IIC Canada 2012: Industry Canada getting set to unveil spectrum release plan

By Perry Hoffman

OTTAWA - Industry Canada has plans to deal with the mobile spectrum crunch. It involves allocation tweaks, technology innovation and some potential harmonization with the U.S. Just before Industry Minister Christian Paradis spoke about spectrum on Tuesday afternoon, Helen McDonald, senior assistant deputy minister for spectrum, information technologies and telecommunications at the department told the IIC Canada conference that the 270 MHz mobile broadband spectrum currently available could double to nearly 550 MHz of bandwidth by 2014. Much of this could come from allocation changes in the 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz bands as well as a potential mobile designation...