European policy trends towards flexible spectrum management

Abstract

This article discusses, in some detail, the main policy and regulatory evolutions in Europe up until February 2007, which are intended to contribute significantly to the introduction of systems and services relying on flexible spectrum management. Although business stakeholders as well as many academics consider necessary regulatory reform as a volatile and thus uncertain requirement for innovation, these reforms do not come about because of themselves. This is to say, policy action is in most cases undertaken as a result of constituency pressure, and information as well as persuasion flows, particularly in highly specialised and technical domains, guide the policy process throughout its conception, implementation, monitoring and evaluation phases (Hogwood and Gunn 1984; Dunn 2004). On the other hand, cabinets and administrations, which are sufficiently sensitive to future policy requirements and have the resources to exploit this sensitivity, may well devise policy and regulatory reforms well before an industry consensus around them takes shape. In other words, the policy trends discussed in this paper are in most cases a mix of Government initiatives and a reaction to industry demands. Modern policy processes often provide both formal and informal channels through which stakeholders may influence these processes.