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."

Comments

One article you don't want to miss?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yeah, if the rest of the article contains statistics half as fascinating as that one, I'd probably be riddled with regret if I didn't read it. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to find out precisely which frequencies are actually determined by those actions. Thanks for the heads up!

Why would anyone assume

[PhilipPeake]

that auctioning off spectrum is a good thing?

Its braindead. The RF spectrum is a limited resource, and as such is subject to speculation and fraud -- have we forgotten electricity auctions so quickly?

Re:Why would anyone assume

[jfengel]

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.

Re:Why would anyone assume

[Elwood P Dowd]

The RF spectrum is a limited resource, and as such is subject to speculation and fraud -- have we forgotten electricity auctions so quickly?

Whatever. Everything is subject to speculation and fraud. California's electricity deregulation was set up completely wrong. Just like the USSR doesn't prove that socialism is broken, Enron doesn't prove that energy deregulation is broken.

When you have the Cato Institute opposing your "deregulation", you know something is amiss.

For starters

[Politicus]

For decades after Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio in 1897

Um, Tesla invented radio technology, Marconi was the first to put it to use. He actually licensed Tesla's patents.

Waste I do not think so

[MadHungarian1917]

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

I can't help but feel a little responsible...

[lateralus_1024]

...I've been 'regulating' 3 SSIDS from inside my apartment for months now.
Oddly, my neighbor just got a large envelope from the RIAA...

Umm...try again

[Anonymous Coward]

Four more years for Bush (and Michael Powell)

Don't be so fscking blind. Comments like that are so high school. Look at all the give-aways BOTH parties toss out to their paid clients. If you believe for one second Bush/Republicans are any worse than the Democrats, you're a bigger fool than they ever hoped for. Bush's FCC commissioner, Junior Powell, obviously is a lacky for large corporate interests. But so were his predecessors under Clinton. Hell, go read the USDA rural broadband money rules (from the bill Democrat Senator Harkin sponsored). Would you be surprised it's just a slush fund to give money back to the incumbant phone companies? Yup. If you ain't one, or ain't established old money, you ain't getting money. Funny how it always works that way.

While we're on the propaganda debunking, here's one for you:

1. Go read MoveOn.org's propeganda, especially all the blathering hatred at Bush for sending US jobs offshore to places like India, China, etc.

2. Then read who MoveOn.org is funded by (George Soros).

3. Then read Soros Investments list of holdings. Wow... it's like a list of all the major guilty offshoring companies! How can this be? Maybe Soros doesn't know?

4. Then read the white papers and recommendations by Soros Holdings on offshoring. HINT: If you are a company he invests in and are NOT making him money, he will move to find better management or dump his investment in you.

This country would rock if it wasn't for all you stupid sheep.

if this goes through

[Anonymous Coward]

i am writing this on
my ipaq from my 1st
floor coat closet in
my house in FORT
MEADE, FLORIDA! i
am being ravished by
hurricane charlie.
the power went out
almost 6 hours ago,
but somehow i can
still reach a wi-fi
access point (must
be on a UPS). if
anyone can read
this -- please send
beer and porn and
wish me luck!!

cheers,
roger

Sychronocity!

[AccordionGuy]

Clay Shirky has just posted his essay, The Possibility of Spectrum as a Public Good . It starts with mentioning that the FCC is considering opening up additional spectrum for unlicensed uses -- "the same kind of regulatory change that gave rise to Wifi" -- and points out that "The 2.4Ghz spectrum is not treated as property, with the FCC in the ungainly role of a 'No Trespassing" enforcer; instead, it is being treated as a public good, with regulations in place to require devices to be good neighbors, but with no caps or other restrictions on deployment or use."

Good reading all 'round.

So...

[fiannaFailMan]

The Economist recommends privatisation as a solution. Now what a surprise. Don't get me wrong, it's a great paper and I actually subscribe to it, but there are times when it gets into the realms of market fundamentalism, so you should always read between the lines. Some of their articles also read as if they belong in the Leader section, so thick do they lay it on with the opinions.

The visible spectrum

[thephotoman]

I want to purchase all electromagnetic frequencies between 380 nm and 780 nm. Therefore, everything that people could see would belong to me. Or does somebody else already own that part already?

Of course, I'll licence them under the GNU's GPL.

A must read for everyone interested in spectrum rg

[PaulBu]

Thoughts of Dave Reed (the guy who gave us TCP/IP)
on the subject

Paul B.

Re:If it's been so "overcautious"...

[offpath3]

then why do I hear two different radio stations on the same frequency so often?

Because current transmitters and radios are using the spectrum inefficiently. With smarter transmitters and smarter receivers we could much more effectively filter out different signals and use much less of the spectrum per broadcast. Or so the article argues.

Re:Alternitives?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Imagine if you could broadcast anything over the radio without fear of the FCC, as long as your station was popular enough to pay your broadcast bills instead of your fines to the government?

Imagine that, perhaps, not all radio emissions generate money. Imagine that researchers and hams get trampled on by some company because the company has millions to throw at a piece of the spectrum and the researcher/ham doesn't?

Imagine you have a small dinky radio station that broadcasts programs for "friends of the earth" and other ecologists, and Texaco buys out all the spectrum available, and that *oops, too bad* the dinky station can't broadcast anything?

Imagine that. It'd be great wouldn't it? I can't figure out whether you're an idiot, a troll or a convinced republican...

The truth is you're talking nonsense

[rxmd]

But back to hating, the Africans hate the Europeans. Visit Mozembique - if you are Portugeuse, there are places you just do not visit. Visit French Guiana, where France threw its undesirable prisoners for years. If you're French, you do not leave the resort if you're wise (or at least take an escort with plenty of protection). Do you think the Czech like Germans? Go visit the village of Lidice which the Germans wiped off the map in order to show who was boss. Ask any Pole or Balkan nation native how much they love Russians. You want to know hate? Just ask.

And many of these people have legitimate hate. Most of the world has a right to hate Brits, Germans, French and Spainiards for the continued nightmare that lingers from their colonialism. They envy the US, but HATE Europeans.

You do not seem to know what you are talking about. Have you been to any of the places you're mentioning? Could you point to Moçambique on a map without looking it up first?

I'm German. I have been to a number of places in Eastern Europe that have seen the worse side of German occupation, and I have never been met with hate. I've been learning Russian, I've been learning some Hebrew so that I could read Yiddish (basically a dialect of German) and speak to some of the few remaining Jews over there, I did some reading, and then I just went there. People were a bit reserved at first, but after two minutes of talk, we got along very well. When I said I wanted to visit my German occupant grand-uncle's grave on the German military cemetery in Smolensk, we drove there together without them even asking.

My girlfriend is Ukrainian. They are probably the country that got the worst of us in World War 2. Do you think she hates me? We are talking Russian at home because my Ukrainian is too bad, and she gives me 9th-of-May victory postcards as a joke. That's Ukrainian hate for you.

I've spent the better part of the last year in Uzbekistan in the French Research Institute in Tashkent where the librarian is Crimean Tatar, born in the 1930s. We got along very well. She told me about how she got to hate Germans between '42 and '44 during German occupation of the Crimea, how Germans threatened to shoot her father before her eyes. After the war, she said, she refused even to look at Germans because of this. After the collapse of 1991, however, she said the five or ten Germans who came to Tashkent for research were young, interested in the local peopulation and their history, they spoke Russian and/or Uzbek and behaved very civilized and friendly in general. She said that these Germans were difficult to hate, and that she was compelled to relinquish her hate for Germans in general and turn it into bitter memories of the German occupants sixty years ago - an entirely different story.

So "all Africans hate the Europeans"? My brother came back a few weeks ago from eight months of work in Ghana where he lived in Accra with a host family, no running water, but the people were fine. Hated because he is European? Definitely not. I know Brits who worked in Nigeria (colony until 1960), Russians who worked in Central Asia (colony until 1917, Soviet Union afterwards) and a Portuguese who worked in Angola (colony until 1975). The memories they brought back were not ones of hate. If you visit Moçambique, there are places that you don't visit when you look like money, not when you're Portuguese. "Legitimate hate"? If that old Jew in Velizh near Smolensk had hated me, I wouldn't have blamed him, but he didn't.

Make an effort to learn people's languages, to show interest in them, their culture and their history. Respect them, look and behave in a respectable way. Stay in places for more than a couple of days, behave like a civilized person and smile when people show you their family pictures. An American who does just that is not going to be hated anywhere in the world, even in the Philippines (US colony until 1946) or Vietnam for that matter. They may not like your country (as an abstract entity) for what it does, what it did or fails to do, but they will not hate you.