TV White-Space: Big News for Rural Public Safety

Yurok Tribe, located at the mouth of the Klamath River in Northern California, has enhanced public safety thanks to TV white-space technology

It's all over the news: Our first experimental TV white-space project has fired up its first link, a development that's having an immediate and positive effect on the rural community involved.

Yurok Connect, the broadband project at the Yurok Tribe's reservation, last week deployed a dedicated public safety link thanks to TV white-space technology. This dedicated line allows public safety agencies to access criminal databases, conduct live trainings and implement emergency services plans.

Seven More Trials in the Works
The project at the Yurok Reservation, located in rural Northern California, is one of eight white-space trials for which the FCC has granted Carlson Wireless experimental licenses.

The other trials, which are still early stages of planning and set-up, are located in rural regions of Alaska, Michigan, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Central Florida and Oklahoma.

Each community in these trials has been struggling for years to get broadband access because of heavy foliage, rugged terrain and scattered populations-- environmental challenges that make the deployment of other solutions (fiber, copper or microwave) unfeasible.

CEO Jim Carlson is in Washington D.C this week, reporting about the progress of these projects to the stakeholders at the Wireless Innovation Forum's White Space Summit.

How Trial Projects Move the Technology Forward

These trials show the kind of real-world solution that TV white space offers for rural communities. Trials also allow Carlson Wireless to advance white-space technology by discovering which aspects of our product can be developed further.

Our engineers appreciate this opportunity to interact with local problem-solvers in the communities where the trials are located.

Local service providers and public safety agencies are deeply familiar with the challenges their communities face when it comes to broadband deployment. Along with this knowledge, they bring their ingenuity into the mix by proposing innovative ways to use TV white-space technology, for example, blending it with other technologies like picocell extensions.

About the Product

RuralConnect IP is available now under experimental license, offering a robust, economically viable solution for broadband when line of sight is not available.

The product, which complies with existing FCC rules, is on the FCC bench now for testing with the database systems that will manage TV white-space spectrum.

If you are interested in deploying an experimental project in your community, please contact Carlson Wireless at 707-822-7000.