Sure, using the phone network for a backchannel is possible but the whole point of all this is to be much simpler. The TV ant is a transmitter back to the tower, as well as the incoming channel.

thanks for your kind works Stephen!

And, you write, “But in the end you’re at the mercy of Joe Farmer’s rickety old TV antenna for retail connections.”

Speaking for people in this town, and by looking at their TV antennas, 80-90% have already upgraded their antennas
for digital. Many homes etc here have new, large and well elevated 86 element Yagi UHF jobs, with great reception.

“At ANU we discussed putting an audible signal strength meter in the modem so you (or an installer) could peak the signal from the tower.”

I also think that one may find these have already been correctly peaked/aligned via the signal-strength meters in set-top boxes. Do you suppose back channel could be handled by normal phone lines, as satellite access is?

Thanks sincerely for your efforts George, on behalf of we country folk. Stephen Loosley

and the other term used in this space is “Cognitive Radios”. Ones that are smart enough to determine traffic on a frequency before using it, and adjusting in real time to other spectrum users.

In the US, the term for this area is “White Space Network”. Here’s a slashdot article.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/05/217211

But in the end you’re at the mercy of Joe Farmer’s rickety old TV antenna for retail connections. At ANU we discussed putting an audible signal strength meter in the modem so you (or an installer) could peak the signal from the tower.

Thanks for the pointer to Alohanet – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet

I like the idea of not having to replace/rewire antennas and RF cabling.