The radio spectrum is a subset of the electromagnetic waves lying between the frequencies from 9 kilohertz (kHz - thousands of cycles per second) to 30 gigahertz (GHz - billions of cycles per second) (see Figure 1). These support a wide range of business, personal, industrial, scientific, medical research and cultural activities, both public and private. Communications are foremost among those activities and, together with other radio services, are increasingly important to economic and social development.
Figure 1: Radio Spectrum
Historically, access to and use of radio spectrum has been highly regulated in order to prevent interference among users of adjacent frequencies or on neighbouring geographic areas, particularly for reasons of defence and security. But the last decade has seen significant innovations in the theory and practice of that regulation. This gradual change follows a growing consensus that past and current regulatory practices originally intended to promote the public interest may have in fact, in some cases, delayed the introduction and growth of a variety of beneficial technologies and services, or artificially increased the cost of the same. During that same period of time, demands made on the use of spectrum itself have grown significantly, highlighting the need for efficient use of all available spectrum in order to avoid scarcity. Those factors have brought policy-makers and regulators worldwide to focus anew on spectrum regulation. As a result, there is renewed emphasis on striking the best possible balance between the certainty required to ensure stable roll-out of services, and flexibility or light-handed regulation to allow improvements in cost, services and technologies to spread more readily to consumers and public services.
The Radio Spectrum Toolkit is intended to canvass those policy and standards issues as they touch on a broad range of spectrum management areas including basic principles of spectrum regulation, pricing, monitoring and international coordination.
The international framework for the use of the radio frequency spectrum is set out in a treaty ratified by the Member States of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized UN agency. Within that international framework, countries manage their national use of the spectrum. For a more in depth discussion of International Affairs see Section 6. At the highest level, countries do this through establishing a National Frequency Allocation Table which sets out what radio services can use which frequency bands and under what conditions. Conditions of use vary widely, from inflexibly reserving particular frequencies for uses which are specified in detail, to considerable freedom in spectrum use for particular bands or services.
The next stage in spectrum management involves assigning particular frequencies to specified users. This can be done through administrative methods or by means of a market process, such as an auction. Additionally, some spectrum may be reserved for unlicensed use (this is sometimes referred to as the spectrum commons). All users satisfying certain restrictions, for example on power levels, might have access to unlicensed bands. For a more in-depth discussion of Authorizations see Section 3.
Once decisions have been reached about the purpose or purposes to which particular frequencies will be put (this is known as allocation), it is necessary to provide spectrum for use by firms, organisation and individuals (this is known as assignment.) In many cases this was done by the spectrum regulator granting a licence to an organisation, after an internal decision-making process which may involve a comparative evaluation of competing applications. Because such methods of assignment rely on administrative decisions, such procedures are described as ‘administrative methods’. The alternative is a process in which applicants bid for licences in an auction, the ultimate winners being the highest bidders, or when spectrum licences change hands via the normal process of buying and selling assets. Here the spectrum regulator does not select the licensee, but the market does: hence the description of them as ‘market methods’. Additionally, some spectrum may be reserved for unlicensed use (spectrum commons).