{"id":4004,"date":"2012-02-03T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T18:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=4004"},"modified":"2012-02-03T11:01:20","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T18:01:20","slug":"super-wi-fi-blankets-first-county-in-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=4004","title":{"rendered":"‘Super Wi-Fi’ Blankets First County in U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

A campaign to free up spectrum hoarded by old media bears fruit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CHRISTOPHER MIMS 01\/26\/2012<\/p>\n

New Hanover County, North Carolina, just rolled out Super Wi-Fi, which is its actual name, not just a patronizing euphemism I’m deploying because I think you can’t handle “a new Wi-Fi standard operating in the ‘white spaces’ between 50-700Mhz, where previously only television stations were allowed to transmit.”<\/p>\n

Aside: here’s a very accessible primer on what Super Wi-Fi is and why you should care about it.<\/p>\n

This could mean super fast wireless connections for the county’s residents, and also the potential to connect to Wi-Fi towers that are miles distant\u2014something that is impossible with conventional Wi-Fi, mostly because the power of normal Wi-Fi transmitters are limited by the FCC.<\/p>\n

From the press release:<\/p>\n

Wilmington was the first city in 2008 to make the successful transition from Analog to Digital Television. As a result of this transition, the city had early access to the broadcast spectrum \u201cwhite spaces\u201d that emerged from the shift. These white spaces are ideal for Super Wi-Fi deployment since their physical properties allow for stronger signals that provide better penetration and allow Wi-Fi to travel further distances than more common, traditional Wi-Fi networks. A subsequent trial of the Super Wi-Fi network took place in 2011.<\/p>\n

There’s a bunch more in the release about how Super Wi-Fi is the greatest thing since penicillin, but I have to temper the hype a bit by referring to an earlier piece in Tech Review by Scott Woolley that notes that Super Wi-Fi can’t really live up to its full potential, at least as a medium for long distance connectivity.<\/p>\n

Under government rules designed to protect local TV stations from harmful interference, high-power Super Wi-Fi signals (up to four watts), which can travel for miles, must give TV channels a wide berth. Low-power Super Wi-Fi signals (less than 40 milliwatts) face fewer restrictions.<\/p>\n

The result is that while there are 48 channels potentially available for long-range Super Wi-Fi, zero or one channel will be available for long-range use in the places most Americans live\u2014so Super Wi-Fi networks significantly bigger than today’s home Wi-Fi networks won’t be practical.<\/p>\n

So it turns out that most of the spectrum that the FCC was trying to free up for Super Wi-Fi remains unavailable. That hasn’t stopped companies like Microsoft from creating WiFi hardware that could take advantage of a theoretically more-liberal policy on the part of the FCC, so hopefully this is one case in which the technology will push lawmakers to act.<\/p>\n

For more on this rollout, check out New Hanover County, N.C., First in Nation to Deploy \u2018Super Wi-Fi\u2019 Network.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/blog\/mimssbits\/27531\/?p1=blogs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A campaign to free up spectrum hoarded by old media bears fruit. CHRISTOPHER MIMS 01\/26\/2012 New Hanover County, North Carolina, just rolled out Super Wi-Fi, which is its actual name, not just a patronizing euphemism I’m deploying because I think you can’t handle “a new Wi-Fi standard operating in the ‘white spaces’ between 50-700Mhz, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wifi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4006,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions\/4006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}