Aggregating Bandwidth For Faster Mobile Networks, Explosive Growth In 2010

A new study published in the Int. J. Management and Network Economics reveals that the value of mobile spectrum, the capacity to transfer data across mobile networks, is only likely to increase as the demand for data transfer increases. However, it is only those telecommunications companies that bought up in government auctions the inexpensive licences to operate at particularly frequencies of the spectrum that will be in strong position to dominate in the consumer and enterprise markets as well as being in a position to lease bandwidth to their competitors at a high profit.

Jan Markendahl of the Royal Institute of Technology and Bengt G. Mölleryd of the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency in Stockholm have demonstrated that operators that are able to obtain more spectrum than their competitors, and pursue network sharing and spectrum aggregation have a competitive advantage as they have the lowest production cost, highest margin and highest capacity when usage takes off. Spectrum is much cheaper than the construction of new base stations, network towers, power, and site leases.

With the emergence of new radio technology that allows otherwise separate blocks of frequencies to be used as if they were a single block of bandwidth means will allow those operators who enable the so-called 3GPP standard to profit from the separate chunks of bandwidth they own. Similarly, the evolution of 4G technology and devices will also allow aggregation. Indeed, the mobile equipment manufacturers have already launched flexible radio equipment capable of handling all relevant frequencies and access technologies.