The evolving 5G case study in United States unilateral spectrum planning and policy

This paper tracks increasingly aggressive initiatives by the United States government to reallocate spectrum on an expedited and unilateral basis well before conclusion of inter-governmental coordination. Rather than embrace the customary commitment to achieve consensus on global spectrum allocations at the International Telecommunication Union (“ITU”), the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) has auctioned off large blocks of frequencies for the next generation (“5G”) of wireless services.The FCC might have framed its first 5G auction, reassigning Ultra High Frequency (“UHF”) spectrum, as a one-time deviation from compliance with long standing, intergovernmental coordination procedures. These frequencies have ideal signal propagation characteristics and the Commission could use financial incentives—unavailable in most nations—to expedite “repacking” by incumbent broadcasters willing to move, share or abandon spectrum in exchange for ample financial compensation. However, the FCC has continued to auction off 5G spectrum on grounds that it must find ways to abate an acute shortage of wireless bandwidth and doing so will regain or maintain global leadership in wireless technologies. This paper offers a critical rebuke to unilateral spectrum management, because the short-term benefits expected by the U. S. government likely will be offset by countervailing harms to 5G manufacturers, carriers and consumers. The paper tracks fractious preparation for the ITU's 2019 World Radio Conference by the U.S. delegation and the mixed record achieved there. Additionally, the paper explains how injecting trade, industrial policy and national security issues at the ITU can trigger more delays and disputes, including possible retaliation by nations displeased with U.S. efforts to subvert traditional technology optimization goals.A worst case scenario has the ITU deadlocked and unable to reach closure on “mission critical” spectrum planning issues at World Radio Conferences, convened every four years. The paper concludes that costs and likely challenges to the efficacy and legitimacy of the ITU will reduce the benefits accruing from the FCC's unilateral, spectrum planning campaign.     

Why has multilateral space and spectrum resource management become more difficult?

This paper explains why the coordination of satellite orbits and spectrum use among nations may become more contentious and protracted. The potential for greater risks, delays, and conflicts may occur, despite treaty-level commitments by most nations to promote the peaceful uses of outer space and access to radio spectrum and satellite orbits free of signal interference and collision risk. Heretofore, specialized sectors of the United Nations (“UN”) have worked effectively in forging multilateral consensus on these matters.Since the onset of artificial satellite technology, the UN has created five space-related treaties covering such issues such as freedom of exploration, liability for damage caused by space objects, the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment, the notification and registration of space activities, exploitation of natural resources in outer space and settlement of disputes. The International Telecommunication Union (“ITU”), a specialized agency of the UN, has largely achieved the goal of preventing harmful signal interference, formulating technical standards promoting equipment compatibility, and establishing uniform, operational rules of the road. Until now, month long ITU spectrum planning conferences have reached closure on both mundane and critical matters, albeit at a slow and methodical pace.The paper explains how several chronic and emerging factors challenge the successful record of multilateral consensus building on space and spectrum resource management issues. The probability of collisions of spacecraft with other objects, including space debris and harmful signal interference has increased, because the United States has opted to make domestic satellite rules and frequency allocations and in advance of final ITU consideration. Additionally, initiatives by China and Russia to expand the ITU’s mission to include elements of Internet governance could promote balkanization of Internet access and recognize the sovereign right of individual nations to surveil and control access to broadband networks.The paper assesses whether and how UN agencies can continue to establish timely and effective policies and procedures for reducing space debris and the potential for spacecraft collisions, and preventing harmful signal interference. The paper concludes that China, Russia, and the U.S., should renew efforts to promote collegiality, consensus building, and longstanding, shared goals at UN and ITU conferences.     

Expanding mobile wireless capacity: The challenges presented by technology and economics

As demand for mobile broadband services continues to explode, mobile wireless networks must expand greatly their capacities. This paper describes and quantifies the economic and technical challenges associated with deepening wireless networks to meet this growing demand. Methods of capacity expansion divide into three general categories: the deployment of more radio spectrum; more intensive geographic reuse of spectrum; and increasing the throughput capacity of each MHz of spectrum within a given geographic area. The paper describes these several basic methods to deepen mobile wireless capacity. It goes on to measure the contribution of each of these methods to historical capacity growth within U.S. networks. The paper then describes the capabilities of 4G LTE wireless technology, and further innovations off of it, to further improve network capacity. These capacity expansion capabilities of LTE-Advanced along with traditional spectrum reuse are quantified and compared to forecasts of future demand to evaluate the ability of U.S. networks to match future demand. Without significantly increasing current spectrum allocations by 560 MHz over the 2014–2022 period, the presented model suggests that U.S. wireless capacity expansion will be inadequate to accommodate expected demand growth. This conclusion is in contrast to claims that the U.S. faces no spectrum shortage.     

Regulating the use of facial recognition technology across borders: A comparative case analysis of the European Union,the United States,and China

Regulating the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) presents a Collingridge dilemma regarding the great demand for common legal principles to mediate the practical conflicts between privacy and efficiency, autonomy and authority, and safety and accountability. This study compares the enforcement by legitimate authorities in the European Union, the United States, and China of the laws and regulations applied in practical FRT cases and explores the fundamental principles and values manifested in these judgments and their results. The findings presented here indicate that (1) the E.U. regulations tend to move from downstream to upstream based on the notions of “privacy by design” and “privacy by default,” (2) the U.S. regulations are not limited to private contexts but tend also to target the (semi-)public sector, and (3) the Chinese regulations have been shifting from a practice represented by the phrase “nine dragons playing with a pearl” to a practice of “learning by doing”. Specifically, with respect to the determination of violations, the E.U. jurisprudence endorses deontological ethics and the U.S. jurisprudence a kind of universal egoism while the core FRT legislation in China valorizes utilitarianism. Overall, a top-down regulatory framework relating to FRT usage was apparent in the E.U. countries, a self-regulatory approach was observed in the United States, and a “presumption of fault” principle was manifested in China's process of assessing damages.     

Liberalizing US spectrum allocation

In the US, adjudication of wireless entry under the “public interest” standard protects incumbent service providers. Excess demand exists for access to radio spectrum, despite a common misperception that license auctions held by regulators are tantamount to selling spectrum. Would-be suppliers are slowed by the regulatory process. After discussing the financial tolls extracted, the author suggests a number of structural policy reforms, applicable both to the USA and perhaps spectrum markets elsewhere. These include: permissive airwave use (within emission limits implicitly defined by the license); endowing licensees with use of adjacent buffer zones; exhaustive allocation of remaining bandwidth to new applicants and streamlining the process for entrants to gain access to unoccupied bandwidth, using liability rules and post-entry dispute resolution mechanisms.     

Intersectional organizing: Building solidarity through radical confrontation

IR scholars reference intersectionality in relation to organizing, but the field lacks a theoretical construct. Based on 2 years of intimate data access, we examine the 2017 U.S. Women's March as a critical case of “intersectional organizing.” We ground this empirical case study in Critical Race and Intersectionality Theory to show how the intersectional organizing model employed by the Women's March handles identity-based fragmentation, with lessons for building a more inclusive labor movement.     

The rise of 5G technologies and systems: A quantitative analysis of knowledge production

The advent of a new generation of wireless communications has punctuated the dawn of every decade in recent times. Upgrades to mobile electronic systems represent faster and more robust capabilities of data transfer but bring with it a wide set of complementary changes as they are underpinned by harmonised specific spectrum bands, fresh international technical standards, new network operation requirements, innovative cellular devices as well as new services and a broader array of potential commercial use applications. This paper presents a systematic outline of the development of 5G-related research until 2020 as revealed by over 10,000 science and technology publications. The exercise addresses the emergence, growth, and impact of this body of work and offers insights regarding disciplinary distribution, international performance, and historical dynamics. Findings reveal the progressive growth of the 5G research over the years after original contributions in 2010 and point to a “take-off” around 2014. A set of stylised facts regarding this technology since its infancy are of interest to engineers, regulators and innovation strategists and policy-makers.     

Lessons from broadband development in Canada,Japan, Korea and the United States

Broadband network development does not always track closely a nations overall wealth and economic strength. The International Telecommunication Union reported that in 2005 the five top nations for broadband network market penetration were: Korea, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada. The ITU ranked the United States sixteenth in broadband penetration.Aside from the obvious geographical and demographic advantages accruing to small nations with large urban populations, broadband development thrives when it becomes a national priority. Both developed and developing nations have stimulated capital expenditures for infrastructure in ways United States public and private sector stakeholders have yet to embrace. Such investments have accrued ample dividends including the lowest broadband access costs in the world. For example, the ITU reports that in 2002 Japanese consumers paid $0.09 per 100 kilobits per second of broadband access compared to $3.53 in the United States.Economic policies do not completely explain why some nations offer faster, better cheaper and more convenient broadband services while other nations do not. This paper will examine best practices in broadband network development with an eye toward determining the optimal mix of legislative, regulatory and investment initiatives. The paper will track development in Canada, Japan and Korea as these nations have achieved success despite significantly different geographical, political and marketplace conditions. The paper also notes the institutional and regulatory policies that have hampered broadband development in the United States.The paper also will examine why incumbent local exchange and cable television operators recently have begun aggressively to pursue broadband market opportunities. The paper will analyze incumbents’ rationales for limited capital investment in broadband with an eye toward determining the credibility of excuses based on regulatory risk and uncertainty. The paper concludes with suggestions how national governments might expedite broadband infrastructure development.     

Leadership with 5G in Europe: Two contrasting images of the future,with policy and regulatory implications

European policy makers have shown a keen interest in the success of 5G because ubiquitous and high capacity electronic communication infrastructure is recognized as a cornerstone of economic development and productivity growth. The second generation, GSM, is considered the leading example, reaching its peak of deployment in 2015 with 3.83 billion subscribers served by over 700 operators in 219 countries and territories.With 5G rapidly shaping up in the R&D and standardization environments, and a call for leadership with 5G in Europe by policy makers, it is timely to investigate what lessons can be learned from the success of 2G that can be applied to 5G. More broadly, this calls for research into the commonalities and differences between successive generations of mobile technology, their introduction and the market adoption that followed. This also calls for an investigation into the possibility of multiple futures of 5G and how that impacts the opportunity for leadership. As one future may be more desirable than the other, depending on the perspective of the actor involved, a policy debate will be required to determine the most desirable future. As well as a discussion of the policy and regulatory actions required to enable a particular future.Hence, the two-part research question being addressed in this paper is: What explains the success of 2G-GSM and how can it be applied to create success with 5G in the European Union?To respond to the research question this paper first identifies the leadership lessons to be drawn from the success of 2G-GSM in relation to its successors 3G and 4G. Secondly, the contribution describes two stylized images of possible futures of 5G, called “Evolution” and “Revolution”, as input to the policy debate on the options for leadership with 5G. These images reflect two extremes in terms of possible futures of 5G. “Evolution” follows the pattern of previous generations and current trends. “Revolution” represents a clear break with these trends and a path towards leadership with 5G, as it exploits the opportunities of standardized APIs for service creation, being enabled by network virtualization as an architectural foundation of 5G. These open and uniformly applied APIs allow the market entry of a multitude of virtual mobile network operators (VMNOs) serving particular industry verticals or economic sectors with tailored feature sets and qualities of services. They allow a market momentum to be built that constitutes leadership with 5G in Europe.     

Forming a 5G strategy for developing countries: A note for policy makers

This paper aims to provide policy makers in low income and middle income countries with a pragmatic review of the critical issues in formulating effective strategies and planning to embrace the next generation of mobile cellular technology. In a context of industry lobbying of governments to promote 5G, the paper attempts to bring clarity to just what are the critical issues, specifically for an industrial policy to deal with this novel but complex technology. Planning for 5G is a series of complicated choices as there are issues at the levels of creating ecosystems to support it, unproven business models, with claims for applications which may not be financially viable, yet, plus confusion over choices of radio spectrum, and selection of equipment suppliers, even potential issues over public health, as well as the real level of industrial and consumer demand beyond the hype. The emphasis here is on the importance of making balanced strategic choices, by identifying the basic issues, in a ‘realpolitik’ fashion - including why embrace 5G at all. The paper develops its insights from lessons learnt in the introduction of the previous mobile generation, LTE, also from policy studies on small cells and on designing auctions for 5G networks, as well as various 5G-focused publications from governments, regulatory authorities, mobile industry associations and global suppliers over the past six years (2015–2020). It examines whether to regulate 5G deployment with a heavy or light-touch regime, also whether to focus on more than the traditional indicators, such as penetration and coverage, or on “transformational outcomes” (as the promotional literature terms them) for the private and public sectors.     

On regulations for 5G: Micro licensing for locally operated networks

Future 5G networks aim at providing new high-quality wireless services to meet stringent and case-specific needs of various vertical sectors beyond traditional mobile broadband offerings. 5G is expected to disrupt the mobile communication business ecosystem and open the market to drastically new sharing based network operational models. 5G technical features of network slicing and small cell deployments in higher carrier frequencies will lower the investment barrier for new entrants to deploy local radio access networks and offer vertical specific services in specific areas and allow them lease the remaining required infrastructure on demand from mobile network operators (MNO) or infrastructure vendors. To realize the full vision of 5G to benefit the society and promote competition, innovation and emergence of new services when the 5G end-to-end network spans across different stakeholders administrative domains, the existing regulations governing the mobile communication business ecosystem are being refined. This paper provides a tutorial overview on how 5G innovations impact mobile communications and reviews the regulatory elements relevant to 5G development for locally deployed networks. This paper expands the recent micro licensing model for local spectrum authorization in future 5G systems and provides guidelines for the development of the key micro licensing elements. This local micro licensing model can open the mobile market by allowing different stakeholders to deploy local small cell networks with locally issued spectrum licenses ensuring pre-defined quality guarantees for the vertical sectors’ case specific needs.     

Worker Information and Firm Disclosure Analysis on French Linked Employer–Employee Data

Information disclosure requirements significantly increased in French listed companies in the early 2000s, converging toward the U.S./U.K. stock market standards. We investigate the consequences of this process regarding worker information: does more information for shareholders mean more information for workers? Our empirical analysis takes advantage of a French establishment survey that generates linked “employer–employee” data at two points in time, 1998 and 2004. Our results show that worker information has improved in listed companies as an externality of the financialization process. We find, however, that this extra information is only partially correlated with greater employee satisfaction.     

Effective competition and ineffective mobile industry regulation in South Africa

The most striking feature of South Africa’s mobile market is the skewed allocation of spectrum and a seemingly endless sequence of failed attempts to hold an auction for it. A shortage of spectrum (or the inefficient assignment of it) is blamed, among other things, for South Africa’s relatively slow LTE 4G speeds. Through historical accident, the country has two mobile data networks in addition to the four licensed mobile operators. The response of operators has been to innovate using roaming and network sharing agreements; as we explore in this paper, these have become the de facto spectrum allocation process.This paper looks at how the de facto industry structure has been moulded by spectrum holdings and sharing arrangements and asks how spectrum management could be improved. We observe that, although the number of mobile operators has effectively been reduced to 3 (a number which would raise concern in some circles), there exist a variety of arrangements between those three and other spectrum and network operators. The smallest of the current three mobile operators is still not able to offer a nationwide mobile service without a roaming agreement but, at the same time, the two larger operators depend critically on spectrum and roaming agreements themselves, mainly with the two physical data network operators that function as wholesale providers.The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) was established as a consequence of a new constitution that was adopted in 1996 and it helped to create new institutional arrangements for the burgeoning mobile industry. The authority has nevertheless continued to be hampered, as we shall demonstrate, by political imperatives. This has been pointed out by other authors over the past twenty years and we add to this body of evidence by considering the spectrum auction planned (again) for 2021.The “2021” auction is in fact an iteration of the auction originally announced in May 2010 and then abandoned (Song, 2011). The same thing happened again in 2016 (Paelo & Robb, 2020). Late in 2020, the regulator again announced an auction, due to take place during 2021 but by the second quarter of the year, two of the four national operators had already obtained a court injunction to stop it. The process is intertwined with a political imperative to establish a public wireless open-access network, which we discuss in detail.We describe how the industry has navigated around policy and regulatory dysfunction and how competitive interaction among the South African operators has managed to prevail. Following Hausman & Taylor’s (2013) lead in their work on the United States, in this paper we provide a commentary on apparently perverse outcomes from significant regulatory, judicial and legislative actions (or, perhaps more accurately, inactions) governing the South African mobile telecommunications industry from the commencement of the current constitutional arrangements in 1996 to the present.     

An Oligopoly Model for Analyzing and Evaluating (Re)-Assignments of Spectrum Licenses

The Communications Act requires the Federal Communications Commission to assess whether proposed spectrum license transactions serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity. We review the FCC’s implementation of this component of the Act. We provide a tractable economic model of competition among wireless service providers in which spectrum licenses are a cost-reducing input. This model allows us to evaluate the effects of (re-)assigning spectrum licenses on economic outcomes and to define operational measures of “warehousing” licenses. Calibrating the model, we find little evidence of warehousing and that the approved Verizon-T-Mobile-SpectrumCo transaction increased social surplus.     

Lessons to Learn? Rückblick auf 10 Jahre „Schiefergasrevolution“ in den USA und Bestandsaufnahme für Europa

A decade ago, the “shale gas revolution” started in the United States. An increased natural gas production turned the U.S. from a highly import depending gas economy to an exporter of gas. This supply increase led to decreasing gas prices, which were followed by decreasing electricity prices. In contrast to Europe, this price development was the driver for an increased industrial production in the U.S.. This development was enabled by technical progress, namely the advanced usage of hydraulic fracturing, the so-called “fracking”. However, this gas production method could cause significant environmental impacts, such as ground water pollution or earthquakes. Most European governments are driven by environmental concerns, so that it is rather unlikely that a similar “shale gas revolution” will occur in Europe.     

Spectrum auctions: Distortionary input tax or efficient revenue instrument?

Spectrum license auctions are widely recognized by economists as more efficient than lotteries or administrative approaches to allocate exclusive rights to spectrum. But whether spectrum auctions are the most efficient spectrum policy still generates debate, in part because the answer may vary depending on exactly what is being optimized, what else is assumed or held constant, and the policies to which one is comparing spectrum auctions. This paper examines the complex confluence of US spectrum policy and fiscal policy. It concludes that economically efficient spectrum policy requires several distinct optimizations, including devolvement of an efficient set spectrum rights and the optimal approach to raising and recycling government revenue in that devolvement process. It also requires allocation policies that take into account possible distortions of the secondary market for spectrum via the capital gains tax. The paper argues that there is no compelling theoretical case or empirical evidence that spectrum auctions are distortionary, and examines cases in which the most efficient policy is to auction spectrum and “recycle” the revenue to offset more distortionary revenue instruments. This paper also examines cases in which it is most efficient to allocate spectrum rights without raising revenue, for example when transactions costs are high or distributional concerns can prevent or delay efficiency-enhancing reforms.     

Where Firm‐Level Innovation and Industrial Policy Meet: Consensus Roadmaps for Low‐Carbon Powertrain Technologies

Environmental mandates, energy security concerns, and societal demands place considerable pressure on automotive manufacturers to develop novel powertrain technologies that reduce energy consumption, and in turn, carbon emissions. The economic case for these novel technologies is far from clear, however, and firms often turn to the respective national governments for R&D aid and demand‐side subsidies. Government on the other hand often feels unable to back any single technology for competition regulatory reasons, while at the same time being presented with conflicting messages from industry where to focus its support. This paper reports on an initiative by the U.K. Government that led to the establishment of a permanent forum for government‐industry exchange, the Automotive Council U.K., in which the author has participated from the outset. In the course of the Council's work, two “consensus roadmaps” have been developed jointly by industry and the U.K. Government to guide national efforts in the transition for both passenger car and commercial vehicle powertrain technologies toward low‐carbon alternatives. This paper discusses the key technological development stages and projections outlined in these technology roadmaps and comments on the general determinants of an effective interaction between government and industry in the light of a technological discontinuity.     

Customer-Driven Product Development Through Quality Function Deployment in the U.S. and Japan

Quality Function Deployment is a tool for bringing the voice of the customer into the product development process from conceptual design through to manufacturing. It begins with a matrix that links customer desires to product engineering requirements, along with competitive benchmarking information, and further matrices can be used to ultimately link this to design of the manufacturing system. Unlike other methods originally developed in the U.S. and transferred to Japan, the QFD methodology was born out of Total Quality Control (TQC) activities in Japan during the 1960s and has been transferred to companies in the U.S. This article reports on the results of a 1995 survey of more than 400 companies in the U.S. and Japan using QFD. The research questions investigated in this study were developed both inductively from QFD case studies in the U.S. and Japan and deductively from the literature. The reported results are in part counterintuitive. The U.S. companies reported a higher degree of usage, management support, cross‐functional involvement, use of QFD driven data sources, and perceived benefits from using QFD. For the most part, the main uses of QFD in the U.S. were restricted to the first matrix (“House of Quality”) that links customer requirements to product engineering requirements and rarely was this carried forward to later matrices. U.S. companies were more apt to use newly collected customer data sources (e.g., focus groups) and methods for analyzing customer requirements. Japanese companies reported using existing product data (e.g., warranty) and a broader set of matrices to a greater extent. The use of analytical techniques in conjunction with QFD (e.g., simulation, design of experiments, regression, mathematical target setting, and analytic hierarchy process) was not wide spread in either country. U.S. companies were more likely to report benefits of QFD in improving cross‐functional integration and better decision‐making processes compared to Japanese companies. Possible reasons for these cross‐national differences as well as their implications are discussed.     

U.S. Multinational Activity Abroad and U.S. Jobs: Substitutes or Complements?

Critics of globalization claim that firms are being driven by the prospects of cheaper labor and lower labor standards to shift employment abroad. Yet the evidence, beyond anecdotes, is slim. This paper reports stylized facts on the activities of U.S. multinationals at home and abroad for the years 1977 to 1999. We focus on firms in manufacturing and services, two sectors that have received extensive media attention for supposedly exporting jobs. Using firm‐level data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in Washington, D.C., we report correlations between U.S. multinational employment at home and abroad. Preliminary evidence based on the operations of these multinationals suggests that the sign of the correlation depends on the crucial distinction between affiliates in high‐income and low‐income countries. For affiliates in high‐income countries there is a positive correlation between jobs at home and abroad, suggesting that foreign employment of U.S. multinationals is complementary to domestic employment. For firms that operate in developing countries, employment has been cut in the United States, and affiliate employment has increased. To account for firm size, substitution across firms and entry and exit, we aggregate our data to the industry level. This exercise reveals that the observed “complementarity” between U.S. and foreign jobs has been driven largely by a contraction across all manufacturing sectors. It also reveals that foreign employment in developing countries has substituted for U.S. employment in several highly visible industries, including computers, electronics, and transportation. The fact that there were U.S. jobs lost to foreign affiliates in key sectors, despite broad complementarity in hiring and firing decisions between U.S. parents and their affiliates, helps explain why economists view the impact of globalization on U.S. jobs as benign despite negative news coverage for declining industries.