World Radiocommunication Conference 12: Reflections on the Spectrum Policy Debate

摘要

Largely overlooked in current debates is the influence of the international spectrum management regime on national spectrum policies. While both were formalised at the turn of the twentieth century to resolve the interference issue and to enforce government control over spectrum, the way spectrum is utilised has changed since then due to two main reasons. Firstly, the Internet's IP platform has enabled the delivery of different applications on the same device. Secondly, while there used to be enough frequencies to accommodate most of the users, many countries are currently facing a shortage in spectrum due to the high demand for data services. This has motivated several countries to review their national policies and to consider the two principal alternatives to command-and-control, namely spectrum trading and commons. While the former calls for allowing a secondary market of flexible spectrum usage rights, the latter is based on managing the spectrum in a decentralized way. With this in mind, this article addresses three of the activities at the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-12) in order to show the impact of the international spectrum management regime on the trading versus commons debate.