The economic value of unlicensed wireless spectrum in the U.S. could exceed $140 billion, based on estimates derived from independent studies.

That’s the conclusion of a newly released report by Richard Katz, Ph.D., who is Director of Strategy Research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. The report’s release is tied to the introduction of a new industry-supported organization, WiFiForward, which seeks to encourage the liberation of unlicensed over-the-air spectrum for Internet traffic delivery purposes.

Katz’s report notes that ascribing an economic value to wireless spectrum is difficult, partly because there are a variety of use cases for the frequencies, such as cellular off-loading and residential Wi-Fi, rather than one homogenous marketplace. Further, some services that use wireless spectrum aren’t directly sold, making valuation tricky.

But he notes the stakes for optimizing the utility of wireless spectrum are rising as rapid increases in Internet data consumption threaten to overwhelm today’s wireless networks and the spectrum that supports them.