Today the United States is recognized as a leader in mobile technology, including commercial deployments of LTE and development of mobile operating systems. This leadership depends on our continuing to make additional spectrum available for licensed mobile broadband and unlicensed uses, particularly as other countries are also focused on making additional broadband spectrum available.
Today we are releasing a white paper that compiles information on the status of licensed and unlicensed spectrum resources in the United States and selected countries around the globe, which also realize the importance of additional mobile broadband spectrum, and are taking steps to make more available. The countries selected for this analysis were based in part on data availability. Future updates of the paper may include additional countries. Fueled by the skyrocketing demand for mobile data services, there has been a lot of interest in understanding what spectrum is available for mobile broadband networks around the world, and how the situation in the United States compares to other countries. While much information about global spectrum resources is publicly available, getting a complete grasp of the spectrum availability picture around the globe can be daunting. Various conditions and unique issues often arise regarding different frequency bands in individual countries: for example, frequencies may be available, but only for use in certain geographic areas; or there may be restrictions on spectrum use. In addition, different sources may use different definitions, so a frequency band might be considered “currently available” according to one source but not another, resulting in different bottom lines.
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