FCC opens up portion of US airwaves. Will Ofcom do the same in UK?

Following pressure from various US organisations, chief among which was Google (although the internet giant isn’t 100% happy with the result), the US telecoms regulator, the FCC, has decided to open up a section of the US radio spectrum.

The underlying aim of all this was to break the stranglehold that American telecoms operators have on the airwaves, opening up the market to competition from smaller players. Google wanted a fully-open system but, according to quotes on the Register, says the FCC has only gone part of the way towards that.

Here in the UK, similar discussions have been taking place between our regulator, Ofcom, and various interested parties. Called the ‘Digital Dividend Review‘, it covers plans for the carving-up of the old analogue TV signal frequencies. If you’re interested in learning more, you can read all about it on the Ofcom site. As Google suggested, the airwaves could be more like the internet — an open standard that anyone can plug anything into — rather than the closed box that we have at the moment. But in these terror-obsessed days, we can’t see that getting off the ground.

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