Towards a viable business model for collaborative use of unlicensed frequency bands in densely populated areas

The overwhelming commercial success of connected things and personal mobile devices is driving the dense and uncontrolled deployment of wireless networks using unlicensed frequency bands. This results in heavy congestion and interference, leading to considerable loss of network performance. The only sustainable solution is some form of collaboration between users. Not only does this require new technology to facilitate such collaboration, it also demands for new business models that accommodate new, collaboration facilitating roles. In this paper we propose a generic business model for sustainable spectrum sharing in unlicensed frequency band. It includes two new actors, the Spectrum Broker and the Wi-5 System Operator. The business model is tested against popular use cases, in dialogue with various European network operators. The results indicate that the model is applicable and viable. A© 2018 IEEE.