Decarbonisation - radio spectrum, hidden stumbling block?

Let’s play EU transport policy bingo! Which words would you write on to your EU transport policy bingo card? My choice terms would for sure feature: ‘decarbonisation’, followed by ‘smart’, ‘intelligent transport’, ‘digital’ is also always a good bet. Easy play! We are all are more or less following a ‘technology-will-help-decarbonise’ mantra. Take a step back, most ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ solutions in transport feature wireless communication. Now ‘wireless’ is just the term policy makers or lobbyists prefer to ‘radio-spectrum-based-communication’ (which is what we really mean). Policy solutions are all meant to be cost-efficient. This counts for radio spectrum, as much as for anything else. Radio spectrum is the resource many EU policies actually run on. Still little attention is paid to it. Radio spectrum comes in two flavours: licence-free and licenced. Licenced spectrum costs money, paid for exclusive use. Licenced spectrum is a bit like private land, it’s yours. Licence-free costs no money, you need to play rules, a bit like a park or a road, you may use it and are obliged to consider the others around you. It is in these rules where the secret leaver to transport or digital policy lies, good rules get maximum benefit out of the spectrum. Though many actors push for decarbonising transport, they rarely address radio spectrum use. Most lobbyists and policy makers tread carefully here or avoid the matter, it is deemed too technical and the institutional action is centred more on the radio regulation body CEPT or standardisation bodies, not so much the EU institutions. On top of that the people who work there are a tribe by themselves, they speak in numbers and would like measure everything and somehow their language doesn’t click with EU transport policy lingo. Make no mistake, as nerdy as the radio spectrum talk sounds, it matters a lot! Licence-free spectrum plays a key role decarbonising road freight transport, since it is the base of electronic road charging. Charging systems run on licence-free band and satellite based electronic road charging needs licence-free band for its enforcement. If we want to make our EU transport policy to be more than a bingo game, we need to look beyond the EU transport policy comfort zone and into sticky issues, such as the transmission power of 5G in the 6.4 GHz frequency band or the conditions under which WLAN is allowed to transmit on the 5.8 GHz frequency band or the impact of automated driving on road charging or drive and rest times. Not all hope is lost: Since radio spectrum policy deals with a highly technical matter, it also offers a range technical solutions to allow the most efficient use of precious licence-free band and as many as possible actors to use licence-free band without disturbing each other.