Australia's Outback Could Get Web Via TV Antenna

disco_tracy writes "Australia began switching off its analog TV signals in June and the transition to digital-only transmission is expected to be complete by the end of 2013, five years before the roll out finishes for the NBN. The leftover analog spectrum could be used to deliver Internet to people living in remote areas. Unlike 3G networks, which lose download speed with more users, the analog signal would provide a consistent speed no matter how many users there were."

Re:It's the idea of the future!

[butlerm]

Unlike 3G networks, which lose download speed with more users, the analog signal would provide a consistent speed no matter how many users there were.

I think someone needs to gain an acquaintance with the Shannon Theorem [wikipedia.org].

Awful article

[Animats]

I don't have time for a full writeup, but read for some reasonable info. [radioaustralia.net.au] This is intended for areas where the user density is very low, so low that the users are at significantly different angles from the base station, and multiple steered beams can be sent to different users at the same time. They can get about a 6x gain in capacity that way.

The "reuse of analog" simply means that existing VHF antennas at the user end will work. This is useful, because in remote areas, people already have big towers with fixed antennas pointing in the right direction. The base station antennas change drastically, the modulation scheme changes, the user interface boxes are new. Only the user end antennas remain. But that's the item that's a pain to replace in the field.

The guy behind this is a serious RF guy, worth listening to. He can probably make this work.

Stupidest idea ever

[Ezza]

(Disclaimer, I work for a broadcaster in Australia, so take this with a grain of salt)

OK for starters the bit about "consistent speed no matter how many users there were" is complete garbage, with ANY radio based system data system.

Secondly, if you start using the TV spectrum for data in both directions, you start putting a really strong signal OUT your TV antenna, which despite being on a different frequency to the actual TV channels, it is close enough to swamp the (really weak by several orders of magnitude) TV signal on the next band with the (extremely strong in comparison) outgoing signal.

So you can forget about watching TV while you're using the internet.

The decision to sell the TV bandwidth rather than just keep it for the public use (eg. super HD TV, or super multichanneling or whatever is in the future) is completely about $$$$ and greed by the Federal Govt so they can sell the bandwidth to the highest bidder.

Grrr.

Re:Pendantic

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as analog. The smallest elements of all that exist are space and emtpy space. Anything can be break down until what left are "is" and "is not". Analog is a aproxymation of the digital reality, our sense can only mesure that much. We see curve where there is jagged surface.