The exploitation of TV white spaces can meet the increasing demand for spectrum
resources and create opportunities for deploying a variety of wireless services in a
flexible manner. However, uncertainties from technologies, business models and
regulatory policies hinder the take-off of TV white spaces exploitation. This paper
proposes a bicameral (or two-chambered) geo-location database, which allows/supports
both free and paid access to the TV white spaces: i.e., one chamber supports free
access through opportunistic or geo-location database access; and the other chamber
supports paid usage through secondary spectrum trading. Consequently, four technological
scenarios for the acquisition of TV white spaces emerge, namely: sensing only,
joint sensing and geo-location database access, geo-location database access only, and
broker based secondary spectrum trading. An analysis of these scenarios is performed
based on a theoretical framework for emerging technology evaluation while considering
technological, business models and regulatory dimensions. The analyses show that
free and paid access to TV white space complement each other; and that despite
considerable infrastructure costs, the bicameral geo-location database is positioned to
create viable TV white spaces exploitation value chains; hence have the most optimal
technological, business and regulatory prospects.