*** EMBARGOED UNTIL FEBRUARY 26, 2004, AT 17:00 EST ***
Newswise — Ever since RF transmissions were first regulated in the early 20th century, access to spectrum has been chronically limited. That's all about to change. New technologies that use spectrum more efficiently and more cooperatively, unleashed by regulatory reforms, may soon overcome the spectrum shortage.
Since the 1920s, regulators have assumed that new transmitters will interfere with other uses of the radio spectrum. Hence, every wireless system has required an exclusive license from the government. With virtually all usable radio frequencies already licensed to commercial operators and government entities, the result has been, in the words of former U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair William Kennard, a "spectrum drought." We've become accustomed to seeing every new commercial service--from satellite broadcasting to wireless local-area networks--compete for licenses with numerous existing users, including the government, all of which guard their spectrum jealously.
That world is coming to an end. At least in the United States, new technologies and regulatory forms may soon free enough RF capacity to transform wireless industry economics, especially for popular mobile telephony and wireless Internet services. In fact, there's every reason to think we're on the cusp of a spectrum explosion--one that will trigger major shifts in investments, business models, and services. The future era of abundance will be as foreign to us as our world would have been to Marconi and Tesla, whose early spark-gap radios occupied the entire usable spectrum for each individual Morse code message.
In this article, we look at the technologies that will make spectrum abundance possible and the regulatory forms that will unleash it. We then turn to the question of who will benefit and who won't when wireless connections for new voice, music, and video services will be everywhere.
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