Spectrum licensing, policy instruments and market entry. A comment

Peter Curwen is Visiting Professor and Jason Whalley is Professor, both at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. In May 2014, Madden, Bohlin, Tran and Morey published a study concerned with the mobile communications industry. The study concluded, as stated in the abstract, that “the probability of entry is enhanced by using auction assignments and excess licences[1]” (Madden et al., 2014). They obtained the national 3G (third-generation)[2] spectrum data, which underpinned their study by recourse to the DotEcon Spectrum Awards database supplemented by further data searches to establish the number of 2G licences[3] held prior to the award of 3G Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) licences.