[cr-india] articles on Mana Radio and CR

[Vickram Crishna]

The article from The Hindu reports on the first broadcast of Mana Radio.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2002100600691200.htm

The Times of India article is the 'leak' I mentioned last week.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?art_id=23693225

By the way, I must apologize for not using a calculator when I worked 
out the figures on how many stations can be accommodated in our land 
mass.

I goofed on the calculation of the reach of each station, which will 
only be 78.5 sq km and not 155 (double). That means of course that we 
could have 37,835 stations, not 19,000, in 2,973,190 sq km. That is 
about 780,000 channels, not just 340,000.

However, 300 of the larger transmitters, each with a range of 35 km 
as the article in the Times mentions, would cover 1,153,950 sq km of 
the country. Assuming that they were all in different places, not 
overlapping, as they are to some extent. That would reduce the total 
available area, and therefore the number of stations, to just (!) 
23,175.

Oh dear. That is only 463,500 channels, and we should reduce this a 
little further if we are going to cross out all the border areas as 
before. But all is not lost! My spread of 1 MHz per channel is 
obviously far, far too high. The actual reservation (standard) is 
only 200 KHz, which gives us 5 times more channels.

I think one should just agree that there is a cornucopia of bandwidth 
available, when one realizes that it is so reusable.

To address Ken Donow's question, no, the government has not given 
much public thought to reserving any bandwidth for educational 
purposes. In fact, it thinks that it has already reserved the whole 
spectrum for that purpose. Or some other, who knows?

With great difficulty, the 450 MHz band was freed about seven years 
back for cellular telephony, and now the 900 MHz band has been added, 
I understand. 2.4 GHz is not yet free for data communications (LAN 
and WiFi), although our peripatetic IT minister made an announcement 
of intention many months ago. This is despite the fact that the ITU 
clearly lists both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz as publicly available for data 
purposes.

Now if we reserve just 3 MHz for education alone (88-92 MHz) we still 
get as many as 15 channels per location. Doubtless it is a rare ;-) 
village that has 15 educational institutions, so even this is not 
really needed, but it would be good to do this in the cities for 
sure. My only grouse about this reservation is that we should also 
campaign to ensure that such institutions do not use such heavyweight 
transmitters as to reach for a 5 km radius. We don't have a single 
school in the whole country that large, I think I can say with 
confidence. And definitely not in any of our cities.

My suggestion is that the very low power area be left completely 
open, which will allow ordinary schools in cities (that covers 30.5% 
of the population) to freely set up their own radio clubs for 
enrolled students, plus enable them to broadcast lessons (in the 
evenings, for instance), for nearby street children.

For the curious, the landmass area I have used for the country is 
after deduction of water bodies, so the calculations don't include 
the channels that enthusiasts would like to host on boats ;-) in our 
lakes and rivers.

I have in any case not deducted the coastline itself, since we have 
been talking about the value of such low-cost local stations for our 
small-boat fisherfolk. Every year, they venture out on one and two 
day trips into dangerous cyclone prone waters, and there is no way 
for them to be called back when the weather turns. As it does with 
frightening regularity, and often tragic consequences, especially in 
the Bay of Bengal, affecting Andhra and Orissa mainly, but also Tamil 
Nadu and West Bengal.

Similarly, it could be used to warn our fisherfolk who stray too 
close to neighboring country waters and end up being arrested. The 
reverse is also true: if we had regular broadcasting near our border 
areas, we could advise villagers on both sides of the border to carry 
radios to alert them when they were straying into potentially 
dangerous regions.

Of course, it would also alert the nefarious minded, but then they 
already know and court the risks they run, right?

-- 
Vickram