So when last I left you, we had talked about the technological side of things for WhiteFi, and steps that had been taken to try and make it more commercially viable. Basically it boiled down to this: Television has gone digital, freeing up their old signal space within the spectrum. Microsoft wants to use that “white space” to create a new era of WiFi, called “WhiteFi.”
But the application of WhiteFi is a much simpler concept and can be summed up in one statement: “WhiteFi could be worth $15 Billion dollars a year.”
Thats right. 15 billion a year. (Though more likely we’ll see 5 billion a year revenue, as 15 is on the high end)
WhiteFi will produce serious innovation, stimulate the sales of WiFi devices and generate additional value through faster speeds and wider coverage. Even under the most skeptical of scrutiny, it looks like white space WiFi should generate billions of dollars each year in value- and that’s in the US alone! Think if the rest of the world jumped on the licensing bandwagon-revenue would skyrocket.
One of the major innovations that could result from WhiteFi come in the form of new new sensor applications. With WhiteFi having three times the coverage of normal WiFi, sensors would be viable in places normal WiFi was previously unavailable. One of the examples given is automated irrigation systems; WhiteFi could reduce water consumption on these farms anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. How? Rather than spraying water indiscriminately, these systems work by installing tiny sensors throughout fields and vineyards to measure water levels, sunlight levels, and other agricultural data. The results are regularly beamed back to a central computer that aggregates all the information and irrigates only those areas that need it — and only for the amount of time they need it.
Think also of the many other applications of WhiteFi: wireless rural broadband coverage, one central wireless access point for an entire office building, mobile wireless networks for the military-even internet radio, still one of the fastest growing internet mediums, could benefit from this. Internet radio stations could literally broadcast using WhiteFi.
WhiteFi Media Broadcasting could usher in a new era of personal broadcasting; we could see a revival of Pirate Radio for the digital age, or just a revival of the Radio medium as a whole. While technological expertise shifts towards the digital age in the realm of broadcast you have to wonder how long it will be before we’re getting Internet Radio on WhiteFi transceivers in our cars, smart phones or even MP3 players. With WhiteFi, artists could even stream their content directly to you in their home city, or even from a WhiteFi Access point within each major city. We’ve already seen concert innovation developing within the metal communities-What if that same show was digitally recorded and then re-broadcast within the city they just played over WhiteFi, with say…an $8.99 price tag attached to it? Download it directly to your on-board receiver in your car and listen to it. Then download it to your MP3 player and keep it!
WhiteFi, if done correctly, could completely revolutionize the way we see, use and access mobile digital media-and save one of the oldest forms of mass media in the country.
