LTE by combining several TV channels and using directional antennas.
TTP has partnered with Freescale (FSL) to create base stations similar in size to home routers. Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge chipset handles all the processing duties and the Austin company’s MMIC amplifiers complete the solution. TTP says it chose Freescale based on the “price and power advantage” of the company’s offering.
“Enabling communities with affordable, robust broadband service in locations where wired infrastructure is impractical or uneconomical is one of the great challenges for the telecommunications industry over the coming years,” said TTP’s Richard Walker. “The cost of white space broadband is significantly lower and faster to deploy than optical fibre over long distances in remote areas.”
Here in the U.S, the white spaces represent an opportunity for new entrants into the wireless carrier business. Two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission selected ten companies to operate white space databases. One of those companies is Google (GOOG); its white space database is set to go live on Monday. This is just one step on the road to actually launching a wireless network. So far, Google’s efforts in that area have focused on fiber deployments in the MidWest. Google is also rumored to be considering a partnership with Dish Network, and is reportedly prototyping a wireless network in Silicon Valley.
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