Google Looks to "White Space" Spectrum 95
Nerdposeur writes "After maneuvering the major carriers into agreeing to open access rules via the recent spectrum auction, Google appears to be looking into a new area of spectrum that could provide internet connectivity. 'In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission, the Internet leader outlined plans for low-power devices that use local wireless airwaves to access the 'white space' between television channels. A Google executive called the plan 'Wi-Fi 2.0 or Wi-Fi on steroids.' Interestingly, Google has Microsoft, Intel, and others on their side in this one. Was this spectrum their target all along?"
Microsoft Device (Score:5, Informative)
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Woah.
Woah. Stop. Is this so-called "between television channels" technology going to stop me from watching channel 5 in D.C.? (80 miles distant). I don't like the idea of some corporation or person deciding, "Well channel 5 is not used in southeast Pennsylvania, so I'll broadcast there," and wipe out my weak but still watchable television 5.
Re:Microsoft Device (Score:5, Informative)
Woah.
Woah.
Your "weak but still watchable televsion 5" will disappear in 11 months anyhow, [wikipedia.org] before any of this can get implemented. And since channels 2-5 are generally bad for DTV, they will probably keep their new channel, which is almost certainly UHF.
And depending on lots of factors, including antenna direction and getting a relatively recent DTV tuner, your "weak but still watchable" signal might get replaced with a crystal-clear signal. (DTV actually has more problems within 10-20 miles of the transmitter than with distant reception.)
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It seems that wind (trees and leafs) or rain intermittently pushes the signal quality down the slope, rather annoyingly.
Something that might have caused a small flicker on an analog tv is replaced by a minute long mpeg blur.
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In any case, rabbit ears have proved worthless.
I acquired a Channel Master 4228 antenna which is extremely directional. It can pull in UHF 70 miles distant and VHF 100 miles distant, although it must be aimed very precisely (within one degree).
Re:Microsoft Device (Score:4, Informative)
If you're having trouble at 20 miles, then your problem is multipath interference. Basically, reflections of the signal off of various objects in an urban area are delayed copies of the original signal. With an analog tuner, this results in ghosting. With a digital tuner, this results in being unable to decode the digital signal. Older ATSC tuners in particular are very bad about rejecting multipath interference.
Rotating your antenna will affect your signal quality. (I have to adjust my roof antenna every two or three months because winds knock it out of position and I lose CBS.) Installing an attenuator in the signal path may result in better reception. The worst thing you can do when you are that close to the transmitter is to use an amplified antenna. The amplifier may distort the signal in a way that reduces the signal quality.
Also, your tuner should have a signal "strength" display. This is usually in fact a signal quality display. Often 75% is the threshold below which there is not enough good data for the error correction to work. If it has an audible signal meter, turn up the TV volume to where you can hear it outside while adjusting the antenna, and set it to the most finicky channel.
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No it won't.
It will still be there as digital channel 5. Along with digital channel 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, and so on.
My concern was whether or not some guy with a Google White Space thingie decides to broadcast on those channels, because he (mistakenly) believes they are empty. That would not make me happy.
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ATSC allows the station to "lie" about what channel you are watching. It might still be named channel 5 in the PSIP (the station ID information), but that doesn't mean that it is broadcasting on the channel 5 frequency. Most 2-6 stations will be keeping their UHF channel. What gets done about the PSIP channel numbers after the cutoff remains to be seen, but tuners could get confused if the old channel gets reused by a new station, while the old channel number is still in the first station's PSIP. (are YOU c
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Of course it helps that I have a directional antenna with amp.
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Look, no doubt MS screwed it up. But I suspect that Google will be working a few hardware companies who know what they are doing. Issue solved. Of course, getting the fcc to agree is still the real issue, and I am guessing that it will be fought by everybody else.
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By "less-than-spectacular results" do you mean that they merely failed, just not in a Vista sort of way?
And remember that Microsoft's trying something twice and failing provides no evidence against its feasibility. Using the white space requires absolutely playing nice with others, only using what's genuinely available, and being sensitive to others' use of spectrum. This means being respectful of use
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What Google offers is the ability to deliver an advertisement that is customized down to the level of the individual user. To achieve this, they collect data on individual users by offering a wide array of "free" services.
If this is successful, I can only assume that it will be far more profitable than traditional, blanket advertising (i.e. it will cost a company far less to acquire a customer with Google ads than with any other service).
Google isn't quite there yet, but as far as I can tell, th
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I'm looking to buy a new computer, right now there are 4 forms of marketing that can 'get' to me.
Radio: COME TO LOW BOBS CAR EMPORIUM. Not looking for cars.
TV: Tampax, for those times you need to be dry. Not looking (or ever looking) for Tampax
Internet: PUNCH THE MONKEY WIN A FREE CREDIT REPORT. I don't care about my credit
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I like untargeted advertising. There's a much greater chance that at random, I'd click a link for something interesting (well, I don't, but other folks apparently do) than I would for somethi
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I guess I would have put it less bluntly, but no, it's not just you. It's now 11 years since Google was established and in that time they have done the usual corporate consolidation and synergy technologies thing. Their core busine
Re:GOOG is OOLD news (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh I don't know about that. They went through a stage search returns being buried in junk pages. That's gone now, or substantially so. Certainly I no longer have the problems I used to.
You're sort of making the assumption that the internet is static, so google aren't moving.
What's really happening is the internet is a constantly seething morass of junk, exploits, and bot created pages who's sole intent is to gain control of your machine. In the face of that I'm surprised google still manage to sift through the shart and produce useful results.
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In fact, that blog is on my list and it seems like they are always coming up with extras to add into their search. Little extra things you can click on when the search results in a stock symbol or dated item.
Also, have you taken a look at Google labs experimental search?
I'm not saying some comp
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Maybe it's just me, but Google seems to be this huge juggernaut of mediocrity and rehashed advertising.
And a provider of search.
... is any of this sinking in?
And a provider of email services.
And a provider of chat services.
And a provider of shared calendaring services.
And a provider of domain-wide hosting of the above.
And a provider of web-based mapping tools.
And a supporter of numerous Open Source software projects.
And one of the movers and shakers in the press for green technology.
And the only search giant to refuse a federal request for all search records.
And
When people say, "Google just does advertisin
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When people say, "Google just does advertising," what they're really saying is, "what has Google done for me this week that I didn't know about last week."
No, what they're saying is that the only way Google makes hard cash is by selling advertising space. Nothing on your list makes them any money.
Of course making money isn't the most important thing in life. Unless you're a publicly listed company with shareholders to please. Which they are.
Now they're public it's inevitable that Sergei and Larry's little projects are going to become vehicles to sell more ad space. The fact that they make life slightly more interesting to the rest of us is irrelevant to (mo
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what they're saying is that the only way Google makes hard cash is by selling advertising space.
False.
It's true that this is the bulk of their revenue, but given that they have other for-pay services, and I've worked for companies that are customers of those services, so I'm going to have to disagree with you.
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With ads through out the search.
Which displays ads through out.
I may have to give this one to you, but since I use it through Google Mail, once again more ads.
I had to login cause its been a while, but here there was no ads, kudos to them.
Using the standard edition we also get to see some ads.
when I was kid (Score:5, Funny)
Don't take that away google. Think of the children.
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Johnny: What's that -- I think it's a boob!!
Timmy: Nope, just some dude's shoulder. Maybe next time, Johnny.
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Kid 2: "Who cares about channel 99? I can get Natalie Portman with Hot Grits on channel 98.5!"
Already been done? (Score:1, Funny)
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Re:Already been done? (Score:4, Informative)
Each of these repositioning takes time and the signal transmitted in this period is ignored by the TV (since the gun is turned off). Teletext works by encoding digital data in the signal during this period. You can only transmit a small amount of data in this period, but you can do it every frame and it will be buffered inside the receiver.
[1] Colour TV is slightly more complicated.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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So are the digital channels being moved from the gaps between the current analog stations to other frequencies? Or are these "micro frequencies" inbetween everything, and if so, why weren't they included in the original auction? The way the article paints it, it sounds like there's Very Large Swaths to be siezed still, and that google is So Clever for noticing these before everyone else. I feel like
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Get your biggest competitor for bandwidth to spend all of their money on the spectrum you don't want by executing a feint in that direction, and then taking over the spectrum you really wanted.
It's almost like someone who reads those business books that are based on military strategy actually figured out how to apply the military concepts to competition...
Or maybe they read one of those "you can do it! Just visualize!" books and then visualized a kick-ass business tactic...
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But, this White Space spectrum thing reminds me of when advertisers tried to take the "microsoft" desktop in the fringe areas of the screen display. Then, microsoft went ape-shit and made the usual threats, rants, and eternal damnation speeches and got the competitors to relent.
On my old Gateway 2000 CrystalScan display here at work there is STILL a black border around the windoze
Re:Sun Tzu (Score:1)
Those kinds of books have lots to say about life in general.
More of this kind of thing can be found in the writings of Macheavelli, Clauswitz and Herman Kahn.
'Macheavellian' is a compliment, and cool clear thinking even about the horrible is the best way to mitigate it.
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I have one of those! Great, compact monitors with good color that lasts forever.
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But, i'd rather have a 19" or 20+" flatscreen to get that cyclotron or magnet off my desk. 20" behind and 20" to the left of my partition sits the president, and if i fire up the monitor, it disrupts his LCD. He jokes, "Oh, my pace maker", sometimes. At least i keep it on energy save to shut off after 30 minutes of inactivity.
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I am not particularly fond of MIMO but what precludes its use at 700 MHz? The 1/4 wave distance is about 4.2 inches so it would be inconvenient for most mobile devices but not for fixed installations.
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My own experiences with multipath and fading (I used to do a lot of VHF and UHF transmitter hunting with my own equipment) lead me to believe operation down to almost 6 meters would be possi
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That being said, designing MIMO antennas on a mobile (or any similarly sized object) at 2.4 - 2.5 GHz is quite eas
Sure, that'll work..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just like WiMAX works so well
Just like Earthlink, master of all that's good, wireless, and now nearly bankrupt might think.
Sure, software-defined radios might be nice. But let's put in real freaking fibre instead of still another plan to screw telcos/cellular carriers. If Google needs more bandwidth for YouTube, let them finally invest in the infrastructure to deliver it, not 'convenient' short-term wireless ploys. Egads.
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And anyway it makes sense: the Internet is a shared resource, and there are a lot more opportunities for competi
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Worse, there are no usable models for MAN distribution of wireless that make economic sense
It's a simple enough idea (Score:5, Informative)
Additionally, there are methods to use a small footprint in the WiFi band to herd the small signals between tv channels. It would look like frequency hopping, require much smaller signal strength, and would cause negligible interference to broadcast television. Simpler still is to allow the user to input the television channels they do watch so that interference is even more remote. If you can steal (locally only) use of channels that are not used at all in the area (how many stations are on channel 63 or 42?), there is literally TONS of bandwidth to use, and all of it at a better frequency range for non-line-of-sight transmissions. That is to say; better signal quality at lower signal strengths.
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"I literally laughed my head off."
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The problem is that the FCC likes to put restrictions in place on frequency, and on power. Since the UHF bandwidth now has a new owner, it's up to the new owner to decide what gets broadcasted there. Saying things like the google device will voluntarily avoid channels that are alrea
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I wonder if the whitespace compiler will work... (Score:3, Funny)
I used to have a native x86 whitespace compiler, but I never could read my code.
Spectrum Fragmentation (Score:2)
White Noise? (Score:1)
Perhaps Google has no real engineers working for them after all.
Re:White Noise? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps Google engineers are just smarter than you are :-)
Re:Google is already Old Media (Score:4, Informative)
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Another Old media trick. Buy your competitors. Make them look like another entity.
Well, actually that's pretty much business as war theory. But you will soon be seeing YouTube looking less like Google, I suspect, when in fact it *is* more like Google.
It's not just consolidation. Deeper than that.
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It is only a matter of time before something like MySpace or YouTube can directly monetize their offering, and Google shares drop another increment.
Another Old media trick. Buy your competitors. Make them look like another entity.
But, they don't, as far as ownership and stock shares go. Both are under google now.
So, when youtube can directly monetize their offering, how will google shares drop instead of rise?
When google makes more money, stock goes up. So when google (youtube) makes more money, stocks should still go up.
Am I right? I fear im missing something obvious here...
This just might be a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
The only big problem left to solve before true high speed access would be available to nearly everyone is the method of distribution. Using existing service wiring is problematic. Telephone wires aren't adequate due to bandwidth and signal / noise problems. Running networking over power wiring is not workable; it has all the problems of using the phone wiring but much, much worse. Running networking over the cable TV systems is the most functional - but cable doesn't go to every town and house and not all cable systems are compatible.
There's been a push to "wire" the country with glass fiber. They've even got it all the way to the house in some areas. As they build out the fiber networks they'll gradually reach more and more customers. But there's a BIG problem here: there's a huge number of houses and apartments to cover. The phone and electric systems grew up with the country, as each new home / subdivision was created these services were connected; essentially, the phone company took 100 years to get wiring to every residence.
To start out now and try to connect every residence - the magnitude of this problem is staggering. Assuming 100 million residences, if the army of installers could run fiber to and connect 10,000 residences every day - it'd take over 27 years. And that assumes the installers would be working 7 days per week. I'm not even going to try to estimate the cost of doing this.
If workable and reliable long-range wireless networking is developed / proven - and there's RF bandwidth that it can use - this could connect large number of residences inexpensively and quickly. Just plug your network cable into the "network radio" and you'd be online; no army of installers required. This would make it possible to make high speed access available to almost everyone in much, much less than 27 years.
I'm glad to see that Google is putting their resources behind making this a reality. It's not going to be easy to make this kind of technology work reliably but there's some very bright people at Google and if anyone can find a solution they can.
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Wanna buy an ISP?
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A white space issue? (Score:2)
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It is a lot easier (especially with the new digital ATSC) to detect the presence of a carrier than to get a usable signal from the carrier. The white space devices will be able to detect a carrier at least as faint as -114dBm, which is very fringe indeed. It is also likely that your deep fringe antenna will be sufficiently directional so as to avoid the low-power signal, and that ATSC reception would not be affected by interference from a non-ATSC signal.
I would also expect that there would be a way to con
Battle between FCC & Broadcasters against WSD (Score:2, Interesting)
It is the big $$ broadcasting companies and the regulators that are opposing the WSD because they fear any competition.
Check out the lecture at http://videolectures.net/kiblix07_meinrath_wtrr/ [videolectures.net] (the WSD part starts at around 42:00)
Dangerous for PAs (Score:3, Interesting)
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Can we stop calling it Wi-Fi yet? (Score:1)