CIAO DATE: 07/03

Balancing Policy Options in a Turbulent Telecommunications Market
A Report of the Seventeenth Annual Aspen Institute Conference on Telecommunications Policy

Foreword

In a departure from prior practice, the 2002 Aspen Institute Telecommunications Policy Conference held two meetings rather than one. The April conclave focused on spectrum policy, and clarified four models for spectrum policy and management. The larger, longer gathering in August considered the implications of a more flexible spectrum policy and a broader range of issues arising from a difficult financial year for the telecommunications and related industries.

This report summarizes the spectrum deliberations and provides a more detailed exploration of the summer discussions. With regard to spectrum, the group identified three rather obvious models for future policy: (1) the government-engineered command and control type allocation of frequencies that has been in place for many decades, (2) a private ownership model, and (3) an unlicensed commons model. In addition, conference participants identified (4) a hybrid between the latter two models, which we would call a dynamic spectrum access model. Under this approach, which is undeveloped, parties would gain access to unused spectrum, either in spatial or temporal terms, and if the spectrum were already paid for, then fees would go to the owner, perhaps on a licensing scheme akin to the music licensing system of ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

We have also appended a background paper on spectrum policy presented to the group by Dale Hatfield, and some slides offered by Paul Kolodzy, then head of the FCC Spectrum Policy Task Force, which set the stage for the hybrid model mentioned above.

Two summary themes best describe the second meeting. First is the growing interdependence of sub-sectors of the telecommunication market. That is, spectrum and wireless telephony policies influence the fates of incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), and vice versa. And all of these affect the long distance industry. Second, although the primary recent goal of public policymakers has been to promote competition, some now fear that too much competition has developed in key telecommunication markets.

Full Text (PDF, 72 pages, 925 KB)