The U.N. decided to give carriers access to bandwidth reserved for terrestrial television broadcasts, which could pave the way for a truly converging 4G platform in the world in 2015. The U.S. was one of the lead supporters of the plan as it claimed that a global agreement on spectrum use was better than letting each country and region decide which frequency to use. While the U.S. subscriber population will gain access to some of this spectrum in 2009, the rest of world will have to wait an additional 6 years in some cases.
Industry analysts estimate that these networks can be rolled out for half of the cost of using higher frequencies, such as the 2,300 to 2,400 megahertz range that is also available for such services in some regions.
For more on the U.N. spectrum plans:
- read this article