The Evolution of Mobile Communications and Spectrum Policy

Over the last five years, there has been an enormously fast expansion of broadband services consumed in mobility. Extensive Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, also in the context of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), have begun to make up an important share of all mobile communications. Furthermore, 5G, the latest mobile communications technology standard to enter the market, has emerged as a new way of providing mobile ultra-high capacity and very low latency connections, supporting a wide range of innovative applications and services. These phenomena are contributing heavily to the widespread use of data traffic, causing a paradigm shift in the existing economic patterns and rationales of mobile markets. All this has raised the need for updating some regulatory measures and has necessitated a deeper rethinking of spectrum policy strategies. The European Electronic Communications Code defines the current EU spectrum policy and is steering 5G spectrum auctions toward a more systemic approach.