White-space puts Wi-Fi on steroids

Think of how Wi-Fi has made computing so much more convenient. It has untethered users from pesky cable connections to the internet, allowing them to wander around the home or office with laptop or tablet in hand, surfing the web, making free phone calls, sending files wirelessly to printers, video to tele­vision sets, and many more things. But what if Wi-Fi radio beams travelled not just a few hundred feet but stretched for several miles—and were unimpeded by trees, terrain and walls so that they could penetrate all the nooks and crannies within buildings? That is the promise of “white-space” wireless.

“White-space” is technical slang for television channels that were left vacant in one city so as not to interfere with TV stations broadcasting on adjacent channels in a neighbouring city. In the early days of television, America's broadcasting authorities reserved 50 or so channels for TV stations. But because of worries about interference, no metropolitan area has ever come close to using all 50 channels at its disposal. In rural areas, vacant channels (ie, white-space) have frequently amounted to 70% or more of the total bandwidth available for television broadcasting.