Radio Spectrum Management as a System of Innovation: LSA Case Study

Abstract

This paper looks at the workings of innovation within the field of international radio spectrum management by applying the conceptual framework of the System of Innovation (SI). The analysis highlights the importance of proper consideration of roles and involvement scopes of various stakeholders and different interrelations between them. This is illustrated by a case study of a novel dynamic spectrum access method, known as Licensed Shared Access (LSA). The LSA should have allowed mobile networks to be deployed in radio frequency bands assigned to other users. However, this innovation had been stalling, and the SI framework sheds a better understanding of how the innovation efforts could be refocused to restart the development and introduction of LSA as a European platform for database-driven dynamic spectrum access.