Spectrum Management - Governments and Spectrum Management

Governments and Spectrum Management

Most countries consider RF spectrum as an exclusive property of the state. The RF spectrum is a national resource, much like water, land, gas and minerals. Unlike these, however, RF is reusable. The purpose of spectrum management is to mitigate radio spectrum pollution and maximize the benefit of usable radio spectrum.

The first sentence of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) constitution fully recognises “the sovereign right of each State to regulate its telecommunication”. Effective spectrum management requires regulation at national, regional and global levels.

Goals of spectrum management include: rationalize and optimize the use of the RF spectrum; avoid and solve interference; design short and long range frequency allocations; advance the introduction of new wireless technologies; coordinate wireless communications with neighbours and other administrations. Radio spectrum items which need to be nationally regulated: frequency allocation for various radio services, assignment of license and RF to transmitting stations, type approval of equipment (for countries out of the European Union), fee collection, notifying ITU for the Master International Frequency Register (MIFR), coordination with neighbour countries (as there are no borders to the radio waves), external relations toward regional commissions (such as CEPT in Europe, CITEL in America) and toward ITU.

RF spectrum management is treated as a natural monopoly (to be compared to the concept of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill), as there is generally one regulator for any RF band. Discussions on central-planning versus market-based spectrum management are found at the 2008 PhD thesis .