Spectrum has been a finite and scarce resource for communications suppliers and users, so “scarcity” assumptions have guided thinking about its use. So it comes as no surprise that competitors to BT in the U.K. mobile market call for limits on the total amount of spectrum any single mobile operator can possess.
Three, for example, wants Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, to limit total spectrum holdings by any single supplier to 30 percent.
At the moment BT controls 42 percent of available spectrum, Vodafone has 29 percent and O2 and Three have 14 percent and 15 percent respectively.
That would be a material increase over the roughly 630 MHz of spectrum presently allocated on a licensed basis to mobile operators.
More importantly, Ofcom, as are all other regulatory bodies globally, is studying--or preparing for--the release of far more spectrum than presently is used by the entire industry. In fact, new millimeter wave allocations for 5G networks alone are expected to entail spectrum blockes of one gigaHertz per operator.
The point: even if scarcity assumptions now are the reality, millimeter wave spectrum, use of small cell architectures, better radio technologies, continued cost improvements because of Moore’s Law, spectrum sharing and use of unlicensed spectrum and Wi-Fi eventually will make “abundance” the fundamental assumption, not scarcity.
The argument for regulation always makes more sense under scarcity conditions, but makes less sense when abundance is the assumption.
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