Close Menu
TechCentralTechCentral

    Subscribe to the newsletter

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube LinkedIn
    WhatsApp Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    • News

      The algorithm will sing now: why musicians should be worried about AI

      20 June 2025

      Sita hits back at critics, promises faster, automated procurement

      20 June 2025

      The transatlantic race to create the first television

      20 June 2025

      Listed: All the MVNOs in South Africa – 2025 edition

      19 June 2025

      TCS | Tech, townships and tenacity: Spar’s plan to win with Spar2U

      19 June 2025
    • World

      Watch | Starship rocket explodes in setback to Musk’s Mars mission

      19 June 2025

      Trump Mobile dials into politics, profit and patriarchy

      17 June 2025

      Samsung plots health data hub to link users and doctors in real time

      17 June 2025

      Beijing’s chip champions blacklisted by Taiwan

      16 June 2025

      China is behind in AI chips – but for how much longer?

      13 June 2025
    • In-depth

      Meta bets $72-billion on AI – and investors love it

      17 June 2025

      MultiChoice may unbundle SuperSport from DStv

      12 June 2025

      Grok promised bias-free chat. Then came the edits

      2 June 2025

      Digital fortress: We go inside JB5, Teraco’s giant new AI-ready data centre

      30 May 2025

      Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s big bet to out-Apple Apple

      22 May 2025
    • TCS

      TCS+ | AfriGIS’s Helen Hulett on how tech can help resolve South Africa’s water crisis

      18 June 2025

      TechCentral Nexus S0E2: South Africa’s digital battlefield

      16 June 2025

      TechCentral Nexus S0E1: Starlink, BEE and a new leader at Vodacom

      8 June 2025

      TCS+ | The future of mobile money, with MTN’s Kagiso Mothibi

      6 June 2025

      TCS+ | AI is more than hype: Workday execs unpack real human impact

      4 June 2025
    • Opinion

      South Africa pioneered drone laws a decade ago – now it must catch up

      17 June 2025

      AI and the future of ICT distribution

      16 June 2025

      Singapore soared – why can’t we? Lessons South Africa refuses to learn

      13 June 2025

      Beyond the box: why IT distribution depends on real partnerships

      2 June 2025

      South Africa’s next crisis? Being offline in an AI-driven world

      2 June 2025
    • Company Hubs
      • Africa Data Centres
      • AfriGIS
      • Altron Digital Business
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Altron Group
      • Arctic Wolf
      • AvertITD
      • Braintree
      • CallMiner
      • CYBER1 Solutions
      • Digicloud Africa
      • Digimune
      • Domains.co.za
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • Incredible Business
      • iONLINE
      • Iris Network Systems
      • LSD Open
      • NEC XON
      • Network Platforms
      • Next DLP
      • Ovations
      • Paracon
      • Paratus
      • Q-KON
      • SevenC
      • SkyWire
      • Solid8 Technologies
      • Telit Cinterion
      • Tenable
      • Vertiv
      • Videri Digital
      • Wipro
      • Workday
    • Sections
      • AI and machine learning
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud services
      • Contact centres and CX
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Electronics and hardware
      • Energy and sustainability
      • Enterprise software
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Lifestyle
      • Motoring
      • Public sector
      • Retail and e-commerce
      • Science
      • SMEs and start-ups
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Events
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home » Alistair Fairweather » The 31 000 square kilometre hotspot

    The 31 000 square kilometre hotspot

    By Editor3 August 2011
    Twitter LinkedIn Facebook WhatsApp Email Telegram Copy Link
    News Alerts
    WhatsApp

    [By Alistair Fairweather]

    Anyone with a laptop or a smartphone has a love-hate relationship with Wi-Fi. When it works it’s like magic, but too often you find yourself just out of range, or struggling to remember which password you used with this or that hotspot. But imagine if a Wi-Fi hotspot could completely cover an entire city.

    What sounds like science fiction is quickly becoming fact. Yesterday the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published their newest wireless standard — wireless regional area network (WRAN), or IEEE 802.22 in geek speak.

    Using this standard, a single “hotspot” could cover over 31 000 square kilometres. That means a well-placed mast could cover the whole of Johannesburg and some of Pretoria. But the really brilliant thing about WRAN is that it uses leftover pieces of frequency known as “white space”.

    It works like this: everyone who broadcasts a signal must stick to their allocated frequency or all the signals will disrupt each other and customers will be unable to “tune in”. And so the air around us was carved up (or licensed) long ago by the TV and radio broadcasters and, more recently, the cellphone networks.

    When the frequencies that TV broadcasters use were allocated, wireless technology was far less precise and reliable than it is today. The industry chose to leave gaps between frequency bands — buffers to prevent one channel from interfering with another. That’s what you’re seeing when you tune a TV; the static between channels is the white space.

    WRAN allows us, in theory, to use that wasted space to transmit data wirelessly at speeds comparable with the fastest 3G networks. Even better, these TV frequencies have many advantages over traditional 3G. A single broadcast station can cover 12 to 70 times more area, and the frequencies penetrate buildings and other obstacles much more efficiently. The TV guys clearly got the pick of the litter back when frequencies were doled out.

    But while we may dream of a single, citywide hotspot, the best use of WRAN would be to offer broadband Internet access to previously ignored rural areas at the lowest possible cost. That’s almost certainly what the Americans will do with it, and it makes even more sense in Africa and the rest of the developing world.

    Perhaps the most exciting thing about white space, at least in the US, is that it’s currently unlicensed. Just as you don’t need a broadcast license to set up your own Wi-Fi hotspot, you won’t need one for WRAN, even though you’re covering provinces rather than households.

    Hang on, won’t that mean that hundreds of WRAN cowboys quickly end up interfering with each other? Not if the standard works properly. It uses a system called “cognitive radio” to automatically adjust to surrounding frequencies and therefore avoid any such disruptions. Magic, right?

    But this silver cloud does have a fairly thick lead lining. Firstly, it will require a whole new generation of devices to use WRAN. Your standard laptop won’t be able to pick up the new signal, and neither will any smartphone or 3G dongle currently on the market. So we not only need to cover those rural areas, we also need to kit them out with currently nonexistent receivers.

    And then there’s the fact that many devices already use the same white space for smaller scale applications. Wireless microphones, intercoms and in-ear monitors all use these frequencies. Blasting an area with WRAN signal would make them effectively unusable.

    Nor is it as cheap as it sounds. The reach and penetration of the WRAN signal come at a price: power. TV broadcast masts are typically enormous and use huge amounts of electricity. This is not something a weekend geek could slap together — this is something that needs funding and a business plan.

    Finally, the US’s regulators were willing to approve WRAN because they had already shifted their whole country to digital broadcasting standards. This is part of what makes cognitive radio — once a pipe dream — practical for the first time. Since our own digital migration is already running years behind schedule, we shouldn’t expect widespread use of WRAN in SA before 2015 at the very earliest.

    For all those drawbacks, WRAN shows enormous promise. One of technology’s great strengths is its ability to make more efficient use of existing resources. There’s something very neat and satisfying about using a previously wasted space to help the less fortunate. Let’s hope our regulators feel the same way.

    • Alistair Fairweather is digital platforms manager at the Mail & Guardian
    • Visit the Mail & Guardian Online, the smart news source
    • Subscribe to our free daily newsletter
    • Follow us on Twitter or on Facebook


    Alistair Fairweather IEEE
    Subscribe to TechCentral Subscribe to TechCentral
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email Copy Link
    Previous ArticleGrowing outrage over new monitor tax
    Next Article Beyond just talk?

    Related Posts

    FNB backs down on password decision after backlash

    20 August 2019

    FNB’s new password policy makes its customers less secure

    20 August 2019

    IEEE lifts ban on Huawei researchers

    3 June 2019
    Company News

    Making IT happen: how Trade Link gears up to enable SA retail strategies

    20 June 2025

    Why parents choose CambriLearn for online education

    19 June 2025

    Disrupt first, ask questions later – the uncomfortable truth about incident response

    18 June 2025
    Opinion

    South Africa pioneered drone laws a decade ago – now it must catch up

    17 June 2025

    AI and the future of ICT distribution

    16 June 2025

    Singapore soared – why can’t we? Lessons South Africa refuses to learn

    13 June 2025

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2025 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.