Over 10 million people visit the Seattle Center each year and with them comes an ever growing demand for internet availability. The newest solution to provide internet to high numbers of users is to use the “TV white space spectrum.” Microsoft and the Seattle Center are teaming up to provide better and faster internet to those visiting one of Seattle’s most iconic areas.
The TV white space spectrum is new to the Seattle Center, not in general. We’ve already seen it used in India, Ghana and throughout other parts of Africa. It works by utilizing unused television channels to carry the internet. It travels further than Wi-Fi and goes through walls better as well.
This form of distributing internet connectivity also can handle more people at once. The corporate vice president of engineering Dayne Sampson points out that “this technology can handle more than 25,000 users at a time.”
According to a Microsoft blog post “The new system lets users browse at speeds more than 5,000 times faster than they could before.” Currently the white space program is a pilot but the Mayor of Seattle Ed Murray stated that they “may be able to deploy to other neighborhoods in the city.”