[BC] Can technology create a significant revenue source for radio?

[Alex Hartman]

Good points, and yes it would stress the system, but here's where people have to get creative. :)

As for the thoughts on the countryside thing, I do live in the country. I'm 15 minutes to the nearest city center, 1 hour away from any metro area. Sparse population small town. Now think about how you defined what would constitute rural broadband. I live in a town of about 5,000 people. I would need roughly 100 micro-cell wifi sites or so of traditional wifi to cover the entire population. But we also have a co-op cable company that offers broadband. AND they also offer DSL (weird huh!). So there's options, lots of them. So, of that 5,000 population, say 1/4 would sign up for the broadband, like the farmers on the edge of town where cable doesn't go and just out of reach of the DSL signal. Wifi makes perfect sense in this case! They're all spread out so i don't really have them stacked, they're farms, so they probably have a grain elevator or 2 (free tower rent for internet service anyone?). See how simple this REALLY can be? I have wifi equipment that can support about 50-60 users simultaneously. And that's compounded like if i use the grain elevator as an access point, the city water tower, maybe even the city has a tower for civil use. The only issue then is a big enough backhaul to a major metro area with the bandwidth to support my users. That's where it gets tricky. :)

So, getting broadband to users isn't terribly hard, it's getting it to the rest of the world that makes it a little more entertaining.

As for the major metro areas, T-Mobile and ATT used to have this service called UMA. If you were within range of one of their wifi hotspots, your phone would automatically connect to it and route through it versus the cell tower. It took the load off the tower and back onto hard line.  With the municipal wifi happening, this idea should be pushed harder since wifi microsites on street lights is a metric F-ton cheaper than deploying a high-density cell tower. Problem semi-solved.

But yes, bandwidth would not get any cheaper with such a high demand. Unfortunately the current government doesn't believe in the laws of economics to see that this is what will happen.

--
Alex Hartman

 

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Broadcast List USER <Broadcast at fetrow.org> wrote:
>Now, imagine for a moment all Broadcast goes away, and everyone goes
>to Internet streaming.

>The population of New York City is just under 8.4 million people in
>just the five Boroughs of the city.  This ignores the population in
>the broadcast metro, which includes parts of New Jersey, Long Island,
>Connecticut, and other counties in the state of New York.

>The DMA is over 19 million people.

>Now, even if all TV and FM radio spectrum was turned over to
>"wireless" so people can listen to their own stream.  There just isn't
>enough spectrum, unless the cell sizes are massively reduced by
>greatly increasing the number of cell sites.  The costs would be so
>high that no one could afford the service, not to mention the public
>generally strongly opposes the installation of towers and monopoles.

>Even in NYC, many apartment buildings cannot easily be used as
>locations for cell sites because the residents don't want them -- for
>no good reason, of course.

>NIMBYs rule.

>What will happen is the cost of the data will run WAY up, so it will
>be very expensive to listen.

>Even the DC area at over 5 million people, and is only that low
>because it is up against Baltimore, which is really, in many ways, the
>same "metro" area, is over five million people.  Still won't work.
>Baltimore adds in another nearly three million people.  OUCH!

>Another interesting aside is that there are many in government, even
>at the FCC, who want to bring "broadband" to rural areas, and they
>assume that will be wireless.  This is stupid on two levels.  First of
>all, I LONG to live in the country.  I realize I lose several things.
>Good restaurants will be far away.  I won't have either cable TV or
>FiOS available to me, and likely not even DSL.  Satellite TV is fine,
>but satellite Internet is expensive, but it is something I am willing
>to give up in order to live in the country.  Also, grocery shopping
>would be a trip, and my wife's commute would be much worse.  OK, we
>are not moving.  Why should the government use my tax money to bring
>"broadband" to people who CHOOSE to live in the country?

>--chip

>On Nov 22, 2010, at 9:00 AM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

>> Message: 15
>> From: Alex Hartman <goober at goobe.net>
>> for radio?
>> [...]
>> Absolutely! Think about having 8 radio stations programmed
>> essentially for next to nothing, with no overhead other than
>> streaming costs (surely can be less than powering 8 full power
>> transmitters) AND you now have a GLOBAL audience? National ad
>> revenue anyone?
>> [...]
>> --
>> Alex Hartman