Today I came across an interesting article how the white space can be used for internet access in rural South Africa. There are trials in Cape Town (Western Cape) by Google.
Now, Microsoft will team up with University of Limpopo and also look into this ( Read the article on ZDNet).
With "white spaces" one implies frequency space that is allocated to some kind of service (TV, Radio, etc.) but not used allocated. Since the space is not used, it can then obviously be "hi-jacked" for other purposes. Such as for example internet communication and relaying of communication.
In our project we have been looking for ways to have a cheap way of communicating from our sensor stations to the central office (and back). We would like to avoid GSM because of them being rather power hungry and expensive. Could this be an option? As indicated in the article, ranges up to 5.4 km can be covered (metric version of 3 miles, one would presume). For example, in Mokwakwaila, we are not far away from a school and it would possibly be an option to install a communication bridge through their channel. It could also be interesting from an educational perspective to have the students use and understand the information on drought, soil moisture and weather prediction. There could be active labs to support this in the schools.
More information on the Cape Town trials are found here.
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