An interesting portrait of the future. Just two excerpts, if acted on, will present huge opportunties for the jaded stockbroker, banker or lawyer who wants a new lucrative challenge.
Some of all of the following may come to pass, and where it already happens, occur a lot more.
provide for greater market‐based activity, including by increasing the opportunity for
spectrum holders to share and trade spectrum
More business cards and Linked In accounts will read 'Spectrum broker'
More allocations will be done by third parties.
Spectrum holdings, like shares and real estate, will become part of peoples investment portfolios, either directly or via superannuation funds.
3rd party private spectrum traders will buy and sell spectrum with no intention of using it themselves.
It may be possible to borrow from banks to buy slabs of spectrum that you think will rise in value or produce income.
Like real estate, spectrum traders will make money from either subdividing spectrum allocations or consolidating holdings on adjacent frequencies to a more marketable block.
Spectrum speculators may pin their hopes on a particular technology and buy and hoard spectrum in anticipation of it being in higher demand.
There will be such a thing as a wholesale and retail price for spectrum. Both will find a market price related to demand. There may be an online Australian Spectrum Exchange.
Holders of major weekend events will be able to lease spectrum from those whose industries mainly use it during the week.
During times of spectrum scarcity prices will rise and the 'invisible hand' will provide incentives to develop spectrum saving technologies.
During times of oversupply (or high use of efficiency measures) spectrum prices will fall and more spectrum hungry uses will be invented.
The longevity of spectrum using products will be a concern since shutdowns and reallocations are difficult and expensive to arrange (eg digital TV).
Such longevity will go from being a good thing (ie your old AM radio still usable) to a bad thing (in that it slows trading and achieving 'the highest and best use' for an asset).
Future uses may not be as tied to rigid long-term allocations as now.
However falling manufacturing costs, broadband technologies, software defined radio techniques and always-on networked devices will allow faster changes through software uploading rather than hardware changes. Frequency and mode changes could become transparent to the user due to uploadable software updates and make spectrum reallocations less disruptive which will foster increased market activity.
Smart kids will have software defined radios that monitor spectrum activity and tie it to the 'owner'. They may identify slabs of little used spectrum and offer to buy it from unaware users for a few thousand. They then package and sell it, becoming overnight millionaires.
allowing licensees to resolve interference and disputes, including:
encouraging licensees to access alternative dispute resolution
requiring the ACMA to develop and publish guidelines on its dispute
management processes
expanding rights of licensees to take civil proceedings.
Spectrum law will become a growth industry.
Regular judges and juries will not be able to competently hear such technical cases so there may be a 'spectrum tribunal' set up funded from spectrum access charges.
Those with less money will have to put up with interference or seek 'alternative dispute resolution'.
To conclude, the changes appear to remove barriers to market-based change, and will attract non-spectrum users to the field to get their cut - eg private spectrum managers,
private spectrum conveyancers, spectrum lawyers, spectrum valuers, spectrum 'landlords', spectrum usage optimisation consultants, spectrum traders and packagers, etc.
Technical types may lament this but for others the radio spectrum is about to get exciting again.
