Who Benefits From Growing Unlicensed Spectrum Inventory?

The Federal Communications Industry says it has identified more than 700 MHz of spectrum that is available in the United States for mobile broadband use on a nonexclusive basis, as well as an additional 345 megahertz that is either in the pipeline or has the potential to be used in such a manner.

You might argue that there could be lots of winners or losers as more unlicensed spectrum is made available. Licensed carriers and existing major ISPs might lose, to the extent new competition is enabled. New competitors, and smaller competitors, might win.
The big issue in some quarters is how much of that unlicensed spectrum might prove useful of fixed broadband as well. So far, most of the hope has centered on the potential use of “TV white spaces.”

As Google's white spaces data base suggests, many of the best places to use white spaces spectrum for fixed operations are in the rural areas where most wireless ISPs operate.

To be sure, most of the attention and business models using unlicensed spectrum have been for Wi-Fi and other personal area or in-home or in-office signal distribution, not for access, as provided by most ISPs.

But the white spaces spectrum probably is the biggest block of spectrum useful for access, rather than local distribution, as valuable as that might be.

As always, the business case is among the biggest issues. And one argument in favor of use of white spaces is the non light of sight propagation, a huge advantage for wireless ISPs who have in the past had to work with line of sight frequencies.

Right now, white spaces are in trial in the United States, South Africa and Kenya. All of that is useful, but widespread deployment will hinge on sustainable revenue models. In that regard, consumer models may hinge on traditional “access services.” Some enterprise models might work in the more traditional private network sense that many larger organizations have built and operated their own access and transport networks.