The Milton system is a cognitive radio network that mines spectrum to provide cost-efficient telecommunications services at bi-directional, high data transfer rates. This technology aims to provide residential homes and businesses with broadband wireless Internet service, whether they are in an urban or suburban area.

The network, characterized as "cognitive", has the capability to sense the radio environment for interference and identify poor quality radio links. Having sensed the environment it changes its own signal transmission characteristics in a manner that improves poorly performing links and mitigates interference. Designed to be a low cost commodity wireless radio network, it uses the license-exempt bands that operate at 5 Gigahertz - bands that have been identified for world-wide use by the World Radio Congress of 2003.

Milton is ideally suited to boost the data capacity of the millions of kilometres of fibre optical networks that are already installed in cities everywhere and that have only seen a fraction of their capacity used. Milton provides the link between the endpoints of these optical networks and the home and office computer.

This new wireless technology is able to provide high-capacity Internet to regions of the world with underdeveloped or older telecommunications infrastructures. The capability of this technology is important in the development of a world-wide wireless Internet network based on new standards and concepts that originate from laboratories like the Communications Research Centre.