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At its open meeting in Washington today, the FCC recognised the central importance of unlicensed spectrum in fulfilling US broadband objectives. It acknowledged the significant economic potential from opening up the largely unused TV white spaces. The enhanced coverage potential from use of this band will enable a wide range of new applications, including cost-effective extension of broadband coverage. The FCC decision to move ahead with opeming white spaces has been welcomed by broadband players, but further details of the decision are awaited eagerly.

Two key points are already apparent:

1. There is no requirement to sense, where devices use geolocation/database to determine vacant channels
2. Two safe harbour channels will be available in all parts of the country, to accommodate wireless microphone users, whose requirements are too small to warrant registration in a database.

Details of the appointment process and requirements for database service providers are expected later. 

The FCC press release may be found here.

Following moves in the US and more recently in Europe, countries in Asia are waking up the the potential of white spaces. Earlier this month, there was a conference in Tokyo, organised by the MIC titled: "International Symposium -Toward the New Era for Radio Usage including the White Space". Speakers from white spaces leaders such as Microsoft, appeared alongside the European Commission's representative, Rurprecht Niepold. Mr Niepold highlighted the importance of sharing spectrum more effectively as a means of addressing growing demand for wireless network capacity - taking a dynamic approach to managing spectrum. You can find detailsof his presentation here .

The European Commission has been aware of the potential of cognitive radio for some time and has had studies conducted - for example in the CEPT TG4 working group, which was looking at the Digital Dividend ( effectively the spectrum capacity gained from switching to digital TV).

Its Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG) - the group of experts on spectrum,started to study Cognitive Radio in 2009 and released a draft report on their findings, in October. The RSPG has just started to consult on its draft programme for 2010 , again with strong recognition of the potential importance of cognitive technologies in future spectrum management. This would feed into the Commission's planned multi-annual spectrum strategy, now in development. 

TV White Spaces provide an opportunity to apply such techniques, albeit in a simplified form, to unlocking large amounts of prime spectrum that currently lie unused or underused.

Google has just announced that it wants to be one of the new TV white spaces database providers, providing US end-user devices with information on which channels are available in their location. Such a service could in principle be offerred anywhere in the world, subject to having the necessary data on local TV station coverage and information on where wireless microphones are in use.

White spaces information (lists of free channels) could be bundled with a wide range of other location related data - possibly enabling a supporting business model for such services in the future.

This significant move by Google is sure to attract media attention on white spaces and their potentional to deliver what Ofcom described as 'a vast array of applications'. Further details on Google's proposal can be found here .

This new capacity is expected to open up a 'vast array of applications' including:

• New HD-capable home networks that reach everywhere in your home with much better reliability

• Extending Internet access to underserved areas of the country - particularly rural location, where white space capacity is more abundant.

The industry has been busy standardising new technology to exploit this underused capacity. A new standard prepared by ECMA has just been published here.

There are two trials of white space networking under way in the United States:

• In Redmond, on Microsoft's campus, see the following paper about 'White Fi'
  
• In Claudeville, a rural area, details provided here