Of course greater range has pros and cons in wireless network design: you can detect the system from further away providing greater coverage, but this also means that you have the potential to interfere with systems further away. The sweet spot frequency for any system is where the requirement for site density due to capacity constraint is about the same as that due to coverage constraints. The greater the coverage, the further from the transmitter interference can be received, the more potentially challenging an unlicensed/licence-exempt deployment.

Personally this spectrum seems more appropriate for rural wireless and low traffic density deployments than metropolitan applications seeking to provide broadband class services, though for a low traffic/bandwidth deployment it could be interesting option. Even for rural deployments the model of spectrum management and public/private deployment is an interesting area of discussion.

While seems great news in the US, the UK is also looking at broadcast TV spectrum for other uses. The full horror of co-ordinated lobbying from the wireless mic community, and the results of broadcasters implying to the public that using the spectrum for anything other than TV will mean “no HD in the UK” can be seen at the Ofcom website for anybody who has the stomach to wade through several hundred responses. For details of the consultation and responses see http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/ddr/ . While this is just the UK it shows a potential disadvantage to the band, that there is risk that the band may not become broadly globally harmonised in the same way as the 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands.