Policy development and implementation

7. Since 1989, the Crown has progressively sold commercial spectrum rights under the Radiocommunications Act 1989 (the Act) as "management rights" (typically for telecommunications) or "spectrum licences" (typically for broadcasting). The Act provides that spectrum rights have a maximum period of 20 years. The allocation and reallocation of rights is a matter of government policy.
8. The first rights to expire are UHF-TV¹ spectrum licences on 11 March 2010 and management rights at 2.3GHz (MDS) on 25 November 2010. Other spectrum rights (AM and FM radio, cellular telephony and VHF-TV²) expire between 2011 and 2015.
9. The following diagram depicts the overall commercial expiry of rights process. This paper covers the two shaded boxes, part A and part B.

¹ Sky UHF, Prime, TVNZ (unused) and regional commercial

² TVOne, TV2, TV3 and C4