Alternative Spectrum Governance Regimes and The Spectrum Debate
With the digital transition, spectrum management has entered to a new age. Full conversion to digital TV by 2/17/2009 (Digital Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005) allows broadcasters to use spectrum more efficiently and save space for the possibility of sharing spectrum.
Nowadays, spectrum sharing is under heated discussion. Exponential growth of commercial wireless calls for additional spectrum to accommodate more traffic flows. As a regulator, FCC responded to these needs by making more spectrum available. Secondary market is allowed to emerge and licensees are encouraged to lease use of spectrum to third parties temporarily. Making license transferable is an important attempt made by FCC to create incentives for broadcasters to share unused spectrum. More alternatives are underway.
Spectrum scarcity has emerged as a primary problem encountered when trying to launch new wireless services. The effects of this scarcity is most noticeable in the spectrum auctions where the operators often need to invest billions of dollars to secure access to specified bands in the available spectrum. In spite of this scarcity problem, recent spectrum utilization measurements have shown that the available spectrum opportunities are severely underutilized, i.e. left unused. This artificial "access limitation" based scarcity is often considered to result from the static and rigid nature of the command and control governance regime. Interested parties have now started to consider possible improvements in the governance regime by relaxing the constraints on spectrum access. Two prevailing models are the "spectrum commons" and the "spectrum property rights" approaches.
Read more about this topic: Spectrum Management
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