Nearly two dozen companies and organizations announced the launch of the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, which will promote regulatory policies that allow wireless technologies to address the digital divide between those with access and those without, along with extending rural coverage and exploiting white spaces spectrum for wireless connectivity.
Members include Microsoft and Ruckus Wireless, as well as Taiwan’s Computer and Communication Research Center, Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), the Singapore Institute for Infocomm Research, and White Space Technologies Africa, among others.
“Whether you look at how TV White Spaces are being put to use to serve underserved communities in Africa, or how the technology is creatively used in one of the biggest ports to lower costs, it is clear that it can have an immediate effect on people’s lives today”, said Pete Henderson, chairman of alliance member Indigo Telecom. “A large role for the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance will be educating regulators on consumer benefits that can be derived from enabling this technology.”
The group also said that it believes problems such as gaps in coverage and network overload can be alleviated through spectrum sharing — which is a more popular approach abroad than it is in the U.S. and is in various stages of trials and commercial development. However, the alliance said that “policymakers have an opportunity to enable a variety of exclusive-use and non-exclusive spectrum access approaches across a variety of spectrum bands.”
“We are delighted to see more and more regulators taking up the spectrum solutions on offer,” said James Collier, co-founder of Neul. “We hope the example of the Singapore Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) is picked up by others and we look forward to partnering with regulators around the world in developing effective legal frameworks for spectrum sharing.”
