Suchergebnisse

With the latest advances in mobile broadband brought by UMTS, HSDPA, and LTE, all radio communications make use of a highly regulated resource. Specific portions of that spectrum are allocated for use by competing uses, and it is a scarce and expensive resource. To deal with this scarcity, some countries have changed legislation so that other services can use portions of the spectrum initially allocated to a different service/technology. This is called re-farming: repurposing a frequency that was initially allocated to one technology for another one. Re-farming is a cost-effective way to increase capacity for mobile use without the need for market players to apply for new spectrum. This issue is becoming crucial and important for the national regulatory body in every country including Thailand to manage their scare resource with fair and clear rule. With the exponential growth in mobile broadband (MBB) services in Thailand, it places enormous demand on the need to expand the capacity of the MBB sites with the available spectrum resources. Most often, there is a dire need to acquire additional spectrum to fulfill the demand in capacity growth. Spectrum auction prices are very expensive in principle; hence operators need to maximize the available spectrum resources for better utilization. To accelerate the 3G&4G network, spectrum re-farming is needed in Thailand. This study aims to explore the similarity and difference of the objective, spectrum target and approach of spectrum re-farming in the selected countries from each region which are USA, Germany, France and Australia. Public consultation documents and related literature were used for data collection in the selected country. Additional qualitative method which was focus group was employed for data analysis in Thailand. Experience of re-farming from selected countries is expected to provide lessons for the Thai national regulatory authority (NRA) in terms of improving quality of service and coverage and create a fair competition environment among service provider.

The advent of digital television has triggered a revolution in the use of radio spectrum worldwide and in particular in Europe, where the digital switchover, meaning the migration process from analogue to digital broadcasting, has led to two major consequences on spectrum use. First of all, there has been an improvement in the quality and an expansion in the range of television services, but also a significant part of the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band has become free from traditional terrestrial broadcasting usage and released for other services. In response to the outcome of the 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07) to allocate the upper part of the UHF band - the 800 MHz in Europe - for mobile services, Europe committed to structuring a regional plan promoting harmonisation of spectrum use across EU member states. In 2012, the first Radio Spectrum Policy Programme (RSPP) was approved. EU member states agreed on clearing the 800 MHz band from television broadcasting services and making it available for mobile services by 1 January 2013 (European Parliament & the Council, 2012). However, some EU member states showed a high degree of sensitivity about how intrusive the RSPP could be in the policy area of radio spectrum, which is considered a core area of national sovereignty. It is suffice to think that fourteen EU member states asked the European Commission (EC) to grant policy derogations due to a variety of exceptional reasons, having missed the previously agreed deadline, and nine of them have actually been granted. Different paths towards the allocation of the digital dividend to mobile services, in terms of policy and regulatory interventions, have been traced by EU member states under the EU umbrella. Moreover, Europe is carrying out studies on future spectrum requirements, including the 694-790 MHz (700 MHz) band, which will be allocated to mobile services in Europe from 2016, according to what has been stated at the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-12). This band is used to be referred to with the expression 'second digital dividend'.

The new smartphone era is challenging the leading position the European Union (EU) has been occupying in the mobile economy, falling behind other economies such as the United States and some countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The EU acknowledges the fragmented structure of the electronic communications market as being one of the main obstacles to LTE deployment. The EC argues that a main source of fragmentation is lack of harmonised conditions governing the use of radio spectrum across the EU. The EU member states have developed different and sometimes conflicting radio spectrum management practices through time. A consequent drawback is the impossibility of providing wireless broadband dervices across national borders and of deploying the necessary wireless networks and radio equipment. In consequence, on 11 September 2013, the European Commission put forward a new legislative package for a 'Connected Continent: Building a Telecoms Single Market' which contains several reforms directed to create a single telecommunications market. Some of the proposed reforms would partly modify the existing regulatory system of the radio spectrum, introducing harmonised conditions governing national assignment procedures. Through a document analysis and selected experts interviews the paper attempts to assess whether the EU is moving towards a strategic development of radio spectrum policy by looking at the EU initiatives on radio spectrum since the beginning in 1987. Then the focus is narrowed down to the Connected Continent legislative proposal, to value its contribution to the harmonisation of national assignment procedures. The historical overview of the EU radio spectrum policy shows that the EU has gradually acknowledged the negative implications of national fragmented and inconsistent radio spectrum governing rules. The EU has become aware of the need for a long-term strategy for the planning of the use of radio spectrum for the creation and functioning of the EU internal market. However, the paper also claims that in the arduous process of harmonisation of radio spectrum use much has still to be accomplished. Furthermore the paper draws the conclusions that the radio spectrum reforms contained the Connected Continent legislative proposal are probably not the means by which the harmonisation of radio spectrum use for the completion of the internal market can be enhanced. The EU and the EU member states have remarkably diverging and conflicting views on the content of the EC proposed reforms. The EU member states are unwilling to give up on their prerogatives on the radio spectrum by accepting too intrusive harmonised measures.

The term digital divide was introduced in the mid-1990s and defined as the gap separating those who have access to new forms of information technology from those who do not. The digital divide remains an important public policy debate that encompasses social, economic and political issues. This paper presents a literature review and classification scheme for digital divide research. The review covers journal articles published between 2001 and 2010 in three types of journals: (1) Information technology & information systems, (2) Economics and business & management and (3) Social science. A classification of digital divide literature and a comprehensive list of references are provided. The results show that the digital divide is a multifaceted phenomenon, due to the many dimensions of determinant factors. Recent studies have included socio-economic, institutional and physiological factors in order to gain a greater understanding of the digital divide. Among other findings, they show that technological determinism is not sufficient to explain the emergence of the digital divide. Moreover, several types of technologies were investigated, both from empirical and conceptual standpoints. The Internet is the most commonly studied technology. The divide in access and usage are discussed at the global, social and democratic levels by employing a quantitative method, either a survey or data analysis, as the main method. However, there is less discussion in developing countries and at the level of the organization (i.e. SMEs, the private sector and the public sector). The qualitative research method could be seen as a complementary method to fill the gap in the current research. The choice of policies which have been recommended to the policy maker and national regulatory agency (NRA) are also presented and discussed at the end of this paper. Several initiatives made at the country and regional levels and by international organizations have also attempted to create a combined policy. This may suggest that the combined policy is the current trend among digital divide policies. Therefore, there is a need for future research to examine these determinants through the context of global, social and democratic divides. The results would provide some insight into how diverse people in different areas adopt ICTs.

Since more than two decades, broadband has been recognized in the EU as having great benefits to economic and social development.This recognition is evident in the first EU policy document on the telecommunications market - the 1987 Green Paper - which assumed that harmonization and liberalization through competition mechanism could be used as the tools to bring all those benefits to the European citizens. Although the policy in the following years emphasized the competition mechanism, many additional instruments were developed and implemented in order to make broadband available to all European citizen. Some instruments can be seen in the form of Directives, and some instruments are shown in many policy strategies. All of them have a considerable contribution to the growth of broadband deployment in the EU. However, with globalization, the policy impetus for broadband has shifted toward a means to increase competitiveness of a nation or region.This changing emphasis due to globalization and competitiveness impacts the design of policy instruments. A question can be raised which instruments can serve a new concept of future broadband policy. Against this background, the paper will present an evolutionary concept of broadband policy in the EU by providing a model to integrate the related broadband policy instruments. A timeline of all instruments and initiatives being implemented will be explored. This evolution will be analyzed in order to see what kind of future model is applicable when broadband policy is based on a perspective of globalization and regional competitiveness. The analysis will address how well the existing instruments can serve a new concept of broadband policy and what the needs are for new policy instruments and working structures.

The objective of this book is to present a comprehensive evaluation of the smart revolution, including its social and economic impacts. It proposes a modern framework to help assess how recent Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can contribute to societies as a whole. The authors offer a guide to how advanced network technologies have led to a greater variety of applications and social networking services. These allow people to connect with each other both at a more personal and global level, and will ultimately herald a new era of ICTs that will shape the 'digital society'. This essential resource will appeal to academics, government officials and practitioners in telecommunications and media.