IEEE 802 standards for TV white space

In telecommunications, white spaces are unused frequency channels that exist between different assigned channels to avoid interference. Due to advances in digital technologies, these unused channels can be used for other applications with manageable interference. The migration of analog television to digital television also freed up the frequency bands that were originally occupied by analog TVs or otherwise could not be used due to potential interference to analog TVs. The combination of the unused frequencies (guard bands) and freed-up analog TV channels provides an opportunity for applications that are in need of frequency bands. It also looks attractive to applications that are currently occupying crowded frequency bands and to countries that have spare bandwidths, such as Japan.