Page 109 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

ACCELERATING THE INTRODUCTION OF SPECTRUM SHARING USING

MARKET-BASED MECHANISMS

Fernando Beltrán

University of Auckland Business School

ABSTRACT Essentially spectrum management is the government
function that organises and regulates the utilisation,
Spectrum management needs to be effective, in that
spectrum must be allocated to the right uses, and efficient, allocation and assignment of blocks of frequencies so that
in that spectrum must be assigned to those that value it the interference between uses in contiguous bands is minimised.
most. Technological advances and demands for further In order to address scarcity and underutilisation of
spectrum availability from mobile broadband operators spectrum, spectrum sharing is taking high priority in the
(among others) require spectrum management to timely and agenda of spectrum authorities in many countries. Such
firmly incorporate schemes to increase the technical institutions have initiated reviews of their national guidelines
efficiency of spectrum utilisation. One such scheme is for spectrum management in order to incorporate spectrum
spectrum sharing which has the potential to result in higher sharing to their regular processes of spectrum allocation and
spectrum utilisation and greater spectrum value. In such assignment. A review of spectrum sharing policies is
context allocation and assignment, two critical functions to included in a later section.
manage the spectrum, are also discussed. It is argued that Spectrum management has evolved from its early days when
in the course of deciding about allocation and assignment it was focused on interference avoidance [8] to a more
of spectrum, a spectrum authority can and should include modern view whereby, additionally, the spectrum authority
market-based mechanisms that incentivise incumbents to seeks to maximise its value [7]. Spectrum value is defined by
share spectrum needed by entrants. establishing who derives value from its usage and what the
right measurement of value must be. A broad conception of

value as found in Barwise et al [2] considers three
Keywords— Spectrum management, spectrum sharing, components of value: private use value, private external use
ICT, General Purpose Technologies, licensed shared access, value and social value.
unlicensed spectrum.
Such approach can enhance a Spectrum Authority’s (SA)
arsenal of policy tools and regulations when it is applied to
1. INTRODUCTION spectrum sharing as a management scheme aimed to
increase the effectiveness of spectrum allocations and the
efficiency of spectrum assignments. In particular, the
Radio spectrum has played, is playing and will play a decision-making process that leads to the assignment of
fundamental role in the development of communications frequency bands to competing parties is based on
networks and services. The unparalleled rise of the cell administering an auction that sells a number of blocks in a
phone and the quiet revolution in data communications number of geographical areas. Although traditionally
brought about by Wi-Fi and other wireless data technologies auctions have assigned spectrum licenses on an exclusive
demonstrate that effective management of the spectrum is basis, using them to assign shared rights is not only
the foundation to robust wireless markets and innovative conceivable but possibly an efficient pathway to introduce
wireless services. market mechanisms to decide who gets to share the
This paper examines spectrum management as the vehicle spectrum.
deployed by governments to achieve key objectives such as This paper will first introduce, in Section 2, the concept of
maximising the value of spectrum, its efficient utilisation and General Purpose Technologies -which helps explain the
its benefits to society. If spectrum management creates importance of certain technologies to the economy at large-
conditions for achieving such objectives, it will grant to support its argument that Information and
spectrum the affordances that make Information and Communications Technologies are of such kind. Spectrum
Communications Technologies (ICT) the kind of disruptor management is discussed in Section 3, while particular
that exhibits considerable technological progress, pervasive aspects and variants of spectrum sharing are presented in
use in a wide range of economic sectors, a booster for Section 4. In Section 5 the paper argues that market-based
complementary innovations and a generator of important mechanisms can be used when a spectrum authority decides
spillover effects.

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