Microsoft to use unused TV channels to take the net to rural US
Microsoft has announced plans to utilise the unused channels between television broadcasts, called "white spaces", to reach the 80% of rural America which currently has no broadband access – some 24 million people. The company has been developing the technology, sometimes called "Super Wi-Fi", since 2008, and is asking federal and state regulators to support the project. One issue is that the equipment required to decode the signals is expensive – around $1000 a device – but the company believes that the price point will drop to below $200 by 2018.

WASHINGTON — Silicon Valley has dreamed up hot air balloons, drones and constellations of mini-satellites to connect the world to the internet. Now Microsoft is adding its own moonshot to solve the digital divide into that mix.

The software giant plans to announce on Tuesday that it is harnessing the unused channels between television broadcasts, known as white spaces, to help get more of rural America online. In an event at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a coast-to-coast telephone call a century ago, Microsoft plans to say that it will soon start a white-spaces broadband service in 12 states including Arizona, Kansas, New York and Virginia to connect two million rural Americans in the next five years who have limited or no access to high-speed internet.

In an interview, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, said white spaces were “the best solution for reaching over 80 percent of people in rural America who lack broadband today.”

The United States has long grappled with uneven internet access. Many remote and less-populated areas have had particular trouble obtaining fast internet service because providers often cannot justify the cost of building out infrastructure to isolated locales with few people to serve.