Connecting the unconnected in developing countries has been a major goal by the Tech Giants of our world today. Facebook just joined Microsoft in a West African White Space Broadband Project. The two companies have come together to provide wireless connectivity to students in Ghana, West Africa with Microsoft’s White Space Broadband and Facebook’s drone-toting internet.org initiative.
The pilot scheme falls under Microsoft’s 4Afrika program. It’s based on a commercial deal between Microsoft and local ISP Spectralink Wireless and will see wireless coverage installed across the campuses and student hostels of All Nations University College and Koforidua Polytechnic. This coverage will come from a mix of technologies, including white space – Ghana is in fact the only country in West Africa so far that has given the go-ahead for white space broadband, something that Microsoft and Google are lobbying furiously for across the continent.
White space broadband effectively gathers up and glues together the little buffer gaps between the radio frequency bands being used by television channels. Aggregating these fragments of “white space” and managing them through the use of a location-based spectrum database turns out to be a good way of sneaking through wireless broadband services on otherwise unused airwaves. Facebook is involved here on the technology side – the social networking firm is trying to find new ways to grow in the developing world, and it clearly sees now-proven white space technology as a key tool. It will collaborate with Microsoft and SpectraLink Wireless “on the policy front,” i.e. lobbying for more regulators to green-light white space usage.
Microsoft is also a founding member of Taiwan’s Dynamic Spectrum Access Pilot Group, which is looking at using white spaces for hooking up internet-of-things devices.
Check out the Ghanaian pilot video : http://vimeo.com/94950636
