Elma Avdic: Thank you. So my name’s Elma. And I work in the CONNECT Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications based in Trinity College Dublin. What I want to talk to you about is this idea of machines gov­ern­ing things. And one par­tic­u­lar thing that I see gov­erned by the machines is the radio spec­trum. That’s an exam­ple where I see this kind of reg­u­la­tion can work, and I guess the most rad­i­cal thing about it is that I think a robot­ic reg­u­la­tor can actu­al­ly bring more human val­ues to its reg­u­la­tion. So hope­ful­ly I will show you why I think that and how that can happen. 

So, I have so many things to tell you with lit­tle time, and I just kind of want to open this box and you take from it what touch­es you and unpack it fur­ther. I did a PhD the­sis on the cul­ture of spec­trum shar­ing, ​“Emancipation of the Hertz,” that was the title. It was a multi-domain analy­sis of spec­trum shar­ing, start­ing from nature, the domain of nature where we find the resource; through the domain of tech­nol­o­gy, which puts the resource to use and in the case of spec­trum it makes it exist; through the domain of busi­ness, where radio spec­trum is used by a ser­vice provider to pro­duce capac­i­ty and sell it out to the cus­tomers, to the end users—to us. That all hap­pens under the domain of reg­u­la­tion under some rules. And up to the domain of soci­ety as spec­trum is used so much in every­day com­mu­ni­ca­tion. And I see spec­trum as a social issue per se. 

So I feel that the right way of think­ing about how to imple­ment this AI reg­u­la­tor, the machine-enabled reg­u­la­tion of spec­trum shar­ing is to input the prin­ci­ples into the machine, because the machine has to learn from some­thing, right? So I think it’s about the prin­ci­ples, not rigid if-then-else rules, because they don’t real­ly give space to the machine to be real­ly intel­li­gent and get out of the rules. So, I will talk from where we can extract these prin­ci­ples, how that relates to radio spec­trum, what kind of gov­er­nance and struc­tures are behind the radio spec­trum, where is the prob­lem with that, and what is this lega­cy that you’re sup­posed to go with into the con­nect­ed future. And final­ly, how can we make AI-enabled reg­u­la­tion for spec­trum sharing. 

We made a myth out of shar­ing. The non-sharing struc­tures gov­ern­ing the under­ly­ing pipes of the dig­i­tal world want us to think that we’re already shar­ing enough by shar­ing bikes and pets. And that’s a pop­ulist dis­course made to hide their hege­mo­ny and pro­tect it from ref­or­ma­tion. So in this map of the Internet, the bright col­ors where sort of the fire­works are, it’s the place of plat­forms where we do share. And it sort of shows how we cel­e­brate and take pride in the way we share on plat­forms. But we just sit silent­ly in the dark when it comes to the pipes, and that’s where the radio spec­trum and the infra­struc­ture are. 

So, there is a lot at stake when it comes to radio spec­trum, so let’s start meet­ing the stake­hold­ers and let’s start from the head. The FCC is the reg­u­la­tor, the pol­i­cy­mak­er, and pol­i­cy enforcer. So be like Peter from Family Guy, know every­thing about the FCC. In par­tic­u­lar we need to learn about the FCC his­to­ry and its unfair race with tech­nol­o­gy. Unfair because tech­nol­o­gy’s fly­ing, and the FCC is doing a crab dance. 

As much as the Big Spectra wants us to believe it, the balka­nized, entrenched, guard­ed allo­ca­tion chart is not the elec­tro­mag­net­ic spec­trum. Placing own­er­ship and pro­tec­tion in the very def­i­n­i­tion of their work­ing def­i­n­i­tion of elec­tro­mag­net­ic spec­trum, they made it a piece of invis­i­ble land in the sky. But it’s not. It’s a spe­cial resource, usable in bril­liant ways simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, instant­ly renew­able and mag­i­cal­ly exploitable by the ever-progressing tech­nol­o­gy. And yet, they keep it bound in a chart. So spec­trum is not the prob­lem, nor is the tech­nol­o­gy. It’s the humans, the crea­tures of reg­u­la­to­ry habit. 

In an effort to please every­one with finan­cial pow­er and not to leave the com­fort zone much, the reg­u­la­tor comes up with these com­plex spec­trum shar­ing sys­tems. It is com­mend­able that they final­ly rec­og­nize the poten­tial of unused spec­trum. And in the case of the depict­ed CBRS spec­trum shar­ing mod­el, it is the rarely-unused mil­i­tary spec­trum in the 3.5 giga­hertz band. But, as we speak the FCC is prepar­ing to announce in a few days that this new space is going to be turned into yet anoth­er park­ing lot for the big car­ri­ers. So, what are the alter­na­tives to that? Making it a nation­al park? Sort of a nod to com­mons. Or a third way? 

It’s clear that we can­not go on any­more with the same old same old. A sus­tain­able future asks for new more sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els. And the resources have start­ed shapeshift­ing. Rigid, non-shapeshifting busi­ness­es won’t be able to process the flu­id resources of the future. In wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions, they can not still be just phone com­pa­nies, and not every play­er has to be a big one any­more. Everyone can do a small part and make their mon­ey in the mar­ket with what they have. This democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the mar­ket seems also nat­ur­al and total­ly in the spir­it of net neu­tral­i­ty and oth­er move­ments that are pro­tect­ing small busi­ness­es by using the ben­e­fits of the World Wide Web. And yet we don’t talk about it. So is it too dis­tant, too abstract? It should­n’t be. So you might want a piece of this spec­trum pie in the sky. And you want to become a provider. So by the ben­e­fit of shar­ing, you won’t be fac­ing this dilem­ma of hav­ing your piece or eat­ing it. 

So the cur­rent mar­ket is defined by big com­pa­nies bid­ding for chunks of spec­trum for their exclu­sive use under the FCC’s terms. It is ensured that these chunks are far apart, because the bid­ders are afraid of the oth­er users dis­rupt­ing their ser­vice. And they, as well as the reg­u­lar rules, imag­ine these oth­ers have Fred Flintsone-like equip­ment, leaky and loud. And…they don’t. So based on that, they devised these bulky defense mech­a­nisms at the expense of spectrum. 

And as in that famous selec­tive atten­tion video, while you keep an eye on the ball you miss the goril­la in the bas­ket­ball court. So here the guer­ril­la is the spec­trum scarci­ty. Everyone is com­plain­ing there’s not enough spec­trum. But they nev­er join their forces to fight this lack togeth­er and make a prop­er uti­liza­tion of spec­trum a com­mon pri­or­i­ty. So no, they hoard unused spec­trum and then point fin­gers to the oth­ers doing the same. It’s their busi­ness mod­el. So Professor Nash has every right to be dis­ap­point­ed in this scene. The mar­ket is play­ing the wrong game, against the wrong opponent. 

Spectrum is an amaz­ing nat­ur­al resource with many beau­ti­ful fea­tures, and yet it is posed as a hos­tile ter­ri­to­ry that needs to be col­o­nized and tamed. That’s wrong. We should team up with the spec­trum and its superpowers. 

Okay, so step into the big car­ri­ers’ shoes for a sec­ond. It’s hard to blame them. They are doing what every­one else is doing, fight­ing for prof­it in the only bat­tle­field they know. And the world would col­lapse with­out them; they’re too big to fail. So democ­ra­tize the mar­ket already. If you’re too big to fail per­haps you’re too big to exist.

And so they repeat their argu­ments, like the list in the slide. And because it’s the dog­ma which pro­tects their assets. And yet humans, in their own shoes, they see a dif­fer­ent pic­ture. People see how things can work on human prin­ci­ples. How shar­ing func­tions in the cre­ative dig­i­tal world. So, they speak against big com­pa­ny pro­pri­etary nar­ra­tives. So peo­ple like Richard Stallman, Aaron Swartz, Lawrence Lessig. Lessig spoke about spec­trum as well and rec­og­nized the role of the com­mons and proph­e­sied the suc­cess of WiFi. So we need more Lessigs in spec­trum, we need the enthu­si­asm of Richard Stallman and Aaron Swartz, to take spec­trum from bottom-up. 

Because the main­stream does­n’t get spec­trum. It’s mum­bo jum­bo for them so, Ludacris can say some­thing this ludicrous. 

And yet, spec­trum is enabling each and every rung of our needs hier­ar­chy today. The ear­ly Internet start­ed from the top of the pyra­mid. The rev­o­lu­tion that wire­less access brought stormed it all the way to the foundation. 

So you see me get­ting all per­son­al here already. I stud­ied spec­trum in the per­spec­tive of shar­ing economies, detect­ing these five domains where enablers for prop­er shar­ing can grow. So these domains are nature, where the resource is; tech­nol­o­gy, were the net­works are; busi­ness, where the inno­va­tion is the enabler; reg­u­la­tion, where the neigh­bor for shar­ing is dynam­ics and respon­sive­ness; and soci­ety, where the cul­ture of shar­ing is the enabler. 

So I looked at the wax and wane of shar­ing, from blood to code. So why do we com­mit more to Git repos­i­to­ries than to blood banks? The log­ic behind a suc­cess­ful shar­ing mod­el needs to rely on two fac­tors. That is prop­er uti­liza­tion of the nature of the resource, and the sec­ond one is sen­si­ble, mean­ing­ful incen­tiviza­tion. Both of these mech­a­nisms mobi­lize the five domains, and they can­not work with­out bal­ance in them. 

So bal­ance. That’s what Lessig also said when he devised his own reg­u­la­tion the­o­ry, the one of the pathet­ic dot. So the dot is the behav­ior we want to reg­u­late. The forces that the act on it are law, mar­kets, norms, and archi­tec­ture. Kind of sounds like what I just men­tioned but there were five domains there and here are four forces, but we’ll get to that. 

That CBRS mod­el that you saw on the t‑shirt ear­li­er. That’s the best we’ve got, and that says a lot about just how spec­trum shar­ing is not work­ing. So I did a com­pre­hen­sive, rig­or­ous con­tent analy­sis of it’s rule­mak­ing pro­ceed­ing, which is pub­licly avail­able on the FCC web. The cod­ed lan­guage com­pa­nies use to talk to the reg­u­la­tor in order to push their agen­da into the rule­mak­ing, I tab­u­lat­ed their opin­ions issue raised. That helped clus­ter them and estab­lish the clear teams in the game, as well as to see the most impor­tant issues that were sup­posed to make the CBRS shar­ing mod­el dif­fer­ent from any­thing we have seen so far. AI helped with this. So we had a hybrid part­ner­ship where I was the con­text mas­ter and the AI was the con­tent master. 

So read­ing thou­sands of FCC MultiLog pages told me every­thing I need­ed to know about the prob­lems of human reg­u­la­tion of spec­trum. So, why don’t we let AI take care of it? Or should we do it in tan­dem, the way I did the con­tent analysis? 

We are ter­ri­fied with the machines putting num­bers on us based on some non­trans­par­ent algo­rithms, because who knows what’s in there? We are also ter­ri­fied by the machines putting num­bers on us based on a trans­par­ent algo­rithm, because adver­sar­i­al engi­neer­ing will find a way to game the sys­tem and harm us, the fair play­ers. Even when humans try to metri­cize us, we often say, ​“Hey, you don’t know the con­text. You don’t know the whole sto­ry. So keep your con­text non-aware machines from us.” 

So escape one boss and you end up being bossed by an algo­rithm. Is that the future of the shar­ing econ­o­my rev­o­lu­tion? That’s dystopia coat­ed with shar­ing. Can we do bet­ter? And why am I not talk­ing about spec­trum yet? 

Data is not going away. Nor are computers—much less math­e­mat­ics. Predictive mod­els are, increas­ing­ly, the tools we will be rely­ing on to run our insti­tu­tions, deploy our resources, and man­age our lives. But as I’ve tried to show through­out this book, these mod­els are con­struct­ed not just from data but from the choic­es we make about which data to pay atten­tion to—and which to leave out. Those choic­es are not just about logis­tics, prof­its, and effi­cien­cy. They are fun­da­men­tal­ly moral.
Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction

So data is the new reli­gion. Just put enough data in, and the result will come. Big data will solve every­thing. And while it may seem like I’m jump­ing on that band­wag­on, let me tell you some­thing. Data is not just data. It is a new dimen­sion of spec­trum. It’s not a descrip­tion of spec­trum, it is spec­trum. It’s the total oppo­site of the allo­ca­tion chart. 

And I would­n’t ask for machines if I did­n’t need them. But look at them. All fair and nice if we train them well. And I promise I’ll be there or some­one like me to be a part of this dynam­ic duo, because that is every­thing the cur­rent sys­tem is not. It is a sta­t­ic, sin­gle tone. Even though it’s made by humans, it lacks con­text. And the time need­ed to make a pro­gres­sive change is mea­sured in lifetimes. 

So how can we turn this dystopia to utopia? We don’t have to clone our­selves into dig­i­tal ver­sions. We don’t want a neur­al net­work emu­lat­ing Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover is the embod­i­ment of lega­cy in the FCC or a [?] deci­sion tree. This is why the machines won’t be trained using rule­mak­ing pro­ceed­ings and FCC his­to­ry. The bur­den of lega­cy is a curse we do not wish to pass on. In the spir­it of every­thing the shar­ing economies taught me on my voy­age toward suc­cess­ful spec­trum shar­ing, I can tell you that it’s the basic prin­ci­ples the machines need. They can’t under­stand con­text? Well I can. But they can real­ly adapt. 

Fast and small changes of rules in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions of the radio envi­ron­ment, it’s a dream come true for spec­trum. The prin­ci­ple of max­i­miz­ing spec­trum uti­liza­tion as the cra­dle lead­ing a flex­i­ble rule­set which fits space-time-frequencies and data like a glove. Yes, please. 

So the Tyrell Corporation was a spooky dystopi­an enti­ty in Blade Runner. I mean how twist­ed do you have to be to promise build­ing some­thing more human than a human? I’m not promis­ing that, I’m say­ing it’s already there. If we bun­dle the com­put­er net­work to han­dle spec­trum in Manhattan right now and replace the FCC, it would be more fair, more sus­tain­able, more con­scious, and more pro­gres­sive than the humans of the FCC. And yet these traits are cel­e­brat­ed as human virtues. So I did this. I worked in Manhattan as a use case, and promised in the tease is that first we take Manhattan, so now let’s take Berlin. 

I fed a thou­sand pages of vision­ary takes on the future by rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies into my com­put­er and asked it to make me a slide. This was the result. 

You know how I told you that data is a new dimen­sion of spec­trum? Well, peo­ple kept on adding dimen­sions to the def­i­n­i­tion of spec­trum. First it was just fre­quen­cies. Then there was time. Then space. Then pow­er. But data was slip­ping between our fin­gers because it was nev­er that impor­tant. Why would you care about the real-time usage infor­ma­tion from an adja­cent user if they are far enough not to cause inter­rup­tions to your own use and the FCC’s keep­ing them at a con­ve­nient dis­tance? But if the FCC lets the two of us be a bit clos­er and use the spec­trum resource more effi­cient­ly, I will start look­ing at their data to dance with them. Use spec­trum when they don’t, and they will reciprocate. 

So, data is a dimen­sion vital for shar­ing. A strong force that appears once spec­trum users are close. So sum­mon the data, then, and look out of your n‑dimensional space into n+1‑dimensional space. 

After I got all the results I want­ed from the analy­sis, I had any image of a futur­is­tic star­ing, where all enablers of shar­ing come togeth­er and make spec­trum shar­ing the real­i­ty. So Lessig was right all along with the pathet­ic dot. It’s just that split­ting the force of archi­tec­ture into two, nature and tech­nol­o­gy, opened the door of per­cep­tion for spec­trum. It’s the nature of spec­trum that has been miss­ing from the reg­u­la­to­ry equa­tion all along. It kept us from build­ing the cul­ture of shar­ing because we did­n’t under­stand it prop­er­ly. Well that’s why I’m evan­ge­liz­ing it. 

Spectrum is a unique resource. Get out in the streets and chant that, be aware of the ether in the blood­stream of the mod­ern world, and the rigid con­trol the state keeps over it. Only then will the board­rooms make a point about it and take new busi­ness mod­els on board. They will build machines to talk to the reg­u­la­to­ry machines. A new reg­u­la­to­ry lan­guage, cod­ed in a dif­fer­ent man­ner will emerge. The data will plot his­to­ry and the future of net­works, and show where under­uti­liza­tion can be tar­get­ed. Licenses will be small in space-time-frequency, like rent­ing bikes. No more fifteen-year licens­es, take a fifteen-minute one. Be dynam­ic. Be like spectrum. 

So speak­ing of rent­ing and bor­row­ing bikes, just like Arnie in The Terminator, the machines will put under­uti­lized resources to use. 

Citizens of [Telecosmos?], get your spec­trum ana­lyz­er, start talk­ing about spec­trum; at least as much as you talk about Article 13 or net neu­tral­i­ty. So I just want­ed to open this box and throw ideas out there, as I think we’re ready for a new soci­ety. And we need to start more active­ly chal­leng­ing the lega­cy in rule­mak­ing and gov­er­nance. And we need sys­tem­at­ic ways to fight them. Thank you.

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Moderator: Thank you. So, ques­tions. Yes. Well. 

Audience 1: Well, I have tried to lob­by for TV white­space usage a lit­tle bit. I’m prob­a­bly a ter­ri­ble lob­by­ist myself. But I think it’s not all that shiny, like you say it. For exam­ple you talk about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence like some­thing that needs to be cen­tral­ly local­ized some­where. Which is the total fuck-up the FCC made with TV white­space in the United States. Because that type of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is rel­a­tive­ly short-distance. So actu­al­ly the devices in the field can actu­al­ly detect when a chan­nel is used, and then they can use it because it’s unused. And they have to be polite to each other. 

So it’s not like you need a cen­tral­ized enti­ty that man­ages all those things, it’s the swarm intel­li­gence that actu­al­ly can build an effec­tive arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence if you put in the right rules, rather than have it cen­tral­ized some­where. Or did I mis­un­der­stand your presentation?

Elma Avdic: So, I don’t know what you mean when you said you lob­bied? for the white­space. We can maybe talk about it after­wards. But this is not a cen­tral­ized net­work. It’s a dis­trib­uted reg­u­la­tor and dis­trib­uted net­works of oper­a­tors. So it’s decen­tral­ized, what I had in mind. 

Audience 1: I’m just a lit­tle con­fused because towards the end you said no more licens­es for fif­teen years, but the licens­es grant­ed for fif­teen min­utes. So there is an enti­ty that grants the device, or the user or the business…whatever you named it when you’re talked about it, that licensed phys­i­cal­ly. Radio physics and radio devices are not that frequency-agile that they can oper­ate in a total­ly dif­fer­ent band, for exam­ple. Also, the band needs to fit the appli­ca­tion that they’re built for. 

Avdic: So, the licensees that I have here in the pic­ture are gran­u­lar and mod­u­lar in space, time, and fre­quen­cy. What I did­n’t explain here, as I did­n’t want to go into too many details—I did­n’t see this as pre­sent­ing results of my the­sis but more like a talk. So, I have actu­al­ly a machine replace­ment of a bro­ker. A machine that is doing auc­tions— Not all auc­tions, like auc­tions on the spot, based on detect­ing the radio envi­ron­ment, cal­cu­lat­ing the— Because this data, which becomes real­ly real­ly impor­tant to users that are close in time, space, and fre­quen­cy when it comes to spec­trum shar­ing. So the machines are doing this real-time. 

Audience 1: Well we should talk afterwards.

Avdic: Let’s talk, yeah.

Moderator: Further questions?

Audience 2: Hi. You talked a lot about the FCC. I was won­der­ing if you could tell us who’s in charge of radio fre­quen­cies in Europe. 

Avdic: So, reg­u­la­tion in Europe is a bit more com­plex than that. So there is Ofcom, which is the reg­u­la­to­ry body in the UK. And it’s kind of a mini FCC sys­tem. It’s built like that; all the boards and offices. But the major­i­ty of the rest of Europe actu­al­ly, every­body besides the UK…it’s an EU reg­u­la­tion, a set of coun­tries; there is twenty-eight or twenty-nine set coun­tries that are part of this. And each coun­try has an NRA, that’s National Regulatory Authority. So basi­cal­ly each coun­try has its own reg­u­la­to­ry body, but they all sub­mit to the European Commission laws of regulation. 

Audience 3: Hello. I’m just try­ing to see if I under­stand your talk, right. So my under­stand­ing with like big com­pa­nies, they pay loads of mon­ey for exclu­sive access for fif­teen years or what­ev­er. And what you’re sug­gest­ing is a bit more like…a bit how WiFi does channel-hopping. So lots of us might be able to share the same resources over kind of time slices instead. Where do you start with that? Because it sounds cool, but I don’t know how you go from here to there.

Avdic: So first there is a lot of work to be done. That’s where the mag­ic hap­pens. But your ques­tion about the licens­es. So, I did­n’t study shar­ing economies just like that. So what I learned is the impor­tance of rights to access, and replac­ing the prop­er­ty rights which are cur­rent­ly the spec­trum man­age­ment mod­el that these licens­es are sold in auc­tions by—you know, it’s a prop­er­ty right, sort of. And what the users get in the license are two rights. One right is the right to be pro­tect­ed from interference—guaranteed pro­tec­tion and you know, qual­i­ty of ser­vice. Guarantees and every­thing. And the oth­er right is the right to exclude oth­ers from using their spec­trum, even when they are not using it. So this is why it’s seen as a property. 

So, what shar­ing economies are teach­ing us is that you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to own a car any­more to get from Point A to Point B, so it’s about the rights to access and just reform­ing spec­trum man­age­ment mod­els in this way. Because spec­trum is a such a resource. It’s a fast-cleansing, recy­clable resource. Instantly renew­able. Perfectly renew­able. So, I think that that can work. 

Audience 4: In the dia­gram that you have on the screen right now, you made men­tion to the emer­gence of new busi­ness mod­els? I was won­der­ing if you had any spec­u­la­tions on what those might look like? 

Avdic: I do, but I can’t tell you that. [laughs; audi­ence laugh­ter]

Audience 4: Fair enough. 

Audience 5: In one slide, you put the shar­ing econ­o­my ver­sus the lega­cy mod­el. And there were two logos that I did­n’t like; that was Uber and Airbnb. And I don’t rec­om­mend this prac­tice, because accord­ing to Yochai Benkler (that is an impor­tant per­son that talks about the shar­ing econ­o­my) they call these kind of cor­po­ra­tions ​“uni­corns” because they can­not exist. They’re exist­ing to destroy some lega­cy economies that are work­ing, like hotel’s, hos­tel, or in the case of taxis, etc., no? So, these kind of peo­ple are prob­a­bly putting in their pre­sen­ta­tions, ​“Oh, Wikipedia, Git, Linux…” and their com­pa­ny. And with this kind pre­sen­ta­tion I think it’s dan­ger­ous for us. Because then we are all with that kind of people. 

Avdic: So um…I am not say­ing that shar­ing economies are great. I use them as an exam­ple as I was look­ing for just an exam­ple of suc­cess­ful shar­ing. So, what you just said about Uber and dif­fer­ent kinds of plat­forms, these logos here are not here nec­es­sar­i­ly to reflect their ide­ol­o­gy but just to show that shar­ing is hap­pen­ing. So there are dif­fer­ent kinds of shar­ing. I’m not say­ing I agree with Uber—I don’t, of course, or these oth­er types of shar­ing economies. But it’s here to show that a cul­ture of shar­ing is devel­oped on the plat­forms that are mul­ti­di­rec­tion­al busi­ness mod­els. So they work like that. The user gets on the plat­form and cre­ates con­tent them­selves, unlike the pipes which are uni­di­rec­tion­al. So the spec­trum man­age­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el is an exam­ple of a pipe mod­el. So the reg­u­la­tor cre­ates the sup­ply of spec­trum and push­es it out to the cus­tomers, who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have a say in the prod­uct; can­not change it or mod­i­fied it. So yeah, I I take your com­ment on board. I won’t put this any­more here on a slide like this, because I I real­ize it may con­fuse peo­ple. But it’s not the ide­ol­o­gy, it’s more of some­thing that’s fea­si­ble right now. It’s the only shar­ing that works. 

Moderator: Okay, one more question. 

Audience 6: So maybe this is what the AI that you cre­at­ed does, but when I think of machine to machine I think of them hav­ing self-sovereignty, like the machine acts on its own. So in your case the spec­trum would be able to sell itself to a cor­po­ra­tion, where as it sounds like it’s still more of an asset in your mod­el where some­one’s buy­ing it from some­one else, whether that’s con­trolled by a cen­tral­ized ser­vice or not. So, have you con­sid­ered the fact that a spec­trum could act in its own ser­vice instead of being trad­ed between people?

Avdic: So in most of the soci­eties unfor­tu­nate­ly gov­ern­ments own the spec­trum. So any­thing that has to do with spec­trum shar­ing or issu­ing spec­trum under exclu­sive use has to hap­pen under some kind of rules. The mod­el that I showed is dis­trib­uted, is decen­tral­ized, and it has a auto­mat­ic sort of auc­tion man­ag­er. So gov­ern­ments runs the auc­tions, and they gen­er­ate hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars of prof­it. But auc­tions hap­pen once in ten, fif­teen years because there is this norm of enti­tle­ment in the spec­trum world. And that means real­ly long-term licens­es that are renew­able for­ev­er. And in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions just like in tech­nol­o­gy, that’s a few gen­er­a­tions of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. So I’m sug­gest­ing to replace these one-time huge rev­enue boosts for the gov­ern­ments by busi­ness mod­els that are built on shar­ing from scratch, and when think­ing on a long-term scale they actu­al­ly bring more rev­enue. So it’s automated. 

Moderator: Thank you Elma.