Σταμούλης, Γεώργιος
Nowadays, in a time of continuous economic, social and technological evolution, the need for a more efficient and profitable usage of the spectrum lead its management carriers to seek new methods for entrusting it to companies interested in the development of telecommunication services. The failure of methods like the straight or by lot entrusting, as well as the licensing through “beauty contests” or competitive offers, caused, in early ’90, the adoption of a certain type of auction as the exclusive means of assigning spectrum bands.Auction is a competitive exchange process in which each trader from one market side submits a bid, the most favorable one of which is selected by the complementary market side for the transaction. The USA Federal Communications Committee (FCC), was the pioneer in adopting this method, conducting 30 auctions, from 1994 to 2000, and successfully assigning approximately 11.000 licenses. The applied auction model was a properly modified “English Type” auction, so called “Simultaneous Ascending Multiple Round Auction for Individual licenses”. This type of auction allows for submitting bids for individual objects and nominates the highest bidders on every round for each single license, while setting the minimum for the least acceptable bids which increase per round, according to a fixed or parameterized increment contributor. The auction stops only when it comes to a round with no further activity. All the details of the auction are specified with rules, notified in advance to all the participants, while, at the same time, there is total diffusion of all information, thus deriving in more efficient outcomes, when compared to the outcomes of the “closed type” auctions. Special software, provided by the Committee, is being used for the conducting of the auction, while tutorial seminars and a mock auction are taking place in advance for the familiarization of the bidders on auction procedures, bid submission and auction tracking tools.This model was improved on the course of time, confronting in a better way any devious efforts and conspiratorial behaviors by the bidders. Though, it was impossible to discard an intrinsic disadvantage : the exposure problem”, means the problem of exposing the participants in danger, when trying to acquire a package of supplementary licenses, submitting bids for individual licenses which were surpassing the value they would pay for each one separately, in the prospect of a bunch. But if they would fail to attain it, they were in loss and this was an inhibitory factor, either detaining them in low bids or forcing them not to participate in the auction. This problem of " licenses’ aggregation failure" had been confronted with the grant of the right to withdraw bids, a right which was abused for the exercise of other strategies and caused many troubles.A new proposal, for auctions that will allow bidding for combinations of the auctioned objects, was imposed during the Wye Woods River Conference, May 5-7, 2000, due to the Committee’s auction #31 for spectrum at 700 MHz band. The discussion kept up after the issue of the Public Notice by the Committee in May 2000, which was proposing a, satisfactory for the case, model with some changes when compared to the classic auction. The Public Notice was actually asking for the opinions of the researchers and the companies. The major matters were : (a) the designation of the quantity and the type of the license packages that would be offered, (b) the rules that would determine the highest bidders of every round, that would be the winning ones and (c) the stopping rules of the auction. Given that the solving of the problem of finding highest bidder, in case accepting all possible packages are deriving even from a small number of individual licenses, is extremely difficult (NP-complete), new ways are needed in order to offer the combinations that would lead to solvable problems. Nine (9) different packages (combinations) of 12 individual licenses (6x10 MHz and 6x20 MHz, located in the six regions [EAGs] of USA) were suggested for the case of FCC’s auction #31. Bids will be accepted when they concern : (i) one license of all 6x30 MHz of the spectrum under auction for the whole country (Global), (ii) two Nationwide licenses of 6x10 MHz or 6x20 MHz, for the whole country and (iii) six Regional licenses for each one of the regional 6x30 MHz. The highest bidders for each round will turn up by the use of a combined rule of comparison of four cases. Bid withdrawals are restricted and the auction will be stopped after the conclusion of two rounds of no activity.Many confronting opinions have been stated against these proposals, having as a common denominator the need for the adoption of a more flexible auction, that would be easily modified and expanded for future use, considering that the forthcoming auction #31 is supposed to be a simple one. There are examples of failure of auctions of this type proving that without its strengthening with the appropriate restrictive rules it might motivate the bidders to seek for devious strategies and lead the auction to inefficient results. The sentences have to do with the abolition of existing rules or the adoption of new ones, concerning the selection of the highest bidders of each round, the definition of the end of the auction and the nomination of the highest bidders. A common proposal by many researchers is to forbid the right of withdrawing bids, though each one suggests his own method for the acceptance of bids and the way to define the highest bidders on every round. Some of them suggest that the bids should be accepted for all possible combinations, bypassing any calculation problems (Kelly-Steinberg), some others say that the good sense is important as far as the number of acceptable combinations is concerned, highlighting that it is very difficult to define the highest bidders (Rothkopf-Pekec), while some others are opposed to the adoption of the combining bids (Riley).What is important for the acceptance of the auctions with combinational bids, it is to confront the complexity of the computational problems in an intelligent way. The experimental comparison of the methods, even the use of some of them in carrying out small auctions, would be the best starting point for the case of choosing a combinational bid. The right answer, to the question “Which is the best?”, it is “The implementation will show it”.
Federal Communications Committee (FCC)
Combinatorial Auction
Ομοσπονδιακή Επιτροπή Επικοινωνιών των ΗΠΑ (FCC)
Εκχώρηση Ζωνών Φάσματος