The Federal Communications Commission is permitting spectrum owners to sublicense their spectrum and facilitate an open market for spectrum brokering. This will help alleviate spectrum shortages by making unused or underutilized spectrum held by existing licensees more readily available to other users and uses and thereby spur development of new, spectrum-efficient technologies.

To fully tap this FCC policy, as well as simplify the task of subleasing, Orlando, Fla.-based fledgling company Spectrum Bridge Inc. has come up with a patented solution that will significantly change the way this business is operated. By providing a software solution that automatically identifies, packages and monetizes spectrum in real-time, Spectrum Bridge will create a new paradigm for the efficient use of wireless spectrum for enterprise, consumer, public safety, and defense uses, said Marketing Vice President Rick Rotondo. By creating a real-time online exchange for trading unused spectrum, Spectrum Bridge is hoping to make spectrum a retail commodity, noted Rotondo.

According to the developers, Spectrum Bridge will enable spectrum owners to monetize available spectrum via an automated exchange in a structured and trusted environment. Hence, added Rotondo, "it will enable our products and technologies to dramatically increase the overall utilization of available wireless spectrum."

"Our solution provides a simple way to identify, package and lease available spectrum,” said Engineering Vice President Joe Hamilla.

Rotondo said that the current spectrum subleasing process is manual and  labor-intensive and may take weeks or months to complete, which makes on-demand and automated spectrum exchanges impossible. Second, only spectrum that is totally unused by its owner is leased. Partially used spectrum, even if it is only being used 10% of the time or in 10% of the licensed area is impractical to lease today since its owner cannot be assured that secondary users will not interfere with his network. Spectrum Bridge addresses both of these problems by providing a solution that automates the leasing process and identifies, packages and monetizes spectrum in real time for sale on the open market, explained Rotondo.

The Spectrum Bridge software allows spectrum holders to disaggregate their licenses in to retail offerings by creating leases based on:

• • Time of day (off peak, specific time, entire day, etc.)
• 
  • Duration (minutes, hours, days, etc.)
• 
  • Specific portion or part of license available (specific frequencies or channels)
• 
  • Exact geographic boundaries for secondary use (campus, city, region, etc.)

This simplifies and reduces the transaction costs of the spectrum leasing process- while making significantly more spectrum available for secondary use than is practical or possible today, asserted Rotondo.

Products and services in development include wireless sensing and communications systems (voice, data, video) for both unlicensed and licensed spectrum, radio and spectrum management systems, real-time spectrum exchange, trusted brokerage services and software licensing. In reality, the solution analyzes the airwaves to discover available spectrum and then package available spectrum into leasable retail bundle, thereby allowing spectrum owners and users to participate in a mutually beneficial, dynamic spectrum exchange.

The company will be introducing its technology and online solutions in phases throughout the year, with its online spectrum exchange expected to be fully operational in late this year. A demonstration of the company’s marketplace and toolset can be found at www.spectrumbridge.com.

Venture funded, the company was founded last March by the senior management team of MeshNetworks, which was acquired by Motorola in late 2004.

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