The hottest item at Mobile World Congress won't be for sale

In Barcelona, you really can buy happiness. (It's called Iberico, a delicious Spanish ham.) But you can't buy unlicensed spectrum, and yet it's going to be the hottest thing at Mobile World Congress next week.

Commercial mobile operators, which for years relied on exclusive frequencies doled out through auctions or competitions, are now looking toward bands that anyone can use. Not only is unlicensed spectrum free, it may also become available with less time-consuming red tape. And there's a lot of it.

Consumers choose unlicensed spectrum every day when they let their phones switch over to Wi-Fi at home or in a coffee shop. (Wi-Fi is the biggest unlicensed success story.) Carriers encourage this because it means less traffic on their cellular networks. But there are a lot of other ways in which cellular devices, as well as the Internet of Things, are starting to take advantage of this kind of spectrum.

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