Rights to use spectrum to build a business always have been hugely “political” and “contentious.” That was obvious at Spectrum Futures, where business models underpinned by licensed and spectrum-exempt spectrum, as well as industry cleavages, were on display.
As you would guess, mobile service providers and their suppliers had one set of views while app providers and others whose business models are built on Wi-fi and license-exempt spectrum had opposite or rival views.
“Regulators should view licensing (of spectrum) as a last resort,” said H Sama Nwana, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance executive director.
In part, the logic is that, in some cases, the perception is that licensees or governments are simply squatting on spectrum, depriving other would-be competitors of its use. “In most cases, there are hundreds of megahertz unused, in Africa,” said Nwana.
But much discussion centered on using available methods of dynamically allocating spectrum rather than creating fenced blocks of spectrum allocated for exclusive use. “We need to challenge all assumptions, including the assumption that interference avoidance is the only way to enable use of spectrum, said Jeffrey Yan, Microsoft technology policy director.
“Flexibility is everything,” said Robert Pepper, Cisco global policy VP. You want “flexibility of technology” such as the ability to use any network, instead of specifying what platforms can be used in specific allocated blocks of frequency.
Likewise, allowable services in any block of spectrum should not be limited, allowing organizations to innovate and sell anything providers think consumers want to buy. The whole point is the “opportunistic use of allocated but unassigned spectrum,” said Pepper.
That is possible now in the same way that Waze uses crowdsourced data about traffic, said Peter Stanforth, Spectrum Bridge CTO and founder. In other words, we now can use information supplied by network-using devices to monitor, predict and control use of spectrum on a shared basis.
And while one never can be completely certain how technology and business models could develop, in some markets, licensed spectrum is viewed as the only option.
“In developed countries you have landline, satellite, cable TV, government and mobile networks. In India we have one network, the mobile network,” said Rajan Mathews, Cellular Operators Association of India director general. “By definition, licensed is the only way for us.”
As world telecom regulators prepare for the World Radiocommunication Conference later in 2015, industry concerns related to reallocation of spectrum also were on some attendee minds. Reallocation of former satellite spectrum for mobile use was such an issue.
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