In the last decade, there have been significant developments in both technological and regulatory approaches to spectrum
management. The main challenge today is to strike a balance between the certainty of administrative approaches and the
flexibility of market-based regulation. This Module gives readers a solid foundation in spectrum management, and includes
specific sections on authorization, organizational, and monitoring concerns.
5.1 SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW
This section is an introduction to the management of the radio spectrum including the planning of current and future uses
of spectrum; ensuring engineering compatibility of various uses and equipment; and authorization, licensing and
monitoring of spectrum usage.
Reference Documents
Telecommunications Research Project, Spectrum Management
5.1.1 INTRODUCTION TO SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW
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.
Historically, access to and use of radio spectrum has been highly regulated in order to prevent interference among users of
adjacent frequencies or from neighbouring geographic areas, particularly for reasons of defence and security. In the past
decade there have been significant innovations in the theory of spectrum management along with gradual changes in
practice of spectrum management and regulation. This gradual change follows a growing consensus that past and current
regulatory practices originally intended to promote the public interest have in fact delayed, in some cases, the introduction
and growth of a variety of beneficial technologies and services, or increased the cost of the same through an artificial
scarcity. In addition to these delays, the demand for spectrum has grown significantly highlighting the need for efficient use
of all available spectrum in order to avoid scarcity.
Those factors are making policy-makers and regulators worldwide focus anew on spectrum regulation with an increasing
emphasis on striking the best possible balance between the certainty required to ensure stable roll-out of services and
flexibility (or light-handed regulation) leading to improvements in cost, services and the use of innovative technologies. In
developing countries in particular, where mobile communications users now greatly outnumber those using fixed line
telecommunication services, it is widely recognised that the spectrum is a highly valuable resource for future economic
development.
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, spectrum sharing and trading, spectrum
pricing, monitoring and international coordination.
Figure 1: Radio Spectrum
