Although licensed- and unlicensed-band equipment can operate cooperatively to serve the wide variety of applications for wireless communications, there has been a long-standing debate over which is the better technology. Now this licensed-versus-unlicensed debate should be reconsidered in light of new technologies that provide high-availability links in the unlicensed spectrum.

Radio technology has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Many of the wireless technologies available today have been developed - or declassified by the military - since only the mid-1980s. As is typical with most innovation, these technologies have already delivered price-performance benchmarks unmatched by traditional products, and continue to deliver improvements in price-performance each year. In addition to significant increases in speed, the last 20 years have brought tremendous improvements in interference mitigation, spectrum management, compression, complex modulation and receiver techniques. All of these improvements have made performance for equipment that operates in the unlicensed band significantly better…making the "licensed is better" point-of-view more myth than reality.

Licensed-band wireless Ethernet operates within the part of the radio spectrum (e.g., 6.0 GHz in the U.S. as well as 50 MHz of the 4.9 band available for public safety) designated by government regulators to be reserved for individual license holders. Licensed operators are permitted exclusive use of part of the band over an assigned geographic area. With exclusive rights, a license holder should be able to operate without interference or spectrum crowding caused by other operators transmitting over the same frequency in the same geographic area. Less interference should translate into higher throughput and better link performance.

The unlicensed part of the spectrum (e.g., 5.4 and 5.8 GHz in the U.S.) does not promise exclusive use of the band. However, it does eliminate the delay and expense of obtaining a license. Unlicensed equipment (radios and antennas) also tends to be much less expensive to buy and install. In addition, unlicensed links are not restricted to a specific geographic area. Typically, they can be deployed at the owner’s discretion, offering greater flexibility for today's providers and telecoms to serve mobile and virtual enterprises.

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