Lecture Series in Mobile Telecommunications and Networks (1583KB)

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To the edge of chaos? The complexity and the promise of a technology and service-neutral future way you can react to increasing demand is by increasing complexity or possibly by increasing power – but, hopefully, by increasing complexity because power poses more interference in any case. Thank you. Linda Doyle: You make some very sensible and wise comments. It is the case that you are increasing complexity with all of these things and that is the trade-off that you make. With the systems we have, the underlying processing capabilities are much more able to deal with them now. Even though the power you expend in all of these things is still greater than in simpler, more straightforward systems, it is greatly reducing. If you look at the power expended in some of the more parallel processing environments, it is an improvement over the kind of soft radios that people have been using up to now. You also talk about social needs, which many people mention when you talk about any kind of very fluid markets. This is a very important point. I actually support Ofcom’s approach to that myself. My understanding of their approach – and if anyone here has a different understanding, please chip in – is that you pay for spectrum and you pay what the value of that spectrum is. If there is a social need to be addressed, you get funding in order to help you to buy it, but you do not actually give it away free. That is probably a very blunt paraphrasing of the policies here. I have heard somebody say that if, for example, you think that there is a social need to build a cinema in, say, a very remote area, but you argue that there is not an economic need, you give people grants to build it – but you do not give them the materials free. I support that kind of mindset but you are right to say that there is also the public safety spectrum. I made the point earlier that you can start from where we are now. The reality is that we will have quite a patchwork future, with different regimes in different spaces. You could still imagine an administrative approach having to exist in certain areas. I am sure that there will be some cases for military use and so on, but certainly striving for this more fluid approach opens up more opportunities than it closes. Mr Stephen Temple: I was in the old world of spectrum management for about 20 years and more recently I have spent a couple of years on the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Group when they went through their thinking on spectrum auctions. Rather than a question, I have more of a comment for you to react to. You started with the political context and then you moved down into the technology. I would not question the technology part because it sounded very interesting, but I wanted to comment on the political context. With the administrative approach, you referred to it being unresponsive, with people sitting in ivory towers, dictating what should happen, and they made mistakes from time to time. I would actually want to blow those myths away. First, if you go back to the days of Marconi, 113 years ago, the history has been consistent of a technology coming along and a market need, and then the government having to respond to it. It has been a reactive process, rather than people sitting there and having their own ideas. If you look at those 113 years, they got enough things right – it is not that they got everything right, but they got enough things right. I would look at any private sector company, and the test is whether they get enough things right. I do not know of an industrial company in the world that has got everything right. Mike is in R&D and if he achieved a 20 per cent hit rate he would think he was doing very well. The private sector gets it wrong 80 per cent of the time. If you look back at the history of radio and spectrum allocation, they actually did a brilliant job. They got all the space spectrum done in time, and GSM was done in time and so on. They got enough things right, although a few things were wrong – short-range radio, Irmies, to think of two examples. I want to blow the myth away that the government has made a mistake and therefore it is the wrong way of doing it, because the private sector would make as many mistakes, if not more. The second myth is this idea of the ivory towers. If you look, you would be reacting to pressures. All the time in government, people are coming along – industrialists and commercial people – so I think that was not quite right. The third one, which is the biggest myth of all, is about this discontent with the administrative system. I was in the industry by the time all these changes occurred and no one within the industry was calling for spectrum auctions. The Royal Academy of Engineering 37
Nobody – believe you me, it came out of the Treasury, which thought it was a great idea, and economists thought it was a great idea. They were all people out of the industry, who knew nothing about the industry, that spread the socalled discontent. People were actually very happy within the industry. I then look at the model you are creating and, in a sense, you slightly backed off from the first part, when you said that this would have a space and it would be administered alongside, and that is the way I think it should be. However, if you say that this should sweep the old world away, then I would characterise your new world as sweeping out the prudent old world, unfettered market forces will deliver superior performance, and you create a system so complex that no one understands it. Now, those three things have just described the banking deregulation. [Laughter] In a sense, that is what you are trying to bring across as the new world. I have sat on certain advisory groups and I actually think that Ofcom are on the wrong track with spectrum trading. I think it will end in tears, although I will not spend the next half hour explaining why. They have not understood, for example, about the important role of spectrum re-farming. If you look at GSM spectrum, for example, that has been re-farmed three times. As soon as you have unfettered market forces fragmented, suddenly that way of regenerating spectrum is lost and gone for ever. Technology neutrality is the biggest value destruction possible - for someone trying to sell off spectrum, it has to be technologically neutral. Not aligning with Europe is a total disaster. If you take the Rubik’s cube, and if you have to get the Rubik’s cubes of 25 member states all to line up within a European-wide service, it will not happen with unfettered market forces. You can go on and on and on – it is a flawed approach. That said, I think your technologic approach is good. It has its place and its role and should have its space. The regulator should find spectrum for it in order for it to contribute to the economy. This is less of a question and more of a provocation, and you are free to react to it. Linda Doyle: Your comments are very interesting and well made. When you are presenting an idea and giving a talk in the time available, you cannot convey all the nuances. Some of my comments may have sounded blunt in the sense in that they were probably too quick a way of saying it. Referring to people in ivory towers making decisions, I was emphasising the fact that the centralised decision is distinct from a distributed decision and there was no insult to individuals or groups intended. You mentioned auctions. There was a lot of happiness on one side with auctions, that revenue was generated, and there was also a lot of unhappiness among operators who had to spend an enormous amount of money. There were a number of extremely serious implications. However, I’m not arguing for auctions per se but I am arguing for a freer and fluid situation and all of the auctions that I have seen take place are falsely fluid in the sense that, around them, they have this tightly regulated system, and they have taken one thing from that and freed it up. They have then said that this is like a free system, which can go whichever way it wants and the market can drive it, but it has all these other anchor points, if you know what I mean. You are half doing something, and looking at that and saying that it does not succeed is not looking at what the picture could really be – it is looking at a half-implementation of it. Any time you begin to see things freeing up, even like in the 700 MHz auctions in the US or even in some of the Ofcom auctions where they are more flexible and you could do combination things, you are still surrounded by a structure that it is fitting into. I think there is more potential in these ideas but I also think it is very difficult, starting from the system we have. I used the word ‘Utopia’ specifically when I gave that description to describe what it would look like if we were all like that. It is not a backing away on my part to say that it will not fully be like that – it is an acceptance of reality. I specifically boxed that thing with the Utopian view, but I still believe in the merit of much of what is in there. There is a wider space than you think for it. Unfortunately, I did not attend a talk at which Vivien Reading was speaking in Ireland. From what she said, it sounds very much like the whole notion of a European regulator. When she was talking about the ‘digital dividend’, she was 38 The Royal Academy of Engineering
Page 1 and 2: Lecture Series in Mobile Telecommun
Page 3 and 4: Foreword This compilation brings to
Page 5 and 6: From wireless networks to sensor ne
Page 7 and 8: From wireless networks to sensor ne
Page 9 and 10: As far as the routing of packets is
Page 11 and 12: easons. In the internet, one never
Page 13 and 14: Implementation with laser pointers,
Page 15 and 16: here of laptops, and all these lapt
Page 17 and 18: adds a great deal of discrete compl
Page 19 and 20: Questions & Answers Mike Walker: Th
Page 21 and 22: Human beings will also evolve and w
Page 23 and 24: Welcome and introduction Professor
Page 25 and 26: ComReg Collection - Start 16/Apr/20
Page 27 and 28: evidence that people give in favour
Page 29 and 30: chunks of spectrum where you are in
Page 31 and 32: As an aside, I was reading a few of
Page 33 and 34: Of course, it is not just one mask,
Page 35 and 36: I apologise for hopping between top
Page 37: Questions & Answers Michael Walker:
Page 41 and 42: The second aspect of my comment is
Page 43 and 44: want to call it - that sits there a
Page 45 and 46: From plain old Telephony to flawles
Page 47 and 48: From plain old Telephony to flawles
Page 49 and 50: You can see that there is much room
Page 51 and 52: 1024, we transmit 10 bits, so to sp
Page 53 and 54: Bandwidth extension with hidden sid
Page 55 and 56: 4 Vision: ambience audio communicat
Page 57 and 58: Questions & Answers Michael Walker:
Page 59 and 60: I said five years ago and what I he
Page 61 and 62: them and perhaps leave out some of

Lecture Series in Mobile Telecommunications and Networks (1583KB)

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