hailed the new “white-space spectrum” as a way to expand upon the success of the open frequencies that allow anyone to set up a WiFi radio hotspot in their house or coffee shop, without needing to buy spectrum or get a license.

But what will this super-WiFi look like in practice? Will it replace the 3G service we pay for for our smartphones? How fast will it be? Will we need new equipment or can our current laptops and cellphones just be upgraded?

Wired.com asked the experts at smart WiFi equipment maker Ruckus Wireless in Sunnyvale, California to find out.

The short answer is that the new spectrum could be really great news for rural areas, won’t be nearly as useful in dense urban areas, though the characteristics of the new spectrum could make for some very smart uses.

That’s according to Bill Kish, the CTO and co-founder of Ruckus Wireless, which is known for its innovative WiFi antennas.

“There is an interesting amount of hype around the new spectrum,” Kish said. “But people don’t know the best way to use this new spectrum at this point and its going to be sometime before we figure it out.”

Currently, WiFi uses unlicensed spectrum in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ranges (the latter is for Wireless-N). These ranges are available across the country and largely standardized across the world.

The new whitespaces are much lower — in the 700 MHz spectrum — and like the TV signals that use adjacent channels, the waves are very good at penetrating walls and obstacles. WiFi is more easily absorbed by obstacles, including humans.

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Authors: Ryan Singel

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