Implications of Incentive Auction : Focusing on key issues in U.S.

Abstract

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates interstate and international communications in the United States, has established a plan to allocate high demand spectrum to the usage of mobile communication by inducing voluntary relinquishment from broadcasters. This plan was introduced by the National Broadband Plan as an incentive auction in 2010. The FCC suggested the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in 2012 and issued Report and Order (R&O) on May 2014 regarding the overall rules of incentive auctions expected to be implemented in mid-2015. The incentive auction attracts the attention of many countries because this policy suggests a novel approach regarding the alteration of use from an inefficient usage to an efficient usage in limited spectrum resources. In this paper, we define the key issues in order for implementation of incentive auction. Since the incentive auction is a highly complicated process compared to previous allocation procedures, a careful review of the incentive auction regarding whether this spectrum policy can be introduced is required. In this paper, we describe the detailed procedure of the incentive auction and present policy considerations for the introduction of the incentive auction.