The upcoming June 7th Wireless Innovation Forum in Washington D.C. will feature a White Space Communications Summit where FCC Chairman Genachowski will join speakers from organizations such as Google, Nokia, Qualcomm, and BT to discuss, among other topics, how to use TV-band white space spectrum to ease the mobile bandwidth shortage.
TDG has a few suggestions for those set to discuss this topic.
The future of radio bandwidth efficiency is going to require considerably more innovation for dynamic spectrum access. The nearly century-old practice of dedicating spectrum to specific uses is wasteful. Highway traffic management provides a useful analogy.
Spectrum dedication is much like reserving three separate interstate highway systems for use by (1) fire engines, (2) ambulances, and (3) everyone else. It is economically far more efficient to simply provide a method for fire trucks and ambulances to obtain priority clearance on a single highway system that requires all non-priority traffic to yield in the event of an emergency.
In terms of spectrum efficiency, cognitive devices and software-defined transceivers can give priority access to legacy users while also utilizing reserved bandwidth for new applications when no legacy businesses require access. It thus seems reasonable to make full use of the TV-band white spaces authorized by the FCC last year--that is, the almost 50 unused TV channels identified by the FCC last year.
Today, not a single city comes even close to using all 50 channels, meaning there is substantial unused TV spectrum in each locality that could be used for other purposes including (1) wireless Internet service, (2) wireless local area networks, and (3) hot spots for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers--in other words, to help ease the all-too-apparent bandwidth shortage now facing the mobile industry.
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