RSPG on "Collective Use of Spectrum" (Nov 2008)
Radio Spectrum Policy Group, "Final Opinion on Collective Use of Spectrum" (Document RSPG08-244, November 2008):
'Collective Use of Spectrum allows an undetermined number of independent users and/or devices to access spectrum in the same range of frequencies at the same time and in a particular geographic area under a well-defined set of conditions.' ...CUS is most usually associated with general authorisations [license exemption]...
"CUS can... be considered to be appropriate when the benefit to consumers and society is greater than that which would be derived from other approaches to spectrum management.... The RSPG considers that carrying out an Impact Assessment can help to determine when a CUS approach will be appropriate. Impact Assessments can provide a framework to assess the benefits of a particular approach (such as CUS) against the cost of denying spectrum to alternative users...
"The RSPG considers that regulators should seek to remove constraints on spectrum use wherever technology allows. In the case of CUS, this means that allocations and associated regulations should be made as generic as possible and should not impose unnecessary constraints on the technologies or services that may be deployed in the band... Furthermore, regulators should be encouraged to explore the removal of existing constraints and question whether they continue to be justified. This is becoming increasingly important as some current rules for CUS are conservative and highly specified. There is a risk that overly specific rules could be driven by certain industrial policy interests that seek to promote certain technologies. This is likely to be detrimental to innovation and competition...
"The RSPG also considers it would be worthwhile to investigate trends relating to use of the CUS model, including the potential for a gradual increase in the use of CUS for longer range applications... some administrations are considering CUS as a spectrum management model for certain high-powered applications, which have traditionally been managed by an administrative assignment model. This may be appropriate if the applications are used by few users, thus minimizing the risk of interference, or are used in areas with low density of expected usage. This may for example be appropriate in sparsely populated areas of Europe or for radio equipment used by sports or other teams travelling to events in different countries...
"The RSPG considers it likely that technological developments will lead to greater use of CUS.... we may expect greater use of cognitive technologies in many (including existing) CUS bands as well as increased emphasis on deploying CUS in higher bandwidths.technical developments are further increasing opportunities for sharing, especially between licence-exempt and licensed services.... This further blurs the distinction between particular spectrum bands either being used for licensed or licence-exempt devices... The RSPG considers that spectrum for CUS will need to be available in bands across the entire frequency range...
"The RSPG considers that, as well as the traditional approach of making spectrum available in response to demand from industry, there may, under the CUS model, also be opportunities to make spectrum available in order to stimulate demand... The RSPG considers that it might be helpful to explore if the current EU Research programme could provide any possibility to facilitate the development of new radio technologies above 40 GHz for CUS applications. The RSPG considers that further work should be undertaken in order to study whether such an approach will actually promote technological innovation...
"Another approach is to consider whether there is a power threshold below which devices can operate across entire frequency ranges on a CUS basis with a very low probability of causing interference to existing users (whether licensed on a primary or secondary basis). This could effectively be an extension of the approach developed for Ultra Wideband (UWB) devices...
"Given the potential of the CUS model to promote innovation, the RSPG considers that further work should be undertaken to assess how this objective can best be achieved. This should include investigation of the different approaches to making spectrum available for CUS... The RSPG believes this could help to stimulate demand for new services but notes that any such initiatives will be dependent upon carrying out the Impact Assessments..."
