More commentary on Ofcom’s recent publication… Today, I will briefly review the essay submitted by Martin Cave titled ‘New spectrum-using technologies and the future of spectrum management: a European policy perspective’. Professor Cave is a well-known expert in the area of radio spectrum policy and he was the author of major report that influenced the UK’s thinking on spectrum management.

Cave’s essay for Ofcom’s book is unremarkable in many respects. He explores the merits of what is often called a marketplace approach to spectrum regulation, tackling issues such as equal societal access, interference, speculation and hoarding, and harmonisation of services. He concludes on a very general level that a marketplace approach works in most cases.

Part 3 of Cave’s essay addresses the issue of the spectrum commons. Cave’s description of licence-exempt spectrum uses is too terse. He ignores the wide variety of licence-exempt uses of radio spectrum, lumping all such uses under the category of a ‘public commons’. While this is perhaps technically true, it results in an under-appreciation of the regulatory challenges associated with all the various uses of licence-exempt spectrum: (i) classic Wi-Fi or cordless telephone style usage of relatively high-power signals for communications purposes; (ii) industrial uses where the radio signals are not intentionally emitted but instead are a by-product of equipment use; (iii) license-exempt uses in frequency bands that are primarily assigned to licensed users; (iv) newer applications like ultra wideband; and (v) transient / itinerant users - like satellite trucks - that are nomadic and directional and present little interference risk.

This lack of detail makes Cave’s next suggestion problematic. He claims — without saying precisely why — that making decisions about unlicensed spectrum on administrative grounds is arbitrary and unsatisfactory. He then describes a highly-theoretical proposed reporting system that would estimate demand for unlicensed uses so that a marketplace-style competition would occur between the marketplace approach and the administrative decision. I don’t know — I’m not convinced it is a better system based on Cave’s description. I’m also not convinced that administrative decisions about unlicensed spectrum are unsatisfactory. Mistake-proof? No, but any replacement system should be better…

Professor Cave next explores some new (although when we will stop calling spread spectrum or directional antennae ‘new?’) technologies and how spectrum regulation should confront them. His most interesting contribution is his description of so-called overlay licences where new entrants would be permitted to use radio spectrum already assigned to another entity, but on a secondary non-interfering basis. The policy question: whether to mandate such arrangements in certain frequency bands or permit the marketplace to develop such arrangements on a voluntary basis. The FCC has taken both approaches in the past (sometimes the overlay situation is temporary as a result of allocation changes). Guess which one results in more time-consuming disputes???

Cave concludes his essay by describing what’s happening in Europe. Cave further proposes that spectrum trading and flexibility be mandated at the European level.