There’s gold in them hills! Wait, not gold – there’s affordable wireless Internet in them hills! Yes, Cal.net, based in California’s Gold Country, is offering a new deal to its customers, using broadband wireless equipment that operates in TV white spaces.

With this offer, customers can get data rates of up to 3 Mbps downstream. It reaches up to five miles without line of sight, thanks to its use of TV white spaces. The white spaces are vacant parts of the TV broadcast spectrum, which were recently opened by the FCC (News - Alert) for broader use, so Cal.net has jumped at the opportunity.

Each transmission site from Cal.net is capable of supporting up to 15 customers, although not one has reached max capacity yet. Every one of them broadcasts on a single vacant TV broadcast channel, making great use out of the white spaces. These sites reach remote areas that Cal.net previous were unable to offer broadband to, helping potentially tens of thousands of customers.

TV white space radios use build-in database technology to track where the broadcast spectrum is not being used, and configure the equipment to make use of it. The Cal.net project uses the database technology from its pioneer, Spectrum Bridge, with Telcordia (News - Alert) acting as a white spaces database administrator.

While the potential range of the technology can reach up to 100 kilometers, the five-mile range is necessitated due to the wattage that the transmissions must be sent at and whether there is anything blocking the signals to the customers. However, there is always the chance that the FCC will allow trials with equipment transmitting at a higher wattage, allowing it to increase its reach.

TV white space provides plenty of potential and possibilities, with the ability to broadcast vast amounts of data over varying distances the same way television is broadcast. Cal.net is making the most of it, and should it prove a success, we’ll be seeing a lot more use out of TV white space.