[opendtv] WiFi Supplanting Broadcasting? Get Real!

  • From: "John Willkie" <jmwillkie@xxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 11:19:45 -0700

I've been pondering for a few weeks the idea offered here of WiFi
replicating or supplanting or even trying to imitate broadcasting.  It's
laughable.

Let me start with the personal.  In 1992, I put an LPTV station on the air.
Total cost of transmission equipment: <$20,000.  Reach:  77% of the San
Diego ADI's population, more than 675,000 homes.  Cost of operating the
transmission system:  less than $300 per month.

Full service stations have a bigger bill, but with only slightly greater
reach.  They do, however, enjoy must carry/retransmission consent.  The
plants can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars (the systems are very
redundant) and, with UHF, have monthly power bills in the tens of thousands
of dollars.

Even with very low cost Wi-Fi equipment, to replicate my former LPTV's
service area with WiFi -- assuming that can be done -- would involve
thousands of meshed Wi-Fi transceivers.  The electricity bill would also be
higher.  And, to use Craig's favorite metric -- spectrum efficiency -- well,
it would involve much more than 6 mhz to make it all work.  That is, if it
all worked.

It would be hard to replicate broadcast service area because the Wi-Fi
signals only travel a few hundred feet -- if that.  We had viewers 30 miles
away, with many areas between them and my transmitter where there were no
homes, businesses, or even telephones per square mile.

So, WiFi replicating in any sense broadcasting is very similar to the "low
power FM" business and mess.

Think about the business aspects:  what content would you show?  Nobody in
that field is likely to be able to pay for licensed content, and a
distributor would have to be VERY desperate to offer their bartered content
to such a technically shaky operation.

Model releases, ASCAP/BMI license fees and even business licenses would be
involved before such a jury-rigged operation could even consider being a
business.  Would each meshed transciever need a business license?  In some
municipalities, they would.  In many cities, it's next to impossible to get
a business license to do business in your home, even as a freelance writer.
(Look at LA's situation.)

So, assuming such a system was put in place.  What content would be aired?

Home movies and porn.  Maybe even live, interactive porn, which has no other
multicast scheme to reach homes.  Perhaps even illegal porn.

John Willkie

 
 
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