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Ruling the waves – spectrum and competition in the mobile sector
George Houpis, director of the telecoms practice at Frontier (Europe), presented at the 2009 "Communications and Competition Law" conference on spectrum and competition in the mobile sector.
George discussed the valuation of spectrum and the drivers of this value. He also considered how the history of regulated spectrum allocations led to asymmetries in the spectrum holding of individual operators. He highlighted that, with an ever increasing demand for mobile data, these asymmetries could give rise to competitive disadvantages. In particular, for operators that do not have sufficient low frequency spectrum.
George's presentation outlines the difficulties in balancing the social benefit of a more symmetric spectrum allocations and the cost to operators of vacating spectrum they currently use. It concludes that newly available spectrum from the digitalisation of broadcasting provides a unique opportunity to rebalance spectrum holdings. However, regulators still need to strike the right balance between efficient spectrum allocation and an allocation that is most beneficial to the competition in the market.
The presentation is available on request.
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