Slashdot Mirror
Spectrum as Property
the economist troll writes "An article in this week's Economist argues that overcautious control of electromagnetic spectrum, on the part of regulatory agencies, has resulted in the sheer waste of up to 95% of available spectrum. The article suggests remedies for this sorry state of affairs, including (but not limited to) various methods of privatization. Peppered with history and interesting facts--for instance, did you know only 2% of America's spectrum allocation is determined by auction?--this is one article you won't want to miss."
As a ham many areas of spectrum are underutilized because the technology does not exist to successfully exploit them. For example the repeater which takes a radio signal coming on one frequency and retransmits it on another is the basis for the entire cell phone industry.
At the time the commercial interests wanted that spectrum for expansion of paging.
What financially driven interests forget frequently is that basic non-directed research is a good thing which yields benefits down the road and often entire new industries.
Like the RFID crowd wants to put high power RFID tags on the 70cm band. This interferes with both Hams, Wind profiling radar and satellite communications. The difference is someone can make a quick buck.
Also these RFID tags can be read at a distance of several miles with the right equipment. So much for RFID being a 'short range' technology
If i am lucky First Post
Spectrum auctions would be a way for the government to make money, without having to raise taxes directly. Something like this:
* There is a valuable (limited) resource that we own in common
* The government parcels out the resource to whoever is willing to pay the most for it
* That money goes "to the people". In reality it goes to the government, who uses it to buy an army, interstate highways, mink farm subsidies, whatever your representatives have put into the budget.
* The buyer makes the money back by selling you something you want (TV, cell phones, garage door openers, etc.)
The fraud problem is also a government problem. It's most easily fixed by demanding the money up front, though that tends to lock small bidders out of it. There are other ways that involve instituting various regulations. Just because the government has been stupid doesn't mean it has to be. (Or maybe it _does_ have to be, in which case the problem becomes insoluble and we're all screwed, and we'll just take guesses because that's the best we can do.)
Now, the point of the article is that spectrum isn't really a limited resource at all. Obviously that's not entirely true, otherwise we'd use just one frequency and we'd all be happy. Certainly the lower frequencies (to a point) are more valuable than the multi-GHz ones, because it travels better. But they claim that technology allows spectrum to do far, far more than we're doing with it. In that case we may not have to auction it at all, not because it's subject to speculation and fraud, but because it's not worth very much.