Monday, March 18, 2013

Counting Spectrum in an Age of Sharing

Mike Marcus’s recent blog post Dueling Spectrum Charts - Part 2 is a nice reminder (not that anyone who reads his blog needs it) that spectrum isn’t just MHz. The current focus on “spectrum sharing” underlines the fact that one has to think of space and time as well as frequency. A more accurate (but also much more geeky) metric would divide MHz by percentage of population covered, and percentage of time allocated.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Using an auction to decide the number of 3.5 GHz spectrum access administrators


The FCC faces a choice of whether to authorize one database administrator or many to run the spectrum access system (SAS) that will manage small cell operation in the 3.5 GHz band. This resembles the choice between an exclusive-use licensing or unlicensed regime. The FCC could use an auction to let the market decide by using a simplified version of the 2008 Bykowsky, Olson and Sharkey proposal.