Systems dynamics approach to analyzing spectrum management policies for mobile broadband services in India

Demand for wireless data and Internet services are expected to grow exponentially, in advanced and emerging markets in the near future. While advanced countries have often used centralized planning and coordination methodology to forecast and allocate the associated spectrum blocks to wireless operators for meeting demand, often its ad-hoc in emerging markets dictated by market forces. In this paper, the authors construct a casual model to represent the different variables that affect spectrum management practices and highlight possible paths forward. Using the causal model structure, they hypothesize that emerging countries with their unique market structure and legacy of spectrum management are better suited to create active secondary markets. The authors cite early market indicators in India such as the adoption of national roaming by the wireless broadband operators and the use of multi-SIM handsets by subscribers that tend to support our hypothesis.