Enabling Broadband to Rural Areas Economically
Over the past couple of years there has been a lot of studies and activities that supports enhancing broadband reachability to the untapped population across the world. We have all heard the Google Balloon tests, and the SpaceX tests to deliver high speed broadband. We’ve also seen technologies such as microwave and VSAT to help in transmitting broadband to longer distances to capture the opportunities outside of cities. Many have proven difficult to deploy due to high costs, low reliability & efficiency in terms speed, but they all promise to evolve to a much superior technology in the future. Why is it important though, why go all the way to enable internet access everywhere?
[1]As of Q1 2020 from the internet world stats shows that the penetration of internet worldwide is around 58.7% hence more than 41.3% worldwide have no access to the internet at all. Which represents a major case to giants such as google, SpaceX, Microsoft onto how to make sure that they tap into these markets. It also represents a challenge for government onto how to make sure that everyone is able to get an access to the internet. We all can not deny the impact of internet in our lives, especially now during COVID 19 pandemic, having broadband internet has enabled us to achieve what was very impossible just 15 years ago. In fact the United Nations declared that internet is a Human Right back in 2016. After Water, Food, Electricity, internet is number 4. In order to equip, enable, and sustain economic growth in a country there must be means to allow internet access everywhere. Besides people, all other sectors now are in desperate needs to have high speed internet.
TV White Space Frequencies (TVWS) as a solution for Rural Area:
What is TVWS, well remember back in the 70s, 80s, 90s before digital access to TV channels we all use to have an antenna on top of our houses, where we rotated to find best TV signal to watch our favourite channels. The frequencies used for that are called VHF and UHF TV bands which ranges band between 50Mhz to 800Mhz (depending on the country), TVWS is within the 470Mhz to 790Mhz bands, these bands were used before as guard bands to mitigate interference on broadcasting[2].
Why is this band really interesting now for operators and ICTs globally? Because firstly, its not being used aggressively anymore and secondly it has very useful propagation characteristics i.e. it can travel for long distances and pass through obstacles such as trees, walls and even some hills. Which makes TVWS very beneficial when it comes to
§ rural broadband access
§ public hotspots
§ wireless LAN
§ multimedia distribution in the home
§ machine-to-machine communications.[3]
According to a study done by the Boston Consulting Group that was referenced as well on the Rural Broadband Strategy by Microsoft, the results showed that TVWS is the most efficient technology for delivering internet access to rural communities from 2 to 200 people per square mile and as the populations thins satellite becomes more efficient . This is clear in the image below what technology would be most efficient to roll out[4]
This study was done to find the best way to connect 23.4 million Americans in rurual areas that had no access to internet, and around 80% of that number can be covered by TVWS. From cost point of viwe the study also looked into what mix would in technology would be required to cover these areas, because using TVWS only might be very costly if intended to cover the 23.4 million populations. This is shown clear on the cost comparision vs technology shown in the image below where the technology mix has show 10% better cost optimization compared to going fully with TVWS.[5]
The IEEE defined an industry standard for TVWS called IEEE 802.11af, which is part of the Wi-Fi family. Since 802.11af uses lower frequencies (470 ~ 800 MHz) than the traditional Wi-Fi frequencies (2.5GHz or 5GHz), it achieves much better signal propagation performance. For this reason the 802.11af TVWS standard is also called “Super Wi-Fi”.[6]
These and a lot of other Microsoft studies since 2003 and pilots with Federal Communication Committees since 2008 has led the FCC to allow unlicensed access to TVWS under control of geolocation database. Since then several tests have been conducted in the UK in Cambridge in June 2011 which helped Ofcom set the regulations with regards to TVWS, and Singapore in April 2012, that also paved the way to set the regulation policies.
Aviacomm ,an international company specialized in buiding telecom technology, launched RF tranceivers that are designed for TVWS, and has already depolyed these services in the Philippines for schools.[7]
From broadband speeds point of view, the most common application of broadband over TVWS shows a speed of 23 Mbps download and 5 Mbps Upload, there are recent tests as well shows that broadband speeds on TVWS can reach download speeds up to 50 Mbps!!
Its obvious that a great deal of technology giants are increasing their efforts into innovating in this space, Microsoft Airband project is one ambitions work to provide internet across the US and as of the latest report shared in March 2020, commercial partnerships in several states have been established. The Airband project has reached 633 thousand unserved people in 2020 vs 24 thousand in 2018 and are expecting more to come this year as a result of several partnerships with ISPs across the country.[8]
Such experiences will need to be considered by other countries in the middle east, as there were some pilot projects conducted in 2017 between Adaptram and Oman Broadband Company via the local ISP Awasr that was completed successfully under the supervision of the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority[9] but haven’t moved forward into full commercialization and adaptation into rural area technologies. Other countries such as UAE, Saudi Arabia area also conducting pilot to measure how efficient this technology is. Only time will tell on the application and utilizations of the band in the region but different pilots now indicates that TVWS will be one band that will have high impact in the near future.
References:
[1] Internet World Stats- www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
[2] TV White Space for Rural Broadband Wireless Service https://www.aglmediagroup.com/tv-white-space-for-rural-broadband-wireless-service/
[3] UK moves towards dynamic access for TV white space spectrum https://www.unwiredinsight.com/2013/tv-white-space
[4] Rural Broadband Strategy Microsoft 2017 page 13 https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/2017/07/Rural-Broadband-Strategy-Microsoft-Whitepaper-FINAL-7-10-17.pdf
[5] Rural Broadband Strategy Microsoft 2017 page 13 https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/2017/07/Rural-Broadband-Strategy-Microsoft-Whitepaper-FINAL-7-10-17.pdf
[6] Aviacomm TV white Space for Broadband Wireless Access http://www.aviacomm.com/download/TV-White-Space-Super-Wi-Fi-for-Broadband-Wireless-Access.pdf
[7] Aviacomm TVWS Philippines school deployment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuNh2mS9Jv8
[8] Microsoft Airband: An annual update on connecting rural America https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/03/05/update-connecting-rural-america/
[9] https://www.adaptrum.com/Newsroom/Press/Oman-First-TVWS-Deployment-in-Middle-East