| 摘要 |
Internet access (16) is provided through bandwidth available in broadband digital television signals, such as the digital television signals produced by terrestrial broadcast towers (18-1, 18-2, 18-3). Bandwidth is dynamically allocated or provisioned among clients (10), and is managed in part by the clients (10), thus providing dynamic, distributed management of spectrum allocation. Automatic provisioning may be applied among different terrestrial transmission towers (18-1, 18-2, 18-3), or different satellites, among transponders or channels on a given tower (18-1), or a given satellite, or among other forms of multiple broadcast origination points (18-1, 18-2, 18-3). The provisioning dynamically and automatically equalizes load among those multiple broadcast points (18-1, 18-2, 18-3). Principles of the present invention may also be applied to automatic provisioning of digital content among non-television broadcast sources, such as cellular telephone towers having available bandwidth, analog or digital radio broadcasts having available bandwidth, or satellite broadcast facilities, and/or dedicated broadcast towers or satellites operating in an allocated spectrum and limited to broadcasting requested digital content. In a satellite embodiment, provisioning may occur among multiple satellites as well as between transponders or time- or frequency- multiplexed channels provided by a single satellite.
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