White Spaces

Unused radio frequencies between used radio bands or channels allocated to a broadcasting service. This is sometime referred to as "guard bands" purposely left blank to avoid interference between adjacent bands. There is also unused radio spectrum which has either never been used, or is becoming free as a result of technical changes. In particular, the switchover to digital television frees up large areas between about 50 MHz and 700 MHz.

Various proposals, including IEEE 802.11af, IEEE 802.22 and those from the White Spaces Coalition, have advocated using white spaces to provide wireless broadband Internet access. A device intended to use these available channels is a "white-spaces device" (WSD). White Spaces has been called "WiFi on steroids" and has been championed by the likes of Google and Microsoft.

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