The European Commission called member countries to introduce legislation that facilitate sharing of spectrum to deal with the "exponential’ growth in mobile and wireless data traffic.
The commission said spectrum regulation often does not reflect the new technical possibilities of sharing spectrum which could lead to poor service for mobile and broadband users.
According to the European Commission new technologies can facilitate sharing radio spectrum amongst several users – such as internet providers – or use the spectrum available between TV frequencies or other purposes.
The plans are expected to result in the development of new markets that include trackable secondary rights for parts of the spectrum allocation.
According to the commission, more than 50% of all smartphone traffic is routed over Wi-Fi networks, and this type of data traffic is growing four to six times faster than that on mobile networks.
European Commission vice president responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe Neelie Kroes said that radio spectrum is economic oxygen, it is used by every single person and business.
"If we run out of spectrum then mobile networks and broadband won’t work," Kroes said.
"That is unacceptable, we must maximise this scarce resource by re-using it and creating a single market out of it. We need a single market for spectrum in order to regain global industrial leadership in mobile and data, to attract more R&D investments."
Mobile data traffic is expected to increase 26% annually by 2015 and by then, over seven billion phones, tablets and other mobile devices will be connectable to the Internet.
