Ofcom Looks at Revolutionary Spectrum Sharing

Something quite new is stirring in the area of spectrum management as regulators in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore are moving to enable spectrum sharing as a way of expanding capacity for mobile and untethered Internet access.

Ofcome, the U.K. communications regulator, sees three areas where such sharing of spectrum between existing licensed entities and commercial access providers provides advantages.

As more Internet access moves to untethered devices or mobile devices used from a stationary location, spectrum sharing can enable much more indoor coverage.

In outdoor settings, spectrum sharing is expected to be useful for creation of new small cell deployments by mobile service providers, aiming to increase capacity, rather than coverage, in high traffic areas.

Finally, shared spectrum is a way to enable more bandwidth to support untethered Internet of Things and machine-to-machine applications.

Up to this point, the licensing of exclusive blocks of spectrum for either untethered (Wi-Fi, for example) or mobile communications has been the global mainstay. But blocks of spectrum suitable for communications are in finite supply.

Making some former broadcast TV spectrum available for mobile applications is one approach also being taken by regulators, but that also has limited potential for adding more useful spectrum.

Regulators now are looking at under-used blocks of spectrum licensed to governmental users, considering ways to enable sharing of existing spectrum. That has many advantages. It avoids the time and expense of clearing existing users and relocating them to other frequency bands.

And such spectrum sharing makes more efficient use of available capacity in many bands useful for communications, especially those bands that support longer-range signal propagation.

Where possible, additional new spectrum will be released for mobile applications Ofcom says it is also is looking at redeployment to mobile apps of some 700-MHz spectrum formerly used for TV broadcasting.

Ofcom also is looking at ways to release for commercial use as much as 500 MHz of spectrum currently used by governmental users, starting with spectrum in the 2.3 GHz and 3.4 GHz bands, currently used by the Ministry of Defence.

Separately, Ofcom also is looking at spectrum policies to support machine-to-machine applications, including spectrum in the 870 MHz to 915 MHz bands. Such spectrum has good signal propagation characteristics, allowing creation of economical transmission infrastructure.

Of the initiatives, it is spectrum sharing which is the greatest innovation, as spectrum traditionally has been licensed on an exclusive and application-specific manner.