Microsoft has turned its headquarters campus into a single wireless hot spot, giving workers in scores of buildings and aboard a shuttle bus a steady Web link to test capabilities of this approach.   The potential for governments to connect entire communities to the internet  is tremendous.

The radio waves travel in gaps between television channels known as white spaces, and like TV signals they carry long distances and through building walls. Uses may include easier Internet connections, remote monitoring of industrial systems such as power plants and taking over some mobile-phone traffic to ease sluggishness for users of current 3G devices.

Using traditional Wi-Fi thousands of routers would be needed to equal the coverage Microsoft provides at its Redmond, Washington, campus through its white-space system. The “white-space’” network uses two transmitters to cover most of the 500 acre campus.

Signals over white-space airwaves travel at least three times the distance of Wi-Fi, covering an area nine times as large with “superior penetration” of buildings.  This is potentially the “last mile” component to allow governments to close the digital divide and wire up entire communities.

Dan Reed,  Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Technology Strategy and Policy and Extreme Computing discusses research Microsoft is doing around white space and policy issues  at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC, September 8, 2010.

More information about the Microsoft Campus test can be found here

More information about white-space and spectrum management can be found here