Microsoft could help change the rural broadband game

With the following quote in an article posted at MIT’s Technology Review Ranveer Chandra, a Microsoft engineer, suggests that the current incumbent internet providers could be bypassed

“Imagine the potential if you could connect to your home [Internet] router from up to a mile,”

This can be achieved by the use of the unlicensed spectrum previously used by broadcast television, otherwise known as the white space. To do this Microsoft has been working with researchers at Harvard University to develop the protocols that would be needed to access this white space and apparently they had some serious success.

One of the big obstacles to using this spectrum is that it would have to comply with the FCC’s strict regulations when it comes to the white space. The main part is that use of the white space spectrum cannot interfere with its primary user which is usually a TV broadcaster.

And it’s not easy to predict which part of the spectrum that incumbent is using at any given time. It’s also tricky because wireless microphones, which operate in the same spectrum, can suddenly become active without warning, and even a single-packet transmission can cause audible interference.

Microsoft dealt with this by creating an “adaptive spectrum assignment algorithm” with which devices measure the spectrum around them and work with other gadgets to find available frequencies, much like laptops search for and identify Wi-Fi networks. If interference occurs, the devices move to a backup channel in a different frequency range. In Microsoft’s experiment, its devices would switch to the backup channel within 3 seconds of a wireless microphone being turned on.

Other researchers have already focused on the first step: finding a way to establish a single link between an access point and user device without interference. Microsoft made the next move, designing an entire network with an access point and multiple clients (like Wi-Fi), leaving for another day the task of tackling multiple access points.

Source – GigaOM :: Simon Juran – Microsoft Makes White-Spaces Breakthrough for Rural Broadband

One of the advantages, besides being free, is that this “White-Fi” has a longer range than our current 2.4GHz Wi-Fi which would give it an advantage in rural areas.