Mobile Technology and Spectrum Policy: Innovation and Competition (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Revised Oct. 30, 2014 |
| Report Number |
R43595 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Linda K. Moore Specialist in Telecommunications Policy |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
| Older Revisions |
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Summary:
The convergence of Internet and mobile technologies has, within the last decade, transformed wireless communications and created a dynamo of innovation and economic growth. The list of applications that enable products and provide services through smart wireless devices is long and growing rapidly as new industries incorporate wireless technologies into their products. Wireless and mobile telecommunications products include not only smart phones and tablets but also utility meters, road traffic sensors, robots, autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial systems, tractors, and household appliances, to cite but a few examples of existing and new technologies that are widely predicted to bring about profound changes in how Americans work and play. The composition of the wireless telecommunications industry is changing as companies with important stakes in spectrum-dependent technologies move from innovation to implementation.
The arrival of these technologies is accompanied by a crowd of policy questions covering issues such as employment, training, education, privacy, cybersecurity, and research and development. This report focuses on the interaction between technological change and spectrum policy, and how the accelerating pace of change may require a timely transition to new spectrum policies. Emerging technologies may require, or work better with, new network concepts to carry wireless transmissions over distances long or short. The arrival of new products, new services, and new concepts in network design may lead to the introduction of new models of competition and investment that might benefit from new spectrum policies. Spectrum policy today focuses on the expansion of commercial broadband with the goal of continuing recent growth trends attributed to the mobile Internet. Expanding policy to more fully include other technologiesâincluding those being developed for the Fifth Generation (5G) of wireless communicationsâmight advance a new telecommunications environment with greater potential for spurring innovation, competition, and economic growth than what has been observed in recent years.
This report traces the current and possible future evolution of mobile communications networks and some of the changes in spectrum policy that might better accommodate innovation. Congress at present is engaged in debates over how to maximize the valueâeconomic, monetary, or otherâof upcoming auctions for spectrum licenses, notably the Broadcast Incentive Auction required by the Spectrum Act in 2012 (P.L. 112-96, Title VI). The evolution of wireless technologies, as outlined in this report, indicates that auctions, as presently structured, are a limited policy tool. Congress, therefore, may move to reconsider the current goals of spectrum policy to more fully accommodate the development of the next generation of wireless technologies. In future reviews of communications law and spectrum policy, Congress may choose to broaden its scope to include spectrum-dependent industries and technologies beyond the telecommunications sector.
