Strategies and Economic Aspects of Spectrum Redeployment for Development of Perspective Mobile Networks in Russia

The radio-frequency spectrum (RFS) is a national natural resource which use should be based on methods appropriate to economic principles of telecommunication market. The national experience in spectrum management shows that it's not always possible to achieve a high efficiency of spectrum use applying only administrative and technical methods. One reason is that more than 80% of spectrum in Russia is allocated to military and government systems. Spectrum redeployment for perspective radio technologies is possible only applying effective economic decisions. The market of 2-nd generation mobile networks in Russia is presented by dynamically developing GSM networks operating in the 900 and 1800 MHz ranges, and is the most attractive for investments due to current legal and technical principles of market development. The 3-rd generation mobile networks form an absolutely new telecommunication market which feature is a convergence of services previously provided using wireline and wireless technologies. However, a progress in development of new mobile technologies in Russia is suppressed by a number of problems, one of which is a high congestion of frequency bands. This article is devoted to strategy and economic analysis of RFS redeployment for development of new radio technologies.