Internet access is provided through bandwidth available in broadcasted
digital television signals, such as the
digital television signals produced by terrestrial broadcast towers. Bandwidth is dynamically allocated or provisioned among clients, and is managed in part by the clients, thus providing dynamic,
distributed management of spectrum allocation. Automatic provisioning may be applied among different terrestrial transmission towers, or different satellites, among transponders or channels on a given
tower, or a given
satellite, or among other forms of multiple broadcast
origination points. The provisioning dynamically and automatically equalizes load among those multiple broadcast points. 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.