One of the major impediments to providing broadband connectivity insemi-urban and rural India is the lack of robust and affordable backhaul. Fiberconnectivity in terms of backhaul that is being planned (or provided) by theGovernment of India would reach only till rural offices (named Gram Panchayat)in the Indian rural areas. In this exposition, we articulate how TV white spacecan address the challenge in providing broadband connectivity to a billion pluspopulation within India. The villages can form local Wi-Fi clusters. Theproblem of connecting the Wi-Fi clusters to the optical fiber points can beaddressed using a TV white space based backhaul (middle-mile) network. The amount of TV white space present in India is very large when comparedwith the developed world. Therefore, we discuss a backhaul architecture forrural India, which utilizes TV white spaces. We also showcase results from ourTV white space testbed, which support the effectiveness of backhaul by using TVwhite spaces. Our testbed provides a broadband access network to ruralpopulation in thirteen villages. The testbed is deployed over an area of$25$km$^2$, and extends seamless broadband connectivity from optical fiberlocations or Internet gateways to remote (difficult to connect) rural regions.We also discuss standards and TV white space regulations, which are pertinentto the backhaul architecture mentioned above.
展开▼
