Spectrum Policy for Mobile Broadband

This paper empirically studies the changes in spectrum holdings distribution in Korea’s mobile market, and finds that the spectrum holdings distribution in Korea tends to become less concentrated since LTE service were launched. This empirical finding suggests that regulating excessive spectrum holdings is less necessary in Korea’s mobile market. Besides this empirical finding, this paper discusses that there is a more important reason why the regulatory body should refrain from applying the old regulation policies: The spectrum for mobile in 4G and 5G era becomes more diversified or heterogeneous. Therefore, measuring the degree of spectrum concentration in a simple manner may not be correct anymore and the regulation based on that concentration measure can be misleading.