After many years of fighting for more radio frequency spectrum to be awarded to the public, the UK MoD is looking to unlock a spectrum range from military use. The bandsharing forum, formed on Monday, will oversee the transition and awarding of spectrum for public and corporate use.
Currently, the Bandsharing Forum claims that organisations such as the MoD and the Civil Aviation Authority control more than 40 percent of the most useful radio spectrum. And the majority of the non-military spectrum is awarded to Radio, TV broadcast and mobile phone operators. With a small fraction being open to public, non-regulated, use through Wifi, Wimax and bluetooth technologies.
Wifi and bluetooth technologies have proved that open public use of radio spectrum generates the most value out of the limited resource. The value generated by public wifi use of a fraction of the range is far beyond that generated by mobile phone operators, for instance. Unfortunately, wifi and bluetooth users muster little lobbying power compared to mobile phone operators.
Open spectrum organizations, and the wireless internet commons will be lobbying for some of the new spectrum to be released for open public use.
The key breakthrough of open public radio technology, like wifi, is that it allows all users an equal share of the resource, and manages the contention when users collide on the spectrum. A model first used on the TCP protocol which is the cornerstone of net neutrality on the internet.
More spectrum will allow wifi to increase its range and accomodate more simultaneous users.