Wireless spectrum: A hidden natural resource

Tom Simonite, online technology editor

Google is backing a political campaign to force the US government to release full details of how one of our most valuable natural resources is being exploited - radio communications spectrum.

A post on Google’s policy blog lauds a bill being introduced to Congress that would require the Federal Communications Commission to “take a full inventory of our nation’s spectrum resources between the 300 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands.”

You can already see a representation of how the spectrum is divided in the graphic above, or in pdf form here. But the bill would make available full details of who is using which chunks of spectrum for what, and how efficiently. As the Google post puts it, “is a sizable portion of useful spectrum simply lying fallow?”

The internet giant was one of many that lobbied sucessfully to get spectrum freed up by the demise of analogue TV signals allocated to new kinds of mobile devices. That will supposedly allow the development of technology dubbed “Wi-Fi on steroids” by its proponents, and shape our technological future - allowing faster portable connections and high-speed broadband in remote areas, for example.

Similarly, making it publically known how the rest of the radio spectrum is being used, and what is left, could change how we communicate for years to come.

.::. sungolog

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Wireless spectrum: A hidden natural resource