Long-range communications in licence-exempt TV white spaces: An introduction to Soft-Licence concept

Spectrum deregulation in wireless industry along with advancements in Cognitive Radio (CR) technology has opened up opportunities to access under-utilised spectral bands such as TV White Spaces (TVWS). Certain services in TVWS would require access to spectrum which is predictable, measurable and offer a higher degree of certainty currently difficult under the license-exempt model. This paper introduces a novel light-touch regulatory model called as `Soft-Licence´ which sits between the current exclusive-license and license-exempt spectrum models and offers the required service protection from license-exempt secondary systems and provides a fine balance between enabling efficient use of spectrum and encouragement to service providers to deploy infrastructure based on shared TVWS spectrum. To complete the discussion, a commercial model based on separation of White Space connectivity and White Space retail service under the Soft-Licence concept is proposed.