[cr-india] Does this have any relevance to CR?

[mahesh acharya]

Hi All!

Some thoughts on delicensing the low-power band and CR.

As Vikram mentioned, that using off the shelf setup it is possible to increase the range of the high-power radio waves to more than 10 Kms. With this opportuniy it may be possible to tailor make radio's from off the shelf material that will receieve the broadcast. And there you go, a community radio without the license. I PERSONALLY THINK THATS THE WAY TO BEAT THE SYSTEM. Remember the boom of cable TV in 90's? Of course the catch is who funds for the design of the radio, and why  would any one want to fund it as there is no return.

In a limited way, the Wi-Fi enabled phone can be used  to receieve the broadcast from such a station. At least on experimental basis, some one from the group can try  this out. How and where i would'nt know. A laptop or a palm top could broadcast the program and Wi-Fi enabled cell phone could receieve the program. Of course the limitation is only one person would be able to hear. 

At this point i recall a fantastic idea suggested by one of trainee during CR training workshop by a postman  in Garhwal. We actually tried it and it worked!

He suggested that by an arrangement of audio program played through a taperecorder could be broadcast over long distances by using FM mike. The FM mike broadcasts  
the audio to Radio at a distance. Another FM mike placed near this radio re-broadcasts the audio to another radio kept further away. Again a third FM mike re-re-broadcasts this program to yet another radio and so forth! :-). Sounds unique to me.

Thats all for now in this mail.
cheers!!





  

-----Original Message-----
From: Vickram Crishna <vvcrishna at softhome.net>
To: A list on community radio in India <cr-india at sarai.net>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 07:45:07 +0530
Subject: Re: [cr-india] Does this have any relevance to CR?

At 11:55 PM +0530 2/13/05, Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:
>USE OF WIRELESS EQUIPMENT DELICENSED: The government has delicensed 
>the use of low power wireless equipment to establish, maintain, 
>operate, possess or deal in such equipment in the frequency band 2.4 
>- 2.4835 GHZ, on non-protection, non-interference and non-exclusive 
>(shared) basis. The move comes in the wake of the broadband policy 
>2004. No wireless licence is required also for the wireless systems 
>with maximum effective radiated power upto 4 watt and with the 
>antenna/mast height upto 5 metres on an existing authorised 
>building, in the frequency band 2.4 - 2.4835 GHZ. (UNI report in NT)

Yes, peripherally. But...

The potential for use of advanced ICT in enabling small stations to 
improve content quality is immense. The frequency band mentioned in 
this order is used by wireless data networking equipment following 
the 802.11b standard, now so popular that equipment prices have 
dropped to sub-$100 prices (for base stations; network cards may be 
available as low as $10, and nearly all new laptops have the cards 
bundled in as standard).

Improvements in setup of networks have made it possible to 
internetwork at distances of up to 30-40 km using off the shelf 
components at bandwidth speeds in excess of 1Mbps, although the 
original design objectives looked at 100 meters only. When the 
government opens up the other public band at 5 GHz for outdoor use, 
equipment made to standards called 802.11a and 802.11g, and the 
emerging standard 802.11n will push data transfer speeds up to a 
possible 155Mbps.

Internetworking small stations between villages will enable them to 
cheaply share content and training, for example.

The rapidity with which the government has bowed to local and 
international pressure to follow international norms in the usage of 
the 2.4 GHz band indicates the strength of India's IT sector. The 
fact that it has been extremely tardy in delicensing low power 
transmission in the public audio frequencies (87.5-108 MHz band) 
points to the lack of regard paid to development of the village/rural 
sector. Hence the impact of this liberalisation of spectrum will be
minimal to the functioning of our current CR sector, seeing as how it
is currently exceedingly urban-centric by design.
--
Vickram
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Mahesh Acharya
VU3MBV