Chelmsford, MA (PRWEB) January 07, 2015 -- The WhiteSpace Alliance (WSA®), a global recognized industry organization enabling sharing of underutilized wireless spectrum, today announced the first Television WhiteSpace pilot program in South America. The program will begin in Q2, 2015.
The test is being carried out in association with the Brazil Ministry of Communications, ANATEL, the nation’s telecommunications regulatory authority, and Inatel (National Institute of Telecommunications), a research, development and educational institution specializing in telecommunications. “It is critical that we bring the benefits of the Internet to all our citizens”, said Mr. Maximiliano Martinhão, Brazil’s Secretary of Telecommunications. “The use of a new spectrum sharing technology can serve as a model for providing reliable, low cost broadband access in rural and remote areas of Brazil. It can also fuel new Internet of Things applications. Thereby, this test is important to ensure the use of the whitespace without harmful interference in the broadcasting services.” The pilot will be conducted in the Santa Rita do Sapucai district, a leading technology center in Brazil.
The emerging wireless technology takes advantage of underutilized television channels (“whitespace”) and uses those empty channels to provide wireless broadband access. The powerful propagation characteristics of VHF/UHF signals make them ideal for use in rural areas where wired infrastructure is not cost effective to deploy, and vegetation makes line-of-sight wireless solutions unreliable. Use of advanced database technologies enables dynamic, highly efficient identification and management of available channels.
“The WhiteSpace Alliance continues to play a leadership role in developing and promoting innovative wireless solutions to bridge the Digital Divide”, said Dr. Apurva N. Mody, Chairman of the WhiteSpace Alliance. “Our pilot program in Brazil is a significant opportunity to demonstrate the value of intelligent spectrum sharing in accelerating broadband deployment in this emerging economy.”
WhiteSpace Alliance, developer of Wi-FAR™ and WSAConnect™ interoperability specifications, has a following of more than 200 major commercial, academic, government and regulatory organizations around the world. WSA member organizations benefit from access to technical specifications that decrease development costs; expanded access to global markets, regulators and government agencies; and ongoing marketing support at no additional cost. Consumers benefit from a multi-vendor, interoperable ecosystem that brings down the overall cost of broadband access. For more information on WhiteSpace Alliance, please visit http://www.WhiteSpaceAlliance.org
About WhiteSpace Alliance
The mission of the Whitespace Alliance (http://www.whitespacealliance.org/) is to promote the development, deployment and use of standards-based products and services as a means of providing broadband capabilities via WhiteSpace spectrum. By promoting the use of standards, the Alliance will enable companies to provide broadband connectivity at reasonable cost. The WSA will also act as an enabler of the emerging white spaces ecosystem by helping to put in place interoperability, conformance, and compliance testing to make sure that our member stakeholders get the needed information & collaborations to succeed both in the market place and with regulatory requirements. Interoperability specifications will allow multiple vendors to enter the market and help to reduce the costs for the consumers. WhiteSpace Alliance promotes the use of IEEE, 3GPP and IETF Standards for use in the WhiteSpaces.
WSA is a registered trademark of the WhiteSpace Alliance
Wi-FAR is a trademark of the WhiteSpace Alliance
WSAConnect is a trademark of the WhiteSpace Alliance
Bill Mello, White Space Alliance 1, +1 978.877.0051, [email protected]
SOURCE White Space Alliance 1
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