Managing Shared Access to a Spectrum Commons

The open access, unlicensed or spectrum commons approach to managing shared access to RF spectrum offers many attractive benefits, especially when implemented in conjunction with and as a complement to a regime of marketbased, flexible use, tradable licensed spectrum ([Benkler02], [Lehr04], [Werbach03]). However, as a number of critics have pointed out, implementing the unlicensed model poses difficult challenges that have not been well-addressed yet by commons advocates ([Benjam03], [Faulhab05], [Goodman04], [Hazlett01]). A successful spectrum commons will not be unregulated, but it also need not be command & control by another name. This paper seeks to address some of the implementation challenges associated with managing a spectrum commons. We focus on the minimal set of features that we believe a suitable management protocol, etiquette, or framework for a spectrum commons will need to incorporate. This includes: (1) No transmit only devices; (2) Power restrictions; (3) Common channel signaling; (4) Mechanism for handling congestion and allocating resources among users/uses in times of congestion; (5) Mechanism to support enforcement (e.g., established procedures to verify protocol is in conformance); (6) Mechanism to support reversibility of policy; and (7) Protection for privacy and security. We explain why each is necessary, examine their implications for current policy, and suggest ways in which they might be implemented. We present a framework that suggests a set of design principles for the protocols that will govern a successful commons management regime. Our design rules lead us to conclude that the appropriate Protocols for a Commons will need to be more liquid ([Reed05]) than in the past: (1) Marketbased instead of C&C; (2) Decentralized/distributed; and, (3) Adaptive and flexible (Anonymous, distributed, decentralized, and locally responsive)

Measuring Broadband’s Economic Impact

Does broadband matter to the economy? Numerous studies have focused on whether there is a digital divide, on regulatory impacts and investment incentives, and on the factors influencing where broadband is available. However, given how recently broadband has been adopted, little empirical research has investigated its economic impact. This paper presents estimates of the effect of broadband on a number of indicators of economic activity, including employment, wages, and industry mix, using a cross-sectional panel data set of communities (by zip code) across the United States. We match data from the FCC (Form 477) on broadband availability with demographic and other economic data from the US Population Censuses and Establishment Surveys. We find support for the conclusion that broadband positively affects economic activity in ways that are consistent with the qualitative stories told by broadband advocates. Even after controlling for community-level factors known to influence broadband availability and economic activity, we find that between 1998 and 2002, communities in which mass-market broadband was available by December 1999 experienced more rapid growth in (1) employment, (2) the number of businesses overall, and (3) businesses in IT-intensive sectors. In addition, the effect of broadband availability by 1999 can be observed in higher market rates for rental housing in 2000. We compare state-level with zip-code level analyses to highlight data aggregation problems, and discuss a number of analytic and data issues that bear on further measurements of broadband’s economic impact. This analysis is perforce preliminary because additional data and experience are needed to more accurately address this important question; however, the early results presented here suggest that the assumed (and oft-touted) economic impacts of broadband are both real and measurable

Public safety radios must pool spectrum

The dynamic-spectrum-access research and development community is maturing technologies that will enable radios to share RF spectrum much more intensively. The adoption of DSA technologies by the public-safety community can better align systems with the future of wireless services, in general, and can contribute to making next-generation public-safety radio systems more robust, capable, and flexible. A critical first step toward a DSA-enabled future is to reform spectrum management to create spectrum pools that DSA-enabled devices, such as cognitive radios, can use iquest under the control of more dynamically flexible and adaptive prioritization policies than is possible with legacy technology. Appropriate reform will enable spectrum portability, facilitating the decoupling of spectrum rights from the provision of infrastructure. This article examines the economic, policy, and market challenges of enabling spectrum pooling and portability for public-safety radios

Sensing as a service: An exploration into practical implementations of DSA

The cognitive radio literature generally assumes that the functions required for non-cooperative secondary DSA are integrated into a single radio system. It need not be so. In this paper, we model cognitive radio functions as a value chain and explore the implications of different forms of organization of this value chain. We initially explore the consequences of separating the sensing function from other cognitive radio functions