FINAL REPORT - Stakeholders - Ofcom

7 Licensing 28
7.1 General
The purpose of this Chapter was to examine the various elements taken into account by a
number of prominent aeronautical and maritime nations including EU Member States, in
developing licensing regimes and setting fees and charges for land based and mobile
aeronautical and maritime radiodetermination and radiocommunication systems. The
actual levels of fees and charges were also analysed and compared, on a country by
country basis.
The wide disparity between countries in the approaches to setting fees and charges for
use of radio spectrum also makes comparison difficult. For example, some countries have
adopted administrative pricing methods 29 in an attempt to encourage more efficient use of
the spectrum, whereas others adopt a cost recovery approach or apply market based
methods, such as auctions, for large spectrum assignments.
A key objective of this task was to determine transparency of national licensing regimes
and to clarify the justification for administrative fees and spectrum fees / charges. As part
of the work, it was intended that comparisons would be made between the various
approaches used by administrations to determine fees and charges, and consideration
given to possible approaches to good practice by European NRAs in terms of meeting the
objectives of the Licensing Directive 30 . The Licensing Directive is not part of the current
European regulatory framework but for reasons explained below its terminology has been
used in this document. Reference should be made to section 7.2.1.1 for details
concerning the European telecommunications regulatory framework in operation today.
For the purpose of considering licensing and fees and charges regimes around the World,
and in line with the former European terminology within the framework of the Licensing
Directive, Administrative Fees and Spectrum Charges have been defined as follows:
Administrative Fees are fees intended to cover the costs of examining an application for a
licence, granting the relevant authorisation and verifying compliance with the terms and
conditions set once the service or network is operational. Under the terms of the
Licensing Directive (Article 11.1), Member States were required to ensure that such fees
sought only to cover the administrative costs incurred in the issue, management, control
and enforcement of the applicable individual licences. In the case of General
28 Where an administrative or regulatory term is mentioned in association with a particular
country, the use of the word or term will assume the definition or meaning applicable in
the country concerned (e.g. apparatus licence tax in Australia).
29 Administrative pricing refers to the setting of spectrum charges that reflect the
economic value of the spectrum resource, rather than merely the costs associated with
licensing and managing the spectrum. The term should not be confused with
administrative fees, which are set on a cost-recovery basis.
30 Directive 97/13/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 10th April 1997 on a
common framework for general authorisations and individual licences in the field of
telecommunications services (O.J L 117/15, 07.05.97).
Page 244