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FCC's Spectrum Auction Approaches $20B in Bids
An anonymous reader writes "After 32 rounds, the FCC has raised more than $18.8 billion in its 700-MHz auction, well surpassing its own early estimates of attracting between $10-15 billion in offers.
That's undoubtedly good news for the agency. Since the auction began on Jan. 24, both the FCC and wireless experts have expressed ongoing concerns about meeting those estimates. Once the auction was underway, those worries were compounded by a shaky economic forecast and the possibility of a looming recession."
According to their budget sheet (133 page PDF warning), their proposed budgetary resources for 2008 is $433 million.
As I haven't been following the news very closely, does anyone know where this $20 billion will go?
I, like many Americans, am ghastly concerned with how my government spends money. I hope that the FCC doesn't pull an M.C. Hammer and put spinners on their pocket protectors or pass out diamond studded platinum iPods to all of its friends. Will this money be put under control of congressional spending? Will this money be put in a fund to supply the FCC with emergency regulation cash?
You're going to suddenly have over 40 times the amount of resources you normally have. Even if they went nuts and ordered yet another all marble Parthenon-dupe building in DC they couldn't burn all this cash. Please don't be stupid.
My work here is dung.
what business exactly does a government have selling a unique public resource to some private interest (thus automatically establishing a govenment backed monopoly), rather then presiding over equitable sharing and access to the said resource by all citizens?