Spectrum management and policy e-book now available for download

In the past few months, we have tried to explain how spectrum management and policy has evolved in the past 100 years, why some approaches have become dominant and set out today's "hot button" policy issues. The result is our new e-book: Spectrum management and policy which is now available for download. It covers basic questions like why spectrum needs to be managed; the main historical events that shaped current policy; and key issues like auctions, 5G and World Radiocommunication Conferences. Here are some of the questions we try to answer:

• Why are spectrum auctions winners rarely allowed to pay in instalments?
• Why the current interest in spectrum sharing?
• The ITU Radio regulations are not policed and there are few penalties, so why are they followed?

We wanted to keep it as brief as possible - 25 pages in fact. Our short narrative is necessarily selective and not everyone will agree with our arguments. But we hope it provides a useful introduction to newcomers and that experts will also read it and use the online comments to widen the debate.•