Everywhere you look from Europe, to Canada or Singapore, more efficient spectrum use is increasingly a global regulatory goal; with attention now shifting to what spectrum sharing can add to existing spectrum management options.
Evidence of this growing interest is proliferating, with the European Commission’s recent Communication on promoting the shared use of radio spectrum and the US Federal Communication Commission’s announcement that it intends to ensure that a significant portion of UHF spectrum is available for license-exempt sharing on a nationwide basis, increasing the amount of such spectrum in the urbanized areas of some major US markets. We also see strong interest from regulators such as the UK’s Ofcom and Singapore’s IDA in trials and commercial pilots of the White Spaces technology.
The reason is simple: the number of wireless devices is growing exponentially. According to the European Commission numbers, by 2015 there will be 7.1 billion phones, tablets and other mobile devices connected to the Internet globally. Five years further down the line, the number of smart devices connected to the Internet is going to be staggeringly larger – particularly when wireless sensors and other machine-to-machine communication devices are counted. Unfortunately, the way spectrum is managed today, does not readily allow the flexibility to adapt to meet that projected demand. Gaps in coverage and network overload in busy areas are already resulting in poor service for end-users.
These problems can be alleviated through spectrum sharing, as proposed in the European Commission’s Communication. Fortunately the technology is now ready to make this happen. One example of how to ensure that radio communication devices can access wireless bandwidth when and where they need it, is through license-exempt use of White Spaces. These are the unused portions of spectrum in the TV bands including some of the channels freed up by the transition from analogue to digital TV broadcasting.
Here at Microsoft we have been working on this technology for many years now and our trials and commercial pilots in the UK and Singapore, as well as in the US, have demonstrated that this is a viable option for addressing the projected wireless capacity shortfall. A Commission funded project called COGEU, which brings together research institutes and private companies from Portugal, France, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Greece and Cyprus, has recently set out to quantify the white spaces sharing opportunities in key central European states. In August we saw Europe’s another commercially-authorized TV White Space geolocation database launch in Finland, Ireland is on the cusp of launching its own White Spaces initiative, and the French regulator have recently granted a TV white space test license.
With this growing interest and investment in White Spaces technology, it has become increasingly clear that its benefits can be much broader than just ensuring good wireless broadband services. Trials and pilots have explored a range of solutions from increasing the affordability of the Internet and enabling machine to machine (M2M) communication, to turning a highly populated metropolitan area into a leading Smart City with substantial long-term environmental benefits. A popular use case is looking at how spectrum resources can help overcome inadequate Internet access in remote rural areas.
Taking into account all those potential applications and the importance of, and correlation between, digital infrastructure and economic growth, it is clear that White Spaces technology can significantly contribute to the future of the European economy and the future standard of living on the Continent. For these reasons I am delighted that the Commission has identified better spectrum management and spectrum sharing as an essential part of the Digital Single Market. However, we need to go further.
Industry-led trials and pilots over the past two years have clearly demonstrated that TV White Spaces are just the beginning. The efficient techniques demonstrated can be used to improve sharing in other spectrum bands. We hope the Commission can lead the way in creating a supportive European environment for the emerging spectrum economy by lowering barriers to entry and facilitating greater competition by allowing greater exploitation of the license-exempt TV white space spectrum. This requires firmer actions, particularly mandating a level of spectrum sharing to ensure everyone has access and ensuring that the process of granting access is simple, affordable and the same across all the Member States. In this way Europe’s economy can enjoy a more complete wireless technology dividend and demonstrate leadership to the world.