Political Solutions Said Needed to Rev Up European ICT Performance
BRUSSELS -- Europe got it right by coordinating wireless standards for 3G, but 10 years later has lost its dominance because of a lack of spectrum, U.S. Ambassador to the EU William Kennard said Tuesday at the annual European spectrum management conference. Europe’s information and communications technology market is about the same size as the U.S.’s, but with 200 million more people, it’s underperforming, he said. He floated the idea of pan-European spectrum auctions but said political pressures must be surmounted before that can happen. Others questioned whether Europe-wide auctions are the answer.
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As a former FCC Chairman, Kennard was sent to convince European policymakers to adopt multiple wireless standards, he said. But leading companies had already built world class businesses and Kennard realized that “Europe had gotten it right” by harmonizing standards and it was leading in wireless services, he said. Now, the challenge for Europe is that it has lost its edge, and it all comes down to spectrum, he said. The U.S. has the same problem because the future of the Internet is wireless, he said. The U.S. is struggling to come up with 500 MHz, a situation that faces enormous political challenges there and must be even more difficult in an EU with 27 members, he said.
There should be political discussion about this, Kennard said. Governments should support those who have a vision of what the future should be, he said. Kennard said he also tried to persuade Europeans to hold spectrum auctions, something it has since come around to. He asked why there can’t be pan-European auctions, but acknowledged that it’s a hot potato because governments want to hang on to that resource.
European-wide auctions would send a “spectacular signal” to operators and consumers and are feasible, said Gerard Pogorel, Telecom ParisTech economics professor, later in an interview. He believes auctions conducted with annual rather than upfront fees make more sense, he said. But Martin Cave of the London School of Economics said spectrum-trading is more useful than pan-EU auctions. The more feasible route is the U.S.-style strategy of buying up licenses issued on a regional basis until they're ultimately taken over by national groupings, he said in an interview. European countries could do the same thing, he said, although it would require permission from each national administration and there would likely be squabbles over the revenue, he said.
Europe is being squeezed between competitors in the Americas and the Far East, said European Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. The West is delivering the content, the East the devices, and Europe the credit cards with which to buy the products and services, she said. The proposed five-year radio spectrum policy program (RSPP) is intended to create a joined-up European approach to opening more spectrum for wireless broadband, she said. Europe can’t continue to rely on an aggregation of national strategies, she said.
Europe’s biggest roadblock is the shortcomings of the human mind, said European Parliament member Gunnar Hokmark, author of the legislative response to the EC RSPP proposal. All our knowledge and experiences are based on the past, he said. People tend to form a view of society based on the past 10-15 years, considering TV, radio and the Internet as they were, not as they are, he said.
China and India are still referred to as “emerging economies” because it makes Western countries feel safe, Hokmark said. But they are no longer emerging, they are leading and competing, he said. In addition, Europeans and Americans are too rooted in the fact that they've traditionally been in the lead, he said. But today Europe has “totally misunderstood the global economy,” he said. China and America are seen as the two largest economies, he said. They have the biggest markets, but Europe is the largest economy, he said. Policymakers can either follow the “rain dance doctrine,” endlessly repeating that Europe is the most dynamic economy, or it can quickly adopt the RSPP roadmap and boost competition and productivity, he said.
Because of wide variations in economic and telecommunications development in Asia-Pacific nations, a region-wide common radio spectrum policy isn’t possible, said John Lewis, chairman of the spectrum aspects working group of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity. Spectrum policy is crafted nationally or sub-regionally, but APT members have access to guidance from organizations such as the APT Wireless group and the experiences of the most advanced Asia-Pacific administrations, he said.