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UK to Privatize Radio Spectrum?
judgecorp writes "The UK regulator, Ofcom, has decided that managing spectrum is a drag, and there are other people around that might do a better job. It is going to open up 73 percent of the radio spectrum to market forces, and make it technology-neutral and tradeable. So if one technology gets superseded, another one can get rolled out instead (subject to broadcast power limits) without Ofcom having to define what spectrum it should use. Radio was first regulated here 100 years ago this year, and a new regime is needed to fit new radio technology. Ofcom is quite proud to be ahead of the US on this one, because we have a recent Communications Act, and the FCC is 'hamstrung' by old laws - at least that's what the head of research at Ofcom said."
But BT? I would say that was a fairly succesful privatisation non?
Not from the point of view of the telecom engineers- who quickly lost most of their jobs to India.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The UK government has the ability to seize back the privatised items if they are convinced that the privatisation was not successful longterm. This is what stops private companies from sitting on public resources. For example, British Rail was privatised at the start of the 1990s, with the actual physical rail network being sold to a private company called Railtrack, which the government had a shareholder interest in. In 2001 it was determined that Railtrack was not carrying out its job correctly and seized back the UK rail network after having a UK court agree, placing it in control of a public company called Network Rail. For those of you that think this is 'bad', this _is_ the agreement these companies entered into when they purchased the privatised utilities.
It is worth noting that Benito Musoulinni (sp?) who invented Fascism described it as the merger of state and corporate power. In this sense, Fascism refers to corporate control of government rather than the other way around. Thus "fascist govt control" and "private industry monopolization" are hardly opposites.
Unknown host pong.
BT did have a competitor. Mercury Telecommunications. In the 80s the Government paid Mercury an undisclosed sum of money to put in its 'figure of eight' backbone to cover the entire country, and while it was never as big as BT, it made its mark. Mercury was heavily publically subsidised to setup operations, but it was a 100% privately owned company, and it had preferential access to BTs local loop, a lot more than BTs competitors do now.
Connex [South Eastern] lost the rail franchise for the South East of England, they were a shoddy company and their service was pretty poor. I remember a whole winter of cancelled trains to school. It was so bad, our school just stopped their "4 lates" punishments, as it was just impratical over this period.
Once their franchise was lost, the Government took over running of the South East railways setting up South Eastern Trains. The service is pretty good, there's a new fleet of trains on the way, the stations are being updated, new ticket services are being introduced and more checks are carried out on tickets. However, as i happened to read in the Private Eye (Today as it happens), the Government seem set to hand over control to another private franchise. Oh well, i'll have stopped going to college by then i hope!
Who the hell moderated this "+5 Insightful?" It's clearly "+5 Funny."
It works for land.
To an extent. As such, I see no wrong with private ownership, private entities can probably manage their land more efficiently than the government. However, there is certainly the moral case to be made that as land, or natural resources (land, minerals, spectrum, etc.) more generally, was here long before man, no single man has the right to said resource. Thus the government can fairly tax these resources heavily, up to the rental value of the resource (and in the process reduce other, more distorting, taxes).
And before you go off labeling this as yet another communist conspiracy, consider that this concept has been endorsed by many high brow economists, even right wingers like Milton Friedman.
Google found the following quotes:
"Pure ground rent is in the nature of a 'surplus,' which can be taxed
heavily without distorting production incentives or reducing
efficiency."
-- Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in Economics
"In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved
value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."
--Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics
"It is important that the rent of land be retained as a source of
government revenue."
-- Franco Modigliani, Nobel laureate in Economics
"For efficiency, for adequate revenue, and for justice, every user of
land should be required to make an annual payment to the local
government equal to the current rental value of the land he or she
prevents others from using."
-- Robert Solow, Nobel laureate in Economics
"While the governments of developed nations with market economies
collect some of the rent of land, they do not collect nearly as much
as they could, and they therefore make unnecessarily great use of
taxes that impede their economies -- taxes on such things as incomes,
sales, and the value of capital goods."
-- William Vickrey, Nobel laureate in Economics and past
president of the American Economics Association