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The usual internet suspects are supporting the move to open up the white spaces. Microsoft, Philips and Motorola have been prime movers and have submitted prototype devices to the FCC for testing - the main objective being to prove that an unlicensed product can guarantee not to interfere with TV broadcasts. The White Spaces Coalition is a group of technology companies - also including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Earthlink and Samsung - that is campaigning on this front.

However, two Microsoft attempts have failed and so far the FCC has not approved any device. It is also considering an alternative proposal, led by Sprint Nextel and other cellcos, to allocate the spectrum for mobile backhaul.

Google is trying to regain the momentum in this debate and last week wrote a letter to the FCC reiterating its case that opening the white spaces would promote more universal and affordable internet services and help bridge the US' gaping broadband divide. "As Google has pointed out previously, the vast majority of viable spectrum in this country simply goes unused, or else is grossly underutilized," wrote Richard Whitt, Google's Washington telecom and media lawyer, in the letter, calling the white spaces a "once in a lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans", as well as enabling "much needed competition to the incumbent broadband service providers".

While Google is happy to work with mainstream operators to push its applications on to more handsets, it is also keen to expand the market dramatically by supporting new service providers with innovative business models. This was the aim of the failed plan to acquire a national 700MHz license, which would then have been used to wholesale capacity to smaller providers; but Google seems to have realized that boosting the viability of small and disruptive operators is more practical in unlicensed bands, because of the carriers' ability to buy up and manage licensed spectrum under the current auction system.

However, the weaknesses of the Wi-Fi metrozone experiment have highlighted the flaws in using the overcrowded 2.4GHz with WLANs, and so Google and Microsoft are looking to lower frequencies with better propagation qualities, such as TV bands, and to new technologies more optimized for mobile internet use. Whitt said the prototype products being created for the white spaces would be like "Wi-Fi on steroids" (a term previously often applied to WiMAX, whose own function in unlicensed spectrum has been somewhat sidelined of late).

The FCC, particularly the broadly Google-friendly chairman Kevin Martin, seems largely in favour of opening up the white space channels, but only if the broadcast communities' professed fears of interference can be addressed convincingly - which prototype devices to date have clearly failed to do.

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