ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a metaphor that has been very influential in spectrum policy: the tragedy of the commons. The economist Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize in 2009 for her re-examination of this debate, producing more subtle and convincing arguments based on the study of the management of natural local resources in developing countries. The fenland included fields that flooded in the winter, providing fertile arable land in the summer and wide areas of marsh where local people could catch fish and wildfowl. A recent example of the “inevitability” argument was made in the context of the debates about a variant of the LTE mobile standard (LTE-U) having access to the licence exempt bands. Congestion in the unlicensed bands is certainly not impossible, particularly as consumers demand faster download speeds. The success of the mobile industry was founded on licensed spectrum, and one might expect them to oppose to the unlicensed approach.
