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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday November 26 2016, @10:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the using-the-underused dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

D-Link and Redmond have put the paddles on 802.11af, charged the machine, and hit the button.

The 2013 amendment to Wi-Fi is an air interface for "white space" frequencies (from 54 MHz to 698 MHz in the USA; Europe and the UK use a more realistic 490 to 790 MHz), with a maximum per-channel 35.6 Mbps (16 channels can be bonded together to get nearly 600 Mbps).

It's primarily a point-to-point link service rather than a user-access technology, and so it doesn't interfere with TV transmissions, 802.11af uses a cognitive radio to sense other spectrum users, and a localisation database to keep track of broadcasters.

Data rate, however, isn't the main story: compared to 2.4 GHz, TV frequencies cover a lot of ground, and that's the angle D-Link and Microsoft are touting.

The standard is designed for links up to 1 km in range, the kind of reach that 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi can only manage with a cantenna.

The two want to use 802.11af for rural/regional services in underserved areas, with a phase-one pilot currently underway in the US.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:22PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:22PM (#433448)

    Meanwhile they're pumping blue pills and pornography into the West Bank settlements, eh?

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:26PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:26PM (#433449)

    This radio scheme sounds ripe for software cheating abuse... and also very practical given the massive unused bandwidth recently devalued by over-the-air television's rapid decline. Cable was bad enough, but now with Netflix, et.al. the newspapers have a story to tell to broadcast TV. Broadcast television bandwidth has always been copious and underutilized, and now I think we can all agree that it is unlikely that we will ever have a need for 80+ broadcast channels in a single market area.

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