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'Super Wi-Fi': Super, But Not Wi-Fi

BY SASCHA SEGAN

JANUARY 27, 2012 09:30AM EST

17 COMMENTS

White spaces networking technology can bring the Internet to more people, but it's getting caught up in a dispute over
the term "Wi-Fi."

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A new city-wide broadband technology came to

Wilmington, NC yesterday, and it may help
connect rural homes to broadband and power
public Wi-Fi hotspots in cities. It could become a
real threat to cell phone carriers' 3G data
monopoly, and could bring the Internet to rural
homes. But there's one thing the radical new "TV
white spaces" network technology most certianly
isn't: it isn't "super Wi-Fi," as a press release
dubbed it.
"Wi-Fi is a trademark, there is no such thing as
'Super Wi-Fi,' and white spaces is not Wi-Fi," Wi-Fi Alliance marketing director Kelly
Davis-Felner said. "This could cause confusion among consumers who may actually
expect the technology to be Wi-Fi, and it isn't."
The Wireless Innovation Alliance, the trade group for TV white spaces technology
providers, doesn't seem to care much for the Wi-Fi Alliance's complaints.
"The term 'wifi' has always been a general term for the family of 802.11 protocols
and products using these protocols. The term 'Super WiFi' is a verbal tool for
conveying a thought or concept in an easy-to-understand way, such as when a child
asks for a Band-Aid for a boo-boo, and you give him or her a generic brand plastic
adhesive," a Wireless Innovation Alliance spokesperson said in a statement."
The phrase is also being used for a trade show, the "Super Wi-Fi Summit." Scott
Kargman, the COO of Crossfire Media, one of the directors of the summit, said the
company is using the phrase because "it's a commonly used term, and people
seem to understand it."
Davis-Felner isn't impressed.
"We don't like people using the trademark that way and we take protecting our
trademarks very seriously," Davis-Fellner said.
What Is White Spaces?
White space radios use the empty TV channels around you to transmit data. The
white spaces in the UHF band are treated as unlicensed spectrum, so they aren't
exclusive to a single wireless carrier; anyone can use them, just like the 2.4-Ghz
band used for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cordless phones.
It's not that the Wi-Fi folks dislike white spaces. They just say the technologies are
different, and they're right. Operating on a much lower frequency than Wi-Fi, white
space technology currently brings slower connections at a much greater range.
White space radios in the U.S., according to the Wireless Innovation Alliance trade
group, will most likely use a new standard called 802.22 for "regional area
networks." That's different from the 802.11 Wi-Fi "local area network," 802.15
Bluetooth "personal area network," and 802.16 WiMAX "metropolitan area
network" scopes, according to the IEEE 802 Working Group Web site.

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09-09-2015

'Super Wi-Fi': Super, But Not Wi-Fi | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

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In other words, from a technical perspective this is no more "super Wi-Fi" than
Bluetooth is "mini Wi-Fi" or Sprint's 4G WiMAX is "mega Wi-Fi."
In Wilmington, the white-space network will initially provide backhaul to public WiFi routers in two parks and connect four Webcams in a local garden, according to

Forbes.

White Spaces Vs. 3G

Initially, white spaces networking will compete with embedded 3G, DSL, and home
WiMAX. It will be a way for wireless Internet providers, especially in rural areas, to
zap their network over to a main router in a home, which will then redistribute it to
devices over Ethernet or standard Wi-Fi connections. It can also provide wireless
backhaul for public Wi-Fi routers, or connect to other fixed devices like smart
energy meters which would otherwise use 3G.
That's in part because for now, at least, you can't move a white-space device
around. You can't put a white-space radio into a phone or laptop because each
white-space device must check its location against a database to determine which
TV channels and wireless microphones are being used in the device's area, so they
can avoid those channels.
That may change a few years down the road, when "personal/portable" white space
devices appear. Based on the 802.22 standard, these will be chips able to fit into
laptops and tablets, with software that can "sense" clear frequencies as they move
around.
According to Forbes, personal/portable white space chips will come by the end
of 2012, and chipsets will often combine white space and Wi-Fi technology.
Personal/portable white space technologies seem better suited for campus-wide
and large building-wide networks than for replacing the average home Wi-Fi
network, though. It'll be able to cover greater distances with one router, but at
slower speeds. In other words, to me it looks like more of a threat to big wireless
carriers' 3G and 4G data networks than to smaller Wi-Fi hotspots.
"From a data rate standpoint, you're going to see better performance out of the
frequency where WiFi operates [white spaces] can go longer distances and it
does a better job of going through barriers, but at much lower data rates," DavisFelner said.
Furthermore, there's a real Super Wi-Fi coming - 802.11ac, otherwise known as
"VHT," or "very high throughput."
"That will be the next generation of Wi-Fi in the sense that it brings an even higher
data rate more like a gigabit per second," Davis-Felner said. Pre-standard
802.11ac gadgets will appear this year, with standards-certified products showing
up next year, she said.

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