The radio spectrum : opportunities and challenges for the developing world

The radio spectrum is a major component of the telecommunications infrastructure that underpins the information society. Spectrum management, however, has not kept up with major changes in technology, business practice, and economic policy during the past two decades. Traditional spectrum management practice is predicated on the spectrum being a limited resource that must be apportioned among uses and users by government administration. For many years this model worked well, but more recently the spectrum has come under pressure from rapid demand growth for wireless services and changing patterns of use. This has led to growing technical and economic inefficiencies, as well as obstacles to technological innovation. Two alternative approaches are being tried, one driven by the market (spectrum property rights) and another driven by technology innovation (commons). Practical solutions are evolving that combine some features of both. Wholesale replacement of current practice is unlikely, but the balance between administration, property rights, and commons is clearly shifting. Although the debate on spectrum management reform is mainly taking place in high-income countries, it is deeply relevant to developing countries as well.Broadcast and Media,Roads&Highways,Climate Change,Montreal Protocol,ICT Policy and Strategies

The Role of Licence-Exemption in Spectrum Reform

Spectrum reform initiatives in the US and Europe have identified a need to move away from the traditional command and control approach towards flexible and tradable licences and licence-exemption. Current regulatory initiatives are tending to focus on the flexible licensing route, and there is a risk that licence-exemption will be sidelined during the important formative years of this major policy transition. This must not happen; licence-exemption supports innovation and entrepreneurship and is an important second leg of a market-based spectrum management regime. A current case in point is the transition in UHF frequency bands from analogue to digital TV, where licence exempt use of resulting gaps in the spectrum could yield enormous benefits for citizens and consumers.spectrum policy, spectrum management, wireless services, deregulation, Telecommunications, regulation, Networks

Tragedy of the Regulatory Commons: LightSquared and the Missing Spectrum Rights

The endemic underuse of radio spectrum constitutes a tragedy of the regulatory commons. Like other common interest tragedies, the outcome results from a legal or market structure that prevents economic actors from executing socially efficient bargains. In wireless markets, innovative applications often provoke claims by incumbent radio users that the new traffic will interfere with existing services. Sometimes these concerns are mitigated via market transactions, a la “Coasian bargaining.” Other times, however, solutions cannot be found even when social gains dominate the cost of spillovers. In the recent “LightSquared debacle,” such spectrum allocation failure played out. GPS interests that access frequencies adjacent to the band hosting LightSquared’s new nationwide mobile network complained that the wireless entrant would harm the operation of locational devices. Based on these complaints, regulators then killed LightSquared’s planned 4G network. Conservative estimates placed the prospective 4G consumer gains at least an order of magnitude above GPS losses. “Win win” bargains were theoretically available, fixing GPS vulnerabilities while welcoming the highly valuable wireless innovation. Yet transaction costs—largely caused by policy choices to issue limited and highly fragmented spectrum usage rights (here in the GPS band)—proved prohibitive. This episode provides a template for understanding market and non-market failure in radio spectrum allocation

Spectrum Miscreants, Vigilantes, and Kangaroo Courts: The Return of the Wireless Wars

Symposium: Rough Consensus and Running Code: Integrating Engineering Principles into Internet Policy Debates, held at the University of Pennsylvania\u27s Center for Technology Innovation and Competition on May 6-7, 2010. It is axiomatic that government licensing is a foundational requirement for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum. Yet in some bands there is no licensing requirement, providing an empirical site that can be used to examine wireless coexistence without licenses. This Article draws on ethnographic work with wireless Internet Service Providers to report on the extralegal means that are used to share or allocate spectrum in these license exempt bands. Operators use a variety of informal arrangements there, including jamming and extortion. It concludes that wireless may be increasingly subject to extralegal allocation, and the outcomes of federal spectrum policy may in fact rest in local hands

Managing the radio spectrum : framework for reform in developing countries

Bringing management of the radio spectrum closer to markets is long overdue. The radio spectrum is a major component of the infrastructure that underpins the information society. Spectrum management, however, has not kept up with major changes in technology, business practice, and economic policy that have taken place worldwide during the last two decades. For many years traditional government administration of the spectrum worked reasonably well, but more recently it has led to growing technical and economic inefficiencies as well as obstacles to technological innovation. Two alternative approaches to spectrum management are being tried in several countries, one driven by the market (tradable spectrum rights) and another driven by technology innovation (spectrum commons). This paper discusses the basic features, advantages and limitations, scope of application, and requirements for implementation of these three approaches. The paper then discusses how these approaches can be made to work under conditions that typically prevail in developing countries, including weak rule of law, limited markets, and constrained fiscal space. Although spectrum reform strategies for individual countries must be developed case by case, several broadly applicable strategic options are outlined. The paper proposes a phased approach to addressing spectrum reform in a country. It ends by discussing aspects of institutional design, managing the transition, and addressing high-level changes such as the transition to digital television, the path to third-generation mobile services, launching of wireless fixed broadband services, and releasing military spectrum. The paper is extensively annotated and referenced.E-Business,Roads&Highways,Telecommunications Infrastructure,Climate Change,ICT Policy and Strategies

Valuing Spectrum Allocations

Observing trends in which Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have become widely popular, some argue that unlicensed allocations hosting such wireless technologies are increasingly valuable and that administrative spectrum allocations should shift accordingly. We challenge that policy conclusion. A core issue is that the social value of a given spectrum allocation is widely assumed to equal the gains of the applications it is likely to host. This thinking is faulty, as vividly seen in what we deem the Broadcast TV Spectrum Valuation Fallacy – the idea that because wireless video, or broadcast network programs are popular, TV channels are efficiently defined. This approach has been appropriately rejected, in key instances, by spectrum regulators, but is similarly applied in other instances regarding unlicensed allocations. While traditional allocations have garnered widespread criticism for imposing rigid barriers tending to block innovation, and flexible-use spectrum access rights have gained favor, the regulatory methods used to allocate (or reallocate) bandwidth remain embedded in a “command and control” process. Reconfiguring spectrum usage to enable emerging wireless markets often requires lengthy, costly rule makings. The expense of this administrative overhead is generally omitted from spectrum allocation policy analysis. Yet, it constitutes an essential component of the consumer welfare analysis. We propose a more fulsome policy approach, one that includes not only the appropriate measures of marginal value and opportunity cost for rival allocations, but incorporates transaction costs. Instead of regulators attempting to guess how much bandwidth should be allocated to various types of licensed and unlicensed services – and imposing different rules within and across these allocations – a more generic approach is called for. By better enabling spontaneous adjustments to changing consumer demands and technological innovation, spectrum allocations can be more efficiently brought into their most valuable employments

Valuing Spectrum Allocations

Observing trends in which Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have become widely popular, some argue that unlicensed allocations hosting such wireless technologies are increasingly valuable and that administrative spectrum allocations should shift accordingly. We challenge that policy conclusion. A core issue is that the social value of a given spectrum allocation is widely assumed to equal the gains of the applications it is likely to host. This thinking is faulty, as vividly seen in what we deem the Broadcast TV Spectrum Valuation Fallacy – the idea that because wireless video, or broadcast network programs are popular, TV channels are efficiently defined. This approach has been appropriately rejected, in key instances, by spectrum regulators, but is similarly applied in other instances regarding unlicensed allocations. While traditional allocations have garnered widespread criticism for imposing rigid barriers tending to block innovation, and flexible-use spectrum access rights have gained favor, the regulatory methods used to allocate (or reallocate) bandwidth remain embedded in a “command and control” process. Reconfiguring spectrum usage to enable emerging wireless markets often requires lengthy, costly rule makings. The expense of this administrative overhead is generally omitted from spectrum allocation policy analysis. Yet, it constitutes an essential component of the consumer welfare analysis. We propose a more fulsome policy approach, one that includes not only the appropriate measures of marginal value and opportunity cost for rival allocations, but incorporates transaction costs. Instead of regulators attempting to guess how much bandwidth should be allocated to various types of licensed and unlicensed services – and imposing different rules within and across these allocations – a more generic approach is called for. By better enabling spontaneous adjustments to changing consumer demands and technological innovation, spectrum allocations can be more efficiently brought into their most valuable employments

The Case for Liberal Spectrum Licenses: A Technical and Economic Perspective

The traditional system of radio spectrum allocation has inefficiently restricted wireless services. Alternatively, liberal licenses ceding de facto spectrum ownership rights yield incentives for operators to maximize airwave value. These authorizations have been widely used for mobile services in the U.S. and internationally, leading to the development of highly productive services and waves of innovation in technology, applications and business models. Serious challenges to the efficacy of such a spectrum regime have arisen, however. Seeing the widespread adoption of such devices as cordless phones and wi-fi radios using bands set aside for unlicensed use, some scholars and policy makers posit that spectrum sharing technologies have become cheap and easy to deploy, mitigating airwave scarcity and, therefore, the utility of exclusive rights. This paper evaluates such claims technically and economically. We demonstrate that spectrum scarcity is alive and well. Costly conflicts over airwave use not only continue, but have intensified with scientific advances that dramatically improve the functionality of wireless devices and so increase demand for spectrum access. Exclusive ownership rights help direct spectrum inputs to where they deliver the highest social gains, making exclusive property rules relatively more socially valuable. Liberal licenses efficiently accommodate rival business models (including those commonly associated with unlicensed spectrum allocations) while mitigating the constraints levied on spectrum use by regulators imposing restrictions in traditional licenses or via use rules and technology standards in unlicensed spectrum allocations.

Advancing Consumer Interests Through Ubiquitous Broadband: The Need for a New Spectrum

Comprehensive and long-term spectrum reform can play a critical role in the FCC\u27s development of a National Broadband Plan and in its consideration of Open Internet rules. More efficient and intensive use of the nation\u27s spectrum resources would help provide a path to greater broadband deployment, competition and innovation for all consumers. Wireless and mobile technologies hold great promise to offer consumers new services to complement, extend, or even replace existing broadband offerings. A comprehensive review of the nation\u27s spectrum policy is, therefore, necessary to ensure that wireless and mobile broadband services are not hamstrung by outdated rules or command-and-control spectrum allocations. Spectrum reform should include three main components. First, the FCC should focus on understanding how existing spectrum allocations are used currently while ensuring that all existing allocations are made available to providers in a timely manner. Second, the FCC should review its allocation and spectrum sharing rules to promote more efficient spectrum usage. Third, the FCC should ensure its regulatory approach fosters innovative technologies and more efficient uses of spectrum

Advancing Consumer Interests Through Ubiquitous Broadband: The Need for a New Spectrum

Comprehensive and long-term spectrum reform can play a critical role in the FCC\u27s development of a National Broadband Plan and in its consideration of Open Internet rules. More efficient and intensive use of the nation\u27s spectrum resources would help provide a path to greater broadband deployment, competition and innovation for all consumers. Wireless and mobile technologies hold great promise to offer consumers new services to complement, extend, or even replace existing broadband offerings. A comprehensive review of the nation\u27s spectrum policy is, therefore, necessary to ensure that wireless and mobile broadband services are not hamstrung by outdated rules or command-and-control spectrum allocations. Spectrum reform should include three main components. First, the FCC should focus on understanding how existing spectrum allocations are used currently while ensuring that all existing allocations are made available to providers in a timely manner. Second, the FCC should review its allocation and spectrum sharing rules to promote more efficient spectrum usage. Third, the FCC should ensure its regulatory approach fosters innovative technologies and more efficient uses of spectrum