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This article presents a comprehensive summary of the regulatory environment confronting low earth orbit, non-geostationary satellite orbit (LEO NGSO) communication satellites and critically evaluates analogies from terrestrial spectrum management as possibilities for LEO NGSO satellites. This analysis provides a framework for empirical analysis of the alternatives considered. 

Policies and regulations governing electromagnetic spectrum prioritize reducing conflict among active users of spectrum (transmitters), thereby enabling these active users to capture the values associated with property rights to spectrum. Coexistence of heterogeneous technologies and their enforcement have been well studied, but much less has been done to consider the coexistence of heterogeneous uses and the institutions that are necessary to address conflict arising among different users of spectrum.We argue that prevailing property-rights institutions that focus on reducing conflict among active users of spectrum generate a property mismatch that contributes to conflict with passive users of spectrum. Passive users are interested primarily in receiving signals transmitted by nature. The property-mismatch approach offers insight into how to redesign spectrum governance to balance the demands of both active and passive users. Particularly we argue that virtual parceling of the electromagnetic spectrum along a broader range of dimensions can better facilitate efficient spectrum sharing between active and passive users. 

We consider an approach based on property rights mismatch to analyze conflict over radio spectrum. A mismatch occurs when the bundle of property rights created to enable social coordination fails to achieve this objective, leading to missed opportunities for productive exchange. With radio spectrum, these conflicts often result from technological changes that increase prospects (and satisfy demand for) sharing spectrum. Our focus is on how property regimes contribute to conflict as a result of mismatch, as well as how they might be resolved, for two examples of spectrum: passive and active spectrum uses and mobile services on the unlicensed band. 

Abstract The exploitation of radio-electric spectrum bands for wireless transmission purposes has some features of the commons: it is subject to congestion and conflict without rules governing its use. The Coasean approach is to assign private property rights to overcome the tragedy of the spectrum commons. The process of assigning these rights is still centralized, with governments assigning property rights through agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the USA. We consider the possibility of self-governance of the spectrum. We use insights from the study of common pool resources governance to analyze the emergence of property rights to spectrum in a ‘government-less’ environment in which norms, rules, and enforcement mechanisms are solely the product of the repeated interactions among participants in the network. Our case study considers the spectrum-sharing arrangement in the 1,695–1,710 MHz band. Using agent-based modeling (ABM), we show that self-governance of the spectrum can work and under what conditions it is likely to improve the efficiency of the allocation of property rights.