The warnings are dire: The number of available radio frequencies is declining, say U.S. government officials, and with it the Pentagon’s ability to introduce new communications technology...

But a seven-year-old firm a stone’s throw from the Capital Beltway says it can harness “white space” in the spectrum to provide interoperable communications. The 30-employee firm, Shared Spectrum, had 2006 revenues of “about $8 million to $9 million” and expects about the same this year...

In a test last summer by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at the U.S. Army’s Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, Shared Spectrum demonstrated that it could send data on frequencies being used by other nearby radios without interference...

Shared Spectrum is developing a follow-on radio with partner M/A-COM, a unit of Tyco Electronics and a provider of wireless radio, microwave and millimeter-wave components. They are working together on DARPA’s “Wireless After Next” project, which seeks a radio for less than $500...

One wireless policy observer, J.H. Snider, who directs research at the Washington-based New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program, has criticized other attempts by commercial interests to use spectrum white space. But in an e-mail, he was positive about what Shared Spectrum is doing for DARPA.

“DARPA’s XG is to wireless networks what DARPA’s Internet was to wired networks. XG is a government-funded, state-of-the-art network design that could have a huge impact on the design of wireless networks going out a few decades,” Snider wrote.

“Its short-term impact, except for military applications, is likely to be much less,” he added. “Shared Spectrum’s greatest contribution, from my standpoint, is to demonstrate how big a deal XG-type technology really is. Shared Spectrum has done this by demonstrating that there is a huge amount of white space that could be put into productive use with the right combination of technology and policy...”

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