New Wi-Fi, to cover 62 miles. Kills HD Radio!

[pocket-radio]

New Wi-Fi, to cover 62 miles. Kills HD Radio!

The internet can now travel through the air, without training wheels! The 802.22 standard covers 62 miles, uses the new broadcast spectrum that became available when analog TV’s came to an end. And operates in ranges from 54MHz to 698MHz which are perfect for long distance transmissions.

The fact is, it's only a matter of time before these networks will crisscross America, making the internet ubiquitous. Internet access and bandwidth will now be plentiful!

The question in my mind is obvious. Why would anyone want or need an HD receiver? When listeners can hear HD streams from their favorite wifi enabled device.
Yes, some "cheap and lazy people" will refuse to pay for access. But I could imagine a time when cities would offer free access for a small fee. Either way, in America supply and demand still works, thus driving down the price for internet access! And broadcasters should be excited too! AM/FM receivers could rely back real time listening stats, making Arbitron services useless.

http://techshiraj.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-80222-wi-fi-standard-provides-62.html

 

[local oscillator]

It's unfortunate that this 802.22 standard has been misunderstood and spread all over the Internet by folks like Mark Ramsey. This system is viable only in low density areas, operates point-to-point and is not portable. It is essentially the service currently provided by wireless internet service providers. Nothing revolutionary or worth getting excited about. As much as I would like to see HD radio killed, this isn't going to be much help.

 

[KeithE4]

It's unfortunate that this 802.22 standard has been misunderstood and spread all over the Internet by folks like Mark Ramsey. This system is viable only in low density areas, operates point-to-point and is not portable. It is essentially the service currently provided by wireless internet service providers. Nothing revolutionary or worth getting excited about. As much as I would like to see HD radio killed, this isn't going to be much help.

Besides, the concept of municipal or other wide-area wireless internet is pretty much dead outside of cellphone 3G/4G providers. It was tried in many locations. It failed in almost all cases.

This technology could be used to provide residential internet service in rural areas (point-to-point, with an outside, directional TV antenna required), but I can't see it ever being used for mobile services anywhere, or in large metro areas at all, since there aren't enough unused TV channels available in large cities to make it work properly with thousands to millions of users.

 

[SirRoxalot]

There's alway one big problem with this kind of technology. Sure, you can always stick up a tower, plaster it with antennae, and cover 62 miles in all directions with plenty of signal. The big problem is responding to that signal from a small unit or network interface. That little tiny antenna, and micro-powered transmitter just ain't gonna get back to that big tower.

Of course, you could use that kind of range to backhaul short-range repeaters.

BTW, that doesn't mean that HD isn't dead....

 

[arnoldevns]

I'm not sure it's needed. I can listen to my favorite Live 365 station on my phone as I drive all over the area in my car. Beautiful sound and no drop outs usually. I am not sure anything more is needed to kill off HD. The current mobile internet system is more than enough, in my opinion.

 

[Bongwater]

But it's worth looking into. The technical limitations currently may only be what's current and not an indicator of it's future. I see this development as a GIANT leap forward.......

 

[SirRoxalot]

The intent is to provide wireless backhaul to rural areas where it's not fiscally feasible to run fibre. The capacity of twisted pair beyond 6000 ft. isn't enough to feed a cell site, or even a single home looking for high-speed Internet and HD TV.

22MB ain't exactly fat-city when it comes to bandwidth, but it's enough to provide several cell sites with 4G capability. That will allow some rural areas to emerge into the 21st century, and allow extension of high-speed Internet into many of those blank areas on coverage maps.

 

[Chuck]

but I can't see it ever being used for mobile services anywhere, or in large metro areas at all, since there aren't enough unused TV channels available in large cities to make it work properly with thousands to millions of users.

Evidentially, you haven't been keeping up with the current wish list from the FCC. The current Chairman has told TV broadcasters that he would like them to "voluntarily surrender" a large portion of their current spectrum. He wants to use it for Internet connectivity. Most TV broadcasters are really pissed, since they just spent millions moving to new frequencies and converting to digital TV.

If this comes to pass, the ultimate beneficiaries will probably be the telecom industry. It sounds like a spectrum grab to me. If you are in doubt about their intentions, just follow the money....

 

[tomservo]

Much ado about nothing. The same rural areas that this is supposed to "bring into the 21st century" haven't even been brought into the 20th in some cases, where we rural folks were long ago promised seamless broadband 3G from our cell phone providers.

Intent is all well and good, but these things will only be built where they can make money - in more densely populated areas. So where is densely populated but lacking HSI?

Getting a fat pipe from a tall tower way off is one thing, but getting a decent upload speed back to it is another. Consumers have, by and large, rejected satellite internet for this reason. Like this new wifi spec, it requires a special antenna (satellite dish aimed by a professional since it also transmits). Don't think for a minute that you can just throw up an old Radio Shack Colorguard or whatever they were called and get HSI in your home now. It will require a special and very expensive two-way system to be installed.

(IIRC early satellite broadband required a phone connection for uploads, something else people roundly rejected from that debacle.)

This is not going to kill HD radio. It's not even going to kill dialup.

 

[spunker88]

Ranges that far can't be done in a portable device right now. Cell phones are limited in range due to the relatively weak transmission power of the phone, external antennas may help a bit, but the FCC or whoever doesn't want too much power that close to your head, yet there was once 5000kw analog tv stations on the same frequencies as some of today's cell service.

This sounds like it would be for providing internet to areas without fiber lines. Coming from a rural area I know parts that still can only get dial up access. DSL will only travel so far on regular phone lines. There is satellite internet but last I knew the speeds weren't that decent, there is a lot of latency due to it being satellite based, and your given limited bandwidth. But for some people this is the only option.

IMO analog FM kills HD radio. 62 miles is a quite piratical range for a 50 or 100kw signal. It may not be city grade, but it'll be just fine for most people especially in a rural area.

 

[Darth_vader]

Re: New Wi-Fi, to cover 62 miles. Probably won't even put a dent in IBAC!

F.Y.I., Ramsey's marketroid fluff-piece article is on http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/94735/mark-ramsey-a-62-mile-reach-for-wi-fi (filed under "Net News" for 2011 August 06).

Personally I'm a bit skeptical about his claims of the standard having "a total range of 12,000 square miles from a single base station" if it's coming off a terrestrial tower, given the current state of the laws of physics and geology and all. Unless it's all going through a satellite and that 12 000 miles accounts for part of the distance between the Earth's surface and the Clarke belt, then I could see it possibly being feasible.....but even then, I'd be scratching my head.

 

[w9wi]

I think the problem frequently overlooked in this kind of wide-area wireless Internet scheme is the problem of a shared pipe. 22 MBPS, but everyone within the coverage area of the node receives the *same* 22MBPS of data. You're sharing that pipe.

As for the backhaul, not only is there the issue of limited backhaul power, but there's also the issue of avoiding "collisions". What happens when you, and the guy on the other side of the ridge, both decide to send a byte of data at the same time? Do your transmissions clobber each other? There are ways of avoiding the collisions, but they reduce throughput.

This isn't a service that's going to see widescale deployment in major cities. It's something that *might* show up in small isolated rural communities. Maybe, the same kinds of places that used to be served by TV translators.

 

[kenglish]

So, if I and only I (me, myself) want to listen to a stream of Radio NoWheresVille, I can call it up on the internet, and people within a 60+ mile radius get to have it come to their phones and computers, wanted or not. It takes up the same bandwidth, whether anybody else listens or not. (One-to-one data transmission).
And, if another person likes it, they can call up another stream...again taking up more bandwidth.

Talk about a waste of spectrum! Even a full-power radio station wouldn't tie up a channel for one listener.

 

[kenglish]

Even on a large reservation (like the Navajo Nation), it's going to be hard to find a place where you need that kind of range between cities. Maybe the "bigger, better, newer, faster, more extreme" pundits of the industry need to look at realities, and promote the idea of having fiber or microwave access to much smaller areas, where a reasonable UHF transmission system can serve a county or a few adjacent communities. But, that doesn't have the "hype"-ability of these absurd claims they currently make.

 

[DaveBayArea]

So, if I and only I (me, myself) want to listen to a stream of Radio NoWheresVille, I can call it up on the internet, and people within a 60+ mile radius get to have it come to their phones and computers, wanted or not. It takes up the same bandwidth, whether anybody else listens or not. (One-to-one data transmission).
And, if another person likes it, they can call up another stream...again taking up more bandwidth.

Talk about a waste of spectrum! Even a full-power radio station wouldn't tie up a channel for one listener.

That's not true with UDP multicast. Any number of terminals can join a multicast group. The protocol has been used for years in the financial community to deliver real-time stock quotes to many terminals at once. The problem is, multicast is not generally supported by most ipv4 peering. But as networks convert to ipv6 (the new 802.22 stations will almost assuredly be ipv6, as cell phone networks are) they automatically support multicast groups.

Dave B.

 

[kenglish]

But, what kind of multicast group is it, if I'm the only one in that 62 mile radius that wants to listen to Radio NoWheresVille?
That's the point I'm making...how many totally unique streams of programming can fit in to a single transmission channel? They mentioned 22 MBpS. So, why take up a portion of that, over a huge area (62 miles in radius), to enable one customer? Much smaller cells would do nicely, even if they don't live up to the hype of "Wi-Fi on Steroids".

Radio and TV broadcasts already do a fine job of multi-user broadcasts...one transmitter to many thousands of receivers. They can take care of the masses, leaving plenty of bandwidth for the fans of the niche formats.

 

[Darth_vader]

Re: New Wi-Fi, to cover 62 miles. Won't even put a dent in IBAC!

On the other hand, this could make remote Part-15 broadcasting more feasible. Suppose John Q. Hick waaaaay out in the boonies has a laptop with 802-22 transceiver cartridge and an FM transmitter he built, and wants to transmit Radio Nowheresville over the air, sourced from its stream, from his little one-room shack in the farthest throes of the county. Consider it for the benefit of his deer-huntin' buddies already out in the field by 0330. So he does. No ADSL lines or co-ax cables to be found anywhere.

Seems reasonable enough.......

 

[local oscillator]

I think some of you are missing a major point here. This is NOT a mobile/portable system; it's fixed-point to fixed-point. Connectivity is through high-gain antennas mounted on rooftops. This has nothing to do with direct connectivity to smartphones and iPads. That's one of the reasons the headlines about 802.22 all over the internet are so misleading.

 

[Starbucks]

So far it sounds like WI-MAX sounds like the only official mode of wide coverage area. As far as proven, it has as much as a 30 mile asymetrical coverage. A few cities like Minneapolis, Philadelphia,etc. already had has a network as much as 15 mile radius around colleges or downtown areas. The town I live in was planning a 7-10 mile radius for a WIFI network for outdoors, and that never got set up. The only other point is placing low power cells transmitting from a phone poles along the higways for long mobile coverages. But how much would that cost? A company in the Silicon Valley tried that as early as 1999-2000 , and went under.

 

[tomservo]

That's the point I'm making...how many totally unique streams of programming can fit in to a single transmission channel? They mentioned 22 MBpS. So, why take up a portion of that, over a huge area (62 miles in radius), to enable one customer? Much smaller cells would do nicely, even if they don't live up to the hype of "Wi-Fi on Steroids".

I think you guys are missing the point of this. In theory it may reach a 62 mile radius but more than likely it would be scaled down and broken into cells for larger-but-rural community use. Just like cell phones are now. GSM has a theoretical limit of something like 32 km (due to timing issues) but cells rarely are allowed that sort of range.

The realistic use for a full-bore max coverage 802.22 site covering 62 miles would likely be in extremely rural areas of, say, Wyoming or New Mexico, where in 62 square miles you might only have 50 people signing up to use the service. All of them could share 22 Mbps and get roughly 512 kbps at peak use, which is almost 20 times more than dialup. It would then be more cost effective to hook up on massive tower site on a mesa or mountain versus one small site for 6-10 people within eyesight of a shorter, more compact cell.

Although video (especially high def video) is a bandwidth-intensive use of spectrum, streaming radio isn't. It's funny that I'm arguing FOR this now after arguing against the same thing using 3/4G cell networks, but radio really doesn't take up THAT much bandwidth. I've got close to 20 hours of streaming a distant radio station on my cell phone, and the new data sniffer I'm using shows it has consumed about 220 MB of data so far. That's split between a majority use of 48 kbps AAC from talk and music stations and one two hour session with a 128 kbps music stream from Sweden. Knock out the high bitrate Swedish cast and that 220 MB would drop considerably, with little change in sound quality versus HD.