White spaces are frequencies otherwise used for digital terrestrial TV broadcasting and wireless microphones, but which for reasons of frequency planning are not actually used in particular areas. Think of the way a cellular network is built, reusing frequencies by spatially dividing them.
The actual amount of available spectrum will be available in rural areas, if U.S. experience holds. In urban markets, it is possible that only a few 6-MHz channels will be available. Perhaps perversely, it also is possible that tens to scores of 6-MHz channels will be available in isolated or rural areas.
But progress probably will be relatively slow, as a full ecosystems of end user devices and infrastructure has to be built, meaning relatively high prices for devices and infrastructure in the near term.
White spaces takes advantage of similar interference protection schemes where the same frequencies are not used in adjacent areas.
Among expected applications for white spaces are broadband access for rural communities, Wi-Fi services or new “machine-to-machine” networks.
Ofcom anticipates that the technology could be fully rolled out during 2014.
Ofcom separately is planning to free up more spectrum in the future for fifth generation mobile networks (5G).
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