Playing by the Rules: The Success of Unlicensed Spectrum

The dizzying pace of change in unlicensed wireless spectrum isn’t slowing down.

Richard Thanki

March 7, 2014

3 Min Read
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For over a century, wireless services using licensed spectrum have profoundly shaped our lives. It’s difficult to imagine a world without the influence of radio, television, satellite links, and mobile telephony.

However, during the last 15 years, communication using the unlicensed bands of spectrum has witnessed an explosion in usage and utility that rivals, and in many ways eclipses, the licensed experience.

  • Unlicensed spectrum has allowed unprecedented innovation in wireless applications and technology. Multiple standards, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee, have enabled a dizzying array of connected devices. In addition many of the most pivotal recent innovations in wireless technology, from multiple antenna techniques to advanced modulation, first found widespread deployment with unlicensed technologies.

  • Unlicensed networks carry most of the world’s Internet traffic. WiFi networks carry more Internet traffic from end-user devices, including PCs, tablets, and smartphones, than Ethernet cables and mobile networks combined. Even in the case of smartphones, more Internet data traffic is carried on WiFi than on 3G and 4G networks.

  • The majority of wireless devices shipped use unlicensed bands to communicate. More devices are shipped each year that use unlicensed technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth than those that use the licensed bands.

  • The Internet of Things will consist almost exclusively of unlicensed wireless devices. By 2020, around 100 billion devices will be connected, with more than 95 percent using unlicensed technologies to communicate. The idea of SIM cards for every device is simply not coming to pass.

This flowering of innovation and industry has also generated immense economic value. Multiple economic studies have demonstrated the substantial economic value generated by unlicensed wireless technology. A recent analysis by Raul Katz, Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, suggests that in the US alone the value from unlicensed spectrum is $140 billion per annum . As wireless connectivity further permeates every aspect of everyday life, commerce, and industry these benefits will grow commensurately.

Perhaps the key to its success is that potential participants in the unlicensed spectrum bands simply have to follow a set of rules with no need to either obtain permission from a spectrum "owner" or acquire such a title themselves. These two approaches, access by rules and access by title, are used by societies to manage access to a number of limited-capacity resources.

For example, we use rule-based access to enable access to our road networks and justice systems and title-based access to manage access to most land. Professor Brett Frischmann, affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, provides a succinct explanation of why rule-based systems (those following a "commons management principle") can generate greater benefits in some instances than title-based access:

  • The general value of commons as a resource management principle is that it maintains openness, does not discriminate among users or uses of the resource, and eliminates the need to obtain approval or a license to use the resource. As a general matter, managing infrastructure resources in an openly accessible manner eliminates the need to rely on either market actors or the government to “pick winners” downstream. In theory, at least, this facilitates innovation in the creation of and experimentation with new uses. More generally, it facilitates the generation of positive externalities through the downstream production of public goods and non-market goods that might be stifled under a regime where access is allocated on the basis of individuals’ willingness to pay.

The unlicensed bands display these characteristics in spades. Freedom to access the spectrum has prompted the creation of a range of standards that act like public goods: empowering any manufacturer -- from the very smallest to the very largest -- to create compatible devices that can be sold directly to a global market of end-users.

The pace of change in unlicensed spectrum isn’t slowing down. In coming years we will see new bands of unlicensed spectrum coming into widespread use, opening further avenues for innovation and industry.

— Richard Thanki is a former Ofcom economist and a current PhD candidate at the University of Southampton.

About the Author

Richard Thanki

Richard Thanki is an economist specializing in issues related to telecom in general and the role of unlicensed spectrum in particular. He was formerly Senior Associate Economist at Ofcom, the UK telecom regulator. Whilst at Perspective Associates he was the principal assistant to Kip Meek in his role as the UK Government appointed Independent Spectrum Broker. He has written extensively on the organization and success of unlicensed wireless technologies.

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