conomics At this point it is worth considering the impact that standards and spectral policy have on RF network economics. Standards policy has an impact on technology costs. Spectral policy has an impact on engineering costs. Generally, technologies will have been specified and standardised to take effective advantage of available and anticipated device capabilities. Engineering is the necessary process whereby those capabilities are turned into cash and/or competitive advantage. Technology design and development has to be amortised over a sufficient market volume and value to achieve an acceptable return on investment. Engineering effort has to be amortised over a sufficient market volume and value to achieve an acceptable return on investment. A poorly executed standards policy results in the duplication and dissipation of technology design and development effort. The lack of a mandated technology policy increases technology risk. This requires vendors to adopt more aggressive ROI policies. As a result, technology costs increase. A poorly executed spectral allocation policy results in the duplication and dissipation of engineering effort. The lack of a globally harmonised spectral allocation policy increases engineering risk. This requires vendors to adopt more aggressive ROI policies. As a result, engineering costs increase. 21.19 Standards Policy, Spectral Policy and RF Economies of Scale Cellular and mobile broadband handsets benefit from substantial economies of scale. Cellular base stations and related network components have much lower scale economies. There are (several orders of magnitude) fewer base stations in the world than handsets. This makes it harder to recover nonrecurring technology and engineering costs. The result is that base stations and network components are necessarily expensive. As network density has increased over time, the number of base stations has increased, providing the basis for more effective cost amortisation. Successive generations of radio- access technologies options comp