London hosted last 28 January a meeting of the RSPG working group (WG) in charge of revising both the report on “Efficient Use and Award of Spectrum from Harmonised Bands for Electronic Communication Services” and the opinion on “Revision of the Radio Spectrum Policy Programme (RSPP)”.
Note that the RSPG set up two WGs to produce those documents, respectively chaired by Chris Woolford (United Kingdom) and Didier Chaveau (France). Those WGs drafted and finalised the respective documents; the RSPG (at the October meeting) placed them in public consultation from October to December 2015.
This meeting focused on the revision of both documents, including responses received during the public consultation, especially for the report on “Efficient Use and Award of Spectrum from Harmonised Bands for Electronic Communication Services”, about which eight contributions were received, focusing on responses in spectrum allocation auctions (e.g. design of reserve price/auction models), best practices and efficient spectrum use. The respondents indicated widespread consensus about the principle identified in the report, based on which there is no single model that can be extrapolated to all member states (no one size fits all). The report was revised in the section on “Current and future harmonised frequency bands” to emphasise that if the amount of harmonised spectrum exceeds demand, that may lead to spectrum ‘sterilisation’ in so far as that countries with a smaller market may end up with more free spectrum (unused or not efficiently used). The report’s text was also revised to reflect that benchmarking is a tool that ought to be considered with view to more appropriate auction design (e.g. determination of reserve prices), given the specific national characteristics (e.g. population, demand, etc).
Regarding the opinion on the RSPP, thirteen responses received during the public consultation process stand out. The context underlying that opinion is the fact that the Framework Directive establishes that when the European Commission draws up the multiannual spectrum policy programmes it should give maximum consideration to the RSPG’s findings.
Basically, the revisions of the opinion (as submitted to public consultation) focused on the question of revising the technical implementation measures with respect to harmonised spectrum bands (it was stressed that there may be a need to revise those measures, for example, depending on the extent of implementation in the member states and national demand/markets).
