Treatment of mobile phone licenses in the national accounts

This paper addresses the question of how to record mobile phone license payments in the national accounts. It concludes that there are usually two assets involved with mobile phone licenses: the spectrum, which is owned by the government, and the license, which is an intangible nonproduced asset sold by the government to the licenseholder. The values of these two assets are linked complementarily. A set of indicators is proposed that jointly may help judging whether the license or lease arrangement constitutes an asset in its own right or not. Alternative treatments of recording the license payments such as sale of the spectrum itself, other taxes on production, production of a service, or rent, are considered and rejected. Methods of amortization of the license over its life are considered.