Ofcom yesteday released another consultation document in its Digital Dividend Review, this time promising to find a better way for programme making and special events (PMSE) spectrum users to access spectrum without having to bid in auctions. The consultation closes on 31 August 2007. You can comment via Ofcom’s online response form here.

Ofcom say:

The consultation published today provides more detailed options for future access by these spectrum users. The aim is to ensure that existing users continue to have access to the spectrum they need, while promoting the most efficient use of this finite resource for all citizens and consumers.

The consultation proposes that spectrum should be awarded to a band manager with the incentives and expertise to manage the spectrum efficiently for wireless microphone users and others.

The consultation sets out a number of options for achieving this. These include holding a ‘beauty contest’, or comparative selection process. This would involve Ofcom choosing an organisation to manage the use of the spectrum for these and other users. The licensee would pay fees reflecting the amount of spectrum they use, and have incentives to use it efficiently.

Another option is to award access to the spectrum by auction after a pre-qualification process that ensures bidders have the skills and expertise needed to manage the spectrum for users in this sector.

My take: Ofcom do a good job here, showing the PMSE community that it has listened to their views. I’m still not sure Ofcom’s new proposals make things much better, however. The central problem here is that the PMSE community uses radio spectrum in an instrumental fashion — as a minor input component to the important thing they do: entertain people. Asking this group of users to contemplate and comment on various regulatory methods to move the input component to more of a market-led system seems ambitious. I would imagine they just want to have access to that input component without much fuss or cost.