Youngsun Kwona

This paper finds that policy mixes for mobile broadband diffusion need to be differentiated depending on where a country is situated in three stages of mobile broadband diffusion because as a mobile broadband market grows, demand constraints hindering subscription of mobile broadband will also change. A total of 115 countries are clustered into three groups (Take-off, Fast-Diffusion, and Saturated), categorized by their diffusion rates and diffusion speeds over four years from 2013 to 2016.

Spectrum fragmentation, a concept that describes the degree of split for a given portion of spectrum, is a newly emerging issue which can affect productivity and technical efficiency in spectrum use as the telecommunication service paradigm evolves from voice oriented to data oriented services.

This paper proposes ten indices, compares them and calculates their values for Korea and Japan. The values of all indices range between zero and one, so one can use them for international comparison of spectrum fragmentation. Out of ten indices, three are Theil indices, comparing the discrepancies between spectrum and subscriber distributions. In addition, this paper discusses policy alternatives to lessen the spectrum fragmentation problem.