At the moment, the FCC auctions off frequency bands in the US radio spectrum. There's a proposal to do away with this antiquated system and instead allow people to rent slices for a period of time. It would help solve the coming bandwidth-crunch (as more smart devices gobble up more and more data).

http://www.nytimes.c...-of-spectrum.html

According to Mr. Gorenberg, who presented the report on Friday before the committee, the amount of wireless data that has been transmitted by the growing legions of smartphones and wirelessly connected tablets has doubled every year for the last four years. He said that there would be as many as 50 billion devices transmitting and receiving wireless data by 2020, leading many in the wireless industry to forecast a spectrum crisis.

However, he said that the committee’s authors believed that agile radio technologies that make it possible for computerized radio systems to share spectrum on a vastly more efficient basis would make it possible to move from an era of scarcity to one of abundance. The central point of the report is that while there is no new spectrum available, new technologies can vastly increase the capacity of existing spectrum.

The report concludes that the radio spectrum could be used as much as 40,000 times as efficiently as it is currently and the committee recommends an approach that could increase capacity 1,000 fold, Mr. Gorenberg said. “We’re living with spectrum that is of a policy that was really set in motion by technology of 100 years ago,” he said. “That’s led to a fragmentation of the spectrum that has led to inefficiency and artificial scarcity.”

Looking for a new something like the PC revolution to drive the economy for the next 10 years? Looking for ubiquitous broadband? This could be an important piece.

Fingers crossed.

Cheers,
Scott.