Chelmsford, MA (PRWEB) May 01, 2014 -- The WhiteSpace Alliance (WSA)™, a global industry organization enabling sharing of underutilized wireless spectrum, and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) today announced a partnership to conduct the first Television WhiteSpace pilot tests in India. The program will begin in Q2, 2014.
"Extending broadband Internet access, particularly to our large rural population, is critical to India's economic development”, said Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Professor and Head, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay. “This program will demonstrate the viability of sharing unused TV Band spectrum to dramatically accelerate that build-out.”
The pilot tests will use intelligent spectrum sharing to provide fixed wireless broadband services between Khamloli village in the Indian state of Maharashtra and its neighboring villages: Maswan, HaloliGanje, and Pargaon. Located about 100 km north of Mumbai city, these villages currently have very little access to the Internet. The villagers often have to travel several kilometers to fill examination forms, or to perform activities like online mobile recharge using the Internet. The pilot program aims at providing broadband access at selected locations within these villages. Broadband access within the village is expected to assist the villagers in their day to day activities.
The program was initiated through a major grant from the Ford Foundation and represents a unique collaboration among IIT Bombay, WhiteSpace Alliance and its member companies, and Tata Teleservices Ltd. “Dynamic allocation of available spectrum holds vast potential for accelerating broadband deployments”, said Dr. Apurva N. Mody, Chairman of the WhiteSpace Alliance. “TV whitespace solutions can help expand important e-education and e-health initiatives across the country.”
The emerging wireless technology takes advantage of underutilized television spectrum (“whitespace”) and uses that dormant spectrum 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 spectrum.
To view details of the pilot program, please visit http://www.whitespacealliance.org/Pilots
About WhiteSpace Alliance
WhiteSpace Alliance (WSA)™ (http://www.WhiteSpaceAlliance.org) is an international trade association enabling the emerging worldwide WhiteSpace ecosystem to deliver products and services that use the frequency bands which are unused or underutilized, and where spectrum sharing is allowed. WhiteSpace Alliance will collectively educate and seed the market to demonstrate the benefits of using WhiteSpaces. WSA has created the worldwide successful marketplace providing high efficiency spectrum sharing solutions. WhiteSpace Alliance solutions enable many new applications such as smart utility networks, internet of things, intelligent transportation and cognitive machine-to-machine. WSA specifications such as WSAConnect™, Wi-FAR™ that complement LTE-Advanced™, Wi-Fi™ and others, will demonstrate further enhancements in radio performance, interference mitigation and network capacity. WSA technologies promise high speed wireless access to many different market segments around the world.
For press inquiries, please contact WhiteSpace Alliance at press(at)WhiteSpaceAlliance(dot)org.
WhiteSpace Alliance Contact
Dr. Apurva N. Mody, +1 404-819-0314
Chairman, WhiteSpace Alliance
apurva.mody(at)WhiteSpaceAlliance(dot)org
WSA is a trademark of the WhiteSpace Alliance
Wi-FAR is a trademark of the WhiteSpace Alliance
WSAConnect is a trademark of the WhiteSpace Alliance
- Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
About Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay)
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, the second IIT to be set up in 1958, is recognized worldwide as a leader in the field of engineering education and research. It is reputed for the quality of its faculty and the outstanding calibre of students graduating from its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The institute has a total of 15 academic departments, ten centres, one school and four Interdisciplinary programmes. Over the last five decades, more than 42,000 engineers and scientists have graduated from the institute. It is served by more than 600 faculty members considered not only amongst the best within the country, but are also highly recognised in the world for achievements in the field of education and research. Today the Institute is recognized as one of the centres of academic excellence in the country. Over the years, there has been dynamic progress at IIT Bombay in both academic and research activities, including a parallel improvement in facilities and infrastructure to keep it on par with the best institutions in the world.
Visit: http://www.iitb.ac.in
Bill Mello, WhiteSpace Alliance, http://www.WhiteSpaceAlliance.org, +1 978.877.0051, [email protected]
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