Telecom industry association GSMA on Tuesday said exclusive-access spectrum is much better than shared spectrum.
For instance, exclusive licensed spectrum in the 2.3GHz band could add €86 billion (US $116 billion) to the European Union’s economy in the period 2016-2030, said GSMA.
GSMA said shared licensing could sharply reduce economic benefits to €70 billion (US $95 billion) or as low as €5 billion (US $6.7 billion), due to a lack of common approach in spectrum allocation across the Member States, combined with significant geographic and timing exclusions as well as potential contracting limitations.
According to GSMA, during the same time period, exclusive spectrum licensing in the 3.5GHz band would add US $260 billion (€192 billion) to the United States economy.
In the case that sharing terms strictly limit the use of spectrum by mobile operators, this value would be sharply reduced to US $210 billion (€155 billion) or as little as US $7 billion (€5 billion).
The study finds that the release of exclusive-access spectrum for mobile broadband offers wider socio-economic benefits for the United States and European Union over the period 2016-2030, including future job creation.
It is estimated that the deployment of mobile broadband would generate approximately 2.1 million jobs in the US and nearly 1.6 million jobs in the EU across this period.
The GSMA report indicates that shared spectrum can complement but in no way replaces the need for exclusive-access spectrum in the provision of mobile broadband.
Strict limitations associated with Licensed Shared Access (LSA) spectrum agreements – such as shorter terms, build obligations, lack of certainty and small allocations – can reduce the likelihood of a mobile operator to invest.
This means that the potential economic benefits derived from spectrum sharing are ultimately lower than those achieved through exclusive-access spectrum.
