Offered in Rwanda, in-person, Feb 13 through 17, full day

Spectrum Management

Lead instructor:  Jon Peha, Carnegie Mellon University Professor and former Chief Technologist of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

This course will teach participants how to manage spectrum in a way that encourages competition, innovation, and investment, while limiting harmful interference. This includes management of spectrum for commercial communications services, spectrum for broadcasting, spectrum for government purposes such as public safety, spectrum for satellites, spectrum for sensing devices from radar to radio astronomy, and more. The course will address fundamental issues of spectrum licensing, including defining bandplans, running effective spectrum auctions, and encouraging spectrum markets. It will then present current and more forward-looking approaches to spectrum sharing and spectrum management, including unlicensed bands, multi-tier sharing models, spectrum sensing and spectrum access systems that use databases, band managers, receiver standards to improve spectrum efficiency, spectrum markets and spectrum leasing. It will also address organizational aspects of a spectrum management agency, including making spectrum regulations clear and transparent, working with open standards organizations, and creating procedures and policies for enforcement of spectrum regulations.

• This course is intended for people with a professional interest in spectrum policy, which could include those at a spectrum regulator, those involved in legislation that affects spectrum regulation, and those in the private sector with an interest in spectrum policy
• Upon completing the course, participants will have greater understanding of regulatory basics of spectrum policy, technology that affects spectrum policy, and some of the current controversies over spectrum policy
• No prior knowledge of spectrum policy or wireless technology is required, but some participants may bring their own knowledge of relevant law, technology, economics or policy.

Spectrum Auction Design

Lead Instructor: Geoffrey Myers, Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, and former Director of Competition Economics at the UK telecom regulator, Ofcom

This course will teach participants about key aspects of spectrum auctions, highlighting the opportunities and challenges, examining the important concepts and real-world examples of both successful and failed auctions, and learning through participation in group and individual exercises. Auction objectives will be considered, showing how the efficient allocation of spectrum licenses can contribute to large consumer and wider societal benefits, and the potential tension with revenue-raising which benefits taxpayers but can distort economic efficiency. This tension will be illustrated by exploring different approaches to choosing reserve prices, emphasizing that a commonly made mistake is setting reserve prices too high and leaving spectrum unsold. Then the main auction formats used for spectrum auctions will be described and analyzed, showing the practical design trade-offs to be made when seeking both to facilitate straightforward bidding (such as risks of substitution and exposure) and to provide bidders with disincentives against engaging in strategic bidding (which can come in many forms, including demand reduction, tacit collusion, price driving, and signaling). This analysis will explain why the complications mean that there is no perfect auction design and that the best choices will depend on the objectives and on well-informed expert judgement taking account of the circumstances specific to the country and the auctioned spectrum. Then the course will show how to assess the case for implementing competition measures in the auction to promote downstream wireless competition, such as spectrum caps or reservation, and to provide a balance with the risks of regulatory failure from measures that are too restrictive. Finally, the course will explore advantages and pitfalls of different ways to harness auctions to achieve the important policy objective of wider wireless coverage in rural areas, including through direct procurement, coverage obligations, and innovative auction designs.

• This course is intended for people with a professional interest in spectrum auctions, which could include those at a spectrum regulator involved in designing auction rules or overseeing policy choices, policymakers setting legislation or strategy, and those in the private sector participating in auctions.
• Upon completing the course, participants will have greater understanding of the practical steps involved in designing and implementing spectrum auctions, the key trade-offs that design choices need to negotiate, and the issues where expertise can be especially valuable to promote successful decisions and avoid high-profile failures.
• No prior knowledge of auctions is required, but some basic understanding of radio spectrum would be useful.

Standards Development

Lead Instructor: Marvin Sirbu, Carnegie Mellon University professor

This course will give participants an understanding of how technical standards for telecommunications systems are developed, including the various approaches to standards development, the use of open standards, the multi-stakeholder approach to standards development, and how governmental and intergovernmental bodies relate to private sector standards bodies.  The course describes private industry-led standards bodies, such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which has produced standards for multiple generations of cellular systems.  It will describe international non-profit organizations that run open standards processes.  This includes the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which has produced networking standards for networking technologies like Wi-Fi and ethernet, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which has produced standards for the Internet such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP).  The course will describe the role of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), when it allocates spectrum for various types of usage, and when considering the new Internet protocol that has been proposed by the Government of China.  The broader implications of creating a standard through a private  sector open standards process versus an intergovernmental organization will be discussed.

• This course is intended for people whose professional activities involve telecommunications standards or standards bodies.
• Upon completing the course, participants will have a deeper understanding of how standards are made today, the pros and cons of different approaches to standards development, and how the process of standards development can affect the outcome and the benefits derived.
• Some familiarity with common telecommunications standards is useful, but no prior knowledge is required.