Microsoft is Hustling Us with "White Spaces"

[Commentary] Microsoft recently made a Very Serious Announcement about deploying unused television airwaves to solve the digital divide in America. News outlets ate it up. Here's what's really going on: Microsoft is aiming to be the soup-to-nuts provider of Internet of Things devices, software, and consulting services to zillions of local and national governments around the world.

Microsoft doesn't want to have to rely on existing mobile data carriers to execute those plans. Why? Because the carriers will want a pound of flesh—a percentage—in exchange for shipping data generated by Microsoft devices from Point A to Point B. These costs can become very substantial over zillions of devices in zillions of cities. The carriers have power because, in many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies—spectrum—under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars. To eliminate that bottleneck, it will be good to have
unlicensed spectrum available everywhere, and cheap chipsets and devices available that can opportunistically take advantage of that spectrum.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.]