Amazon emphasizes importance of spectrum access
Online retail and cloud computing giant Amazon has joined the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance as a charter member, adding its backing to the group which advocates for opportunistic spectrum sharing, including unlicensed access, and supports policies such as the use of television white spaces to bridge the digital divide.
“Our products and services are smarter, faster and more convenient because we have access to unlicensed wireless spectrum,” said Brian Huseman, VP of public policy of Amazon, in a statement. “Access to spectrum is essential for the creation and growth of ground breaking, consumer-focused technologies and we look forward to working with the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance to ensure we maintain it.”
Kalpak Gude, president of the DSA, called Amazon’s membership “a significant moment in the history of the Alliance.”
The move to join the DSA comes as part of a number of efforts Amazon is making to promote and broaden e-commerce participation in rural areas — which also means promoting internet access and closing the urban/rural digital divide. The company has been particularly focused on the United Kingdom: it hosted Amazon Academy at last year’s Rural Entrepreneur Show conference in with a focus on small and medium-sized businesses and in March, sponsored a report outlining the potential market opportunity in rural areas of the U.K. With higher rates of digital adoption in rural areas, the research by Rural England CIC and Scotland’s Rural College estimated that between $16 billion to $34 billion could be added to the U.K. economy annually.
The research found that along with issues of basic connectivity availability and reliability, rural businesses have additional barriers to digital adoption, such as difficulty finding external IT support, or recruiting people with IT skills.
“The main potential from increased digital adoption in rural areas would come from assisting the bulk of ordinary small and micro businesses to raise their digital game,” according to a report summary. “Whilst technology-driven businesses should not be overlooked, it is growing digital adoption across sectors such as agriculture, retail, tourism, construction, leisure and business services which will pay the highest productivity dividend.
“The digital appetite of rural businesses is illustrated by the fact that four in five of them believe digital tools and services will be important to their future growth,” the researchers added. “Cloud computing is seen as important by 67%, 5G mobile by 54%, the Internet of Things by 47% and machine learning/artificial intelligence by 26%.”
In joining the DSA, Amazon joins fellow charter members including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Nominet and Adaptrum (which provides rural wireless broadband in Virginia using TV white spaces).
“We are confident that having Amazon join the Alliance will help us achieve our goals of bringing broadband connectivity to the unconnected and encouraging more efficient use of spectrum through unlicensed and shared spectrum policies,” Gude said.
