Impact of Analogue Switch-Off on Availability of TVWS: A Quantitative Assessment

This paper explores the television white spaces (TVWS) availability in Malawi after the switchover to digital television (TV) broadcasting. Like other countries around the globe, preliminary TVWS availability assessments in the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) band and subsequent deployment of TVWS networks in Malawi was done before the analogue switch-off, and ever since no study has been conducted to assess the impact of the migration on availability of TVWS for Affordable Internet Access (AIA). In this work, aided by the national digital TV plan in the UHF band and spectral measurement campaigns data collected in various locations in areas of Eastern and Southern region of Malawi, we present a thorough analysis of digital TV band occupancy. The study quantifies that almost 78.6% of the UHF band allocated for digital TV transmission is underutilized in a country where 83% percent of the population has no access to the internet due to poor internet infrastructures and high tariffs.