Ofcom is yet again seeing the light and looking to align the UK with European countries in releasing more analogue bandwidth after the digital switchover.
But, especially with Lord Carter's review in mind, they might be better looking to the US where the so called 'white space' spectrum is being made available for broadband services.
Of course, these plans aren't exactly going smoothly in the US, where the digital switchover has been postponed.
However, it would seem to make sense to make some critical bandwidth available on a 'shareware' basis to enable everyone from organizations like The Cloud, BT, the mobile networks to smaller players like TFL, and even service providers such as Google and MSN to provide low cost bandwidth.
The two requirements for this are:
- suitable spectrum
- an organisation to create a 'level playing field'
This is a situation common to almost all countries and should, perhaps be tackled globally through an organisation like the ITU. Having a two stream economy in a developed country is bad enough. Having a two stream world does not help commerce, communication nor global understanding.
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