White-spaces spectrum used to bring broadband to small Va. town

A wireless broadband network in small rural Virginia community is officially launching today, using white spaces spectrum under an experimental license issued by the Federal Communications Commission.
The white-spaces network is bringing wireless Internet connectivity to Claudville, Va., said Rick Rotondo, a co-founder and chief marketing officer at Spectrum Bridge Inc., which designed and built the network. White spaces are unused spectrum between TV channels. The FCC in November said it would free up white spaces as an unlicensed use. Like most spectrum issues, white-spaces spectrum, which became available with the transition to digital TV, has been rife with controversy, pitting TV broadcasters and wireless microphone users afraid of interference against high-tech companies like Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. Wireless carriers were in favor of auctioning white spaces spectrum as licensed frequencies. The FCC decision allowed unlicensed devices embedded with spectrum-sensing, geolocation and database-access capabilities in TV white spaces. The database includes information on TV stations, cable TV facilities and wireless microphone venues so as to avoid degradation to their services. Spectrum-sensing-only devices will be subject to tougher regulatory and technical scrutiny before they can be marketed commercially.
“We installed it in less than a month,” said Rotondo. The network is averaging speeds between 700 kilobits per second to 1 Megabit of throughput, and can reach speeds of up to 2 Mbps, but is limited by backhaul constraints. The community has been trying to get high-speed Internet access for years, Rotondo said. The town with a population of about 900 sits at the gateway to the Blue Ridge Mountains and as such has a lot of foliage and rugged forest terrain. The none-line-of-site middle mile solution connects the backhaul to Wi-Fi hot spots in town.
“Earlier this year, Jonathan Large, a member of the Patrick County Board of Supervisors, testified before
the Subcommittee I chair about the need for broadband service in rural communities like Claudville,” said Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) , chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet in a prepared statement regarding the launch. “I hope that Claudville will become a model for delivering broadband services to more rural communities in a cost-effective manner in the future.”
Dell and Microsoft and the TDF Foundation, a VC-funded effort focused on communications, contributed computers and software to the community for the launch.
Rotondo said some people criticized the effort because they said few people in the small town even had computers, but Spectrum Bridge found that residents did have laptops and a surprising number of smartphones.The town’s caf