Different regulation paths towards cognitive radio technologies: Cases of Finland and Chile

Radio spectrum regulation progresses in parallel on global and local levels. The European Union harmonizes the spectrum in its member countries, defining the type of service and the technology to be used. In the Americas, standard and infrastructure competition struggles to use the spectrum for mobile services. This paper develops a framework to analyze country regulations, its status and future development paths. Chile and Finland present market and demographic similarities along with regulatory and cultural differences. The paper analyzes both countries, trying to summarize lessons for future spectrum regulation in a scenario of introduction of Cognitive Radio technologies. We observe that the development of these technologies will depend on the market structure of each country; in concrete, on the level of spectrum decentralization and on the level of industry openness.