Abstract

The exponential growth of wireless services with diversity of devices and applications depending on connectivity has inspired the research community to come up with novel concepts to improve the efficiency of spectrum use. Recently, several spectrum sharing system concepts have been introduced and widely researched to cope with spectrum scarcity, though, to date, only a few have reached the policy and standardization phase. Moreover, only a subset of these concepts has gained industry interest with pre-commercial deployments and lucrative business model characteristics. This paper analyzes sharing economy business antecedent factors of the three topical regulatory approaches for spectrum sharing: global TV White Space (TVWS), Licensed Shared Access (LSA) from Europe, and Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) from the US. A comparison is made between these concepts to identify similarities and differences for developing a successful scalable sharing concept. Key factors for a sharing economy enabled scalable business model are introduced including platform, reduced need for the ownership, leverage of underutilized assets, adaptability to different policy regimes, trust, and value orientation. The results indicate that all analyzed sharing concepts meet basic requirements to scale, TVWS radically lowering entry barrier, LSA leveraging key existing assets and capabilities of mobile network operators, and CBRS extending the business model dynamics. The Sharing Economy provides a dynamic framework for analyzing and developing the spectrum sharing business models.