Auctions have become a standard means of assigning high value spectrum. They have offered a competitive means of allocating spectrum efficiently among operators, at a time of large increase in scarcity. It does not seem likely that the allocation system they replaced - beauty contests - could have achieved this goal. Auctions allow the government, not the operators, to capture the rents associated with that increased spectrum scarcity, and use them for public policy objectives, including objectives pertaining to the mobile sector itself. Spectrum auctions have also had grafted on them, in the form of spectrum caps and coverage obligations, means for greater downstream competition and wider deployment of networks at the cost of some government revenues. Obligations are an increasingly important trade-off to consider in the potential positive external benefits that could be associated with the expansive version of 5G.
展开▼
