If those blocks lined up perfectly, device makers could build it in to all the LTE products they sold across the region, and carriers that used that band could offer LTE roaming around much of North and South America. But the extra 25MHz that the OAS supports is already called for in the U.S., Pearson said.
Parts of that extra bandwidth now belong to federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, but a 2012 law called for auctioning it for mobile services. Last week, 4G Americas urged the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to kick off that process by notifying the agencies it would auction off the spectrum. The auction would have to be finished by February 2015.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com
