Firm's product could unclog airwaves, but it raises legal quandaries

Before an e-mail pings your BlackBerry or a video streams on your iPad, it must often pass through the airwaves, a nebulous utility on which our lives grow more and more dependent.

The proliferation of smartphones for business and personal use has swollen the amount of data that travels over a slice of spectrum frequencies specifically allotted to mobile carriers. The Federal Communications Commission also segments and licenses spectrum to the military, government, radio stations and TV channels, among other users.

And as the number of spectrum consumers climbs, the potential to clog networks and cause slower or dropped connections similarly increases. CEO Thomas Stroup and other executives at Vienna-based Shared Spectrum say one solution may be a technology they developed for the military in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The technology allows the military to use available spectrum in foreign countries, effectively allowing it to share the airwaves.

While nearly all spectrum is licensed for use, large swaths sit idle most of the time because the holder has more than it regularly needs, said Stroup and others familiar with spectrum issues. If devices could tap into those unused frequencies, connections would be more bountiful.

The question is how.

Shared Spectrum provides one option, a chip that can be installed in phones, tablets and other devices to continuously scan for and connect to available spectrum, Stroup said.

"Anybody that has encountered a denial of service with a wireless device can see the benefits," he said

But one sizable hurdle stands in its way: government regulations.

The chip would require spectrum owners to share frequencies so that the device can access those that are not in use at the moment. This raises a number of legal and regulatory concerns for which a fix isn't likely to be quick.

As Annandale telecommunications lawyer Robert Schwaninger explains, the FCC divides and sells specific spectrum frequencies to prevent interference. (Think of how a radio station becomes garbled with another on the same frequency when you drive through an area where they overlap.) The licensee then not only has sole right to the spectrum, but a legal responsibility for how it is used.

There's an "element of security that naturally is inherent in saying these are my channels, those are yours," Schwaninger said. "If there's a problem, whose fault and responsibility is it to correct the problem?"