Working Group Meeting Notes

1
Working Group Meeting Notes

• Innovation in Telecommunications -
• Regulation Innovation

Wednesday 18th October 2006 1100 BST
2
Participants

• Apologies
• Joe Butler Ofcom
• Chris Marsden Rand Europe
• Terry Hodgkinson BT
• Elspeth MacFadyen BT
• Lorraine Flawn - BT
• Simon Persoff Orange Home
• John Ure University of Hong Kong
• Taylor Reynolds OECD
• J Scott Marcus
• Ken Ducatel EC
• Angela Sasse UCL

Attended Brian Corbett CRN (Interim
Chair) Bruno Basalisco Imperial College
London Bill Glover BT Alan Cullen BAE
Systems Nick Filer University of
Manchester Linda Doyle Trinity College, Dublin
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Agenda

• Review key areas for further research- What is
  the goal and remit for regulation?- What is the
  interplay between technological market/economic
  regulation?
• Review plans for short term deliverables-
  Synopsis of current thinking- Prepare case
  studies which can demonstrate "best practice
• Agree actions

4
Discussion Points

• The major focus of the meeting was spectrum and
  related issues
• Interoperability across different user bases
• Economic use of resources
• Enforceability of regulation
• Role of the regulator tools available to manage
  through market forces
• Should the regulator focus on services rather
  than technologies?
• Spectrum Working Group
• Agreed we should get an update on the Spectrum
  WGs activities
• Need to ensure we complement and do not duplicate
  work
• Consider a Joint WG meeting at some point?

Spectrum focus was driven by participant
profile at this meeting
5
Commercial v non-commercial use of spectrum

• Concerns about spectrum availability and cost
  implications to military of increasing
  commercial/civilian use of spectrum
• Issues of interoperability, and technology
  cross-over between military and commercial use
• Concerns about technical changes as spectrum
  allocations evolve is the impact of these
  changes considered by the regulator?
• This merged with the next discussion area
  economic use of spectrum

6
Economic use of spectrum

• What are the most effective means to ensure
  economic use of scarce resource
• Use it or lose it approach? How to enforce in the
  case of lack of performance in the use of
  licenced spectrum
• Need to understand capacity/saturation points,
  and impact of varying topologies
• Can the market escape the lowest common
  denominator factor?
• Look into private commons combinatorial
  auctions (ref GMU Richard Porter/Vernon Smith

7
Enforcement balancing market forces

• Regulation 2.0 brings new complexities
• What tools are available to balance market
  forces?
• How to enforce regulation practical issues in a
  decentralised environment (WiMax, mesh networks
  etc)
• e.g. need for public awareness of impact of power
  output from personal devices, on networks as a
  whole
• What technical solutions are there to sense and
  adjust power output depending on local
  environment conditions
• WiFi hotspots and interference issues Dynamic
  Frequency Selection (DFS) as a solution
• Relevance of Software Defined Radio (SDR)?
• Regulatory policy conflicts no processes in
  place to overcome these

8
Actions next meeting

• Following the identification of short term
  deliverables at the first meeting it was agreed
  that by the next meeting specific tasks will be
  determined such that individual members can
  commit to follow up
• BC to circulate proposed tasks for review by the
  Group
• Likely immediate goal would be to define a number
  of key topics and each task owner to provide a
  summary of current thinking for that area
• CRN Regulatory Workshop
• Net Neutrality Battle for a New World Order or
  Much Ado about Nothing?
• 11th December 2006 Royal Society London
• Working Group Meeting
• Proposed to follow the Regulatory Workshop
• Tuesday 12th December 1000-1200 venue tbc