From: Alexander van der Wolk <av2139@columbia.edu>
  To  : <CPC@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 10:42:26 -0500

Paper 1 - Thinking Full Spectrum

Thinking Full Spectrum


	“Those who own the land ought to govern it”
                                                             		- John  
Jay


Nothing could be more wrong with the FCCs assessment of the radio  
spectrum.  Turning a blinds eye on the First Amendment with respect  
to who get to use the airwaves, and – more importantly – who don’t,  
the current system of spectrum allocation is a money milking cow,  
justified by lose-end rhetoric and sold out congressmen.

The technology has surpassed any determination on which the current  
scheme is vested by roughly half a century.  And yet, heads in  
government circles still start nodding heavily when the word  
‘scarcity’ is dropped in spectrum-allocation related conversations.

So, does the FCC really have its head all the way down Rupert  
Murdoch’s pockets, or could it be perhaps that other motives are also  
driving underlying policy decisions?  And, whatever the answer, what  
are we going to do about it?

Media mogul Barry Diller couldn’t be more right when he said that the  
only way you can lose money in broadcasting is if somebody steals it  
from you.[1]  Broadcasting licenses mean big business.  Already in  
the late 50s, Ronald Coase opined that selling frequencies to those  
who valued it most would be efficient.[2]  Nowadays, auctioning off  
the airwaves guarantee a steady revenue impact, to the favor of many  
politicians.[3]  There’s much to be said about this system, and  
Rupert Murdoch, but one has to admit that commercial broadcasting and  
telecoms is pretty advantageous for both politics and economy.  It’s  
not going to move away from that.

But Rupert and friends provide the public with use of ‘the’ spectrum,  
right?  Well, yes and not quite.  The problem with leaving it to  
businesses to provide airwave utility is that their incentives are  
characterized by such power words as ‘return-on-investment’ and  
‘killer app’.  Cell phone technology was already developed back in  
the 50s, but AT&T decided to keep it shelved as it would compete with  
their landlines.  Even now, technological innovation surpasses the  
time within which companies can cash-in on their products, causing  
for slow crappy connections to be sold at high prices, while better  
stuff is readily available.

But there’s also some genuine politics.  In the current scheme a  
minimal portion is actually assigned to unregulated public use, which  
only allows for point-to-point (one-to-one) communication and data  
services.[4]  Ever since Dwight, Adolph, Joseph and Winston found out  
about the distance an airwave could carry their message, point-to- 
multipoint (one-to-many) transmissions were to be treated with great  
care.  Opening up the spectrum for unregulated public use would allow  
‘dangerous’ people to actually push their message across. Just  
imagine what would happen.  Besides, there’s PBS. You want airtime,  
go see your local public – regulated – station.

So what about this all?  Is it really looking this grim?  Perhaps.   
Let me at least run some ideas by you which may or may not have some  
merit to them.

If not from a commercial point, then surely from a political point of  
view, there’s little chance that the spectrum will be re-allocated  
anytime soon, opening up the airwaves for unregulated public use.  So  
one idea is to keep everything just the way it is and let everybody  
keep their frequencies.  What we do change is the use of those  
frequencies, by mandating to allow underlay and setting technological  
standards that facilitate the use of this technology.[5]  With  
interference for decades no longer being an issue, there’s no reason  
why not to use certain frequencies for multiple purposes at the same  
time.  Such technologies as Ultra Wide Band make optimal use of  
available frequency space, while at the same time allowing other  
signals to be transmitted un-interfered.[6]

The next step is to make sure that those who hold licenses will start  
to value it.  Instead of auctioning the airwaves, let’s rent them  
out, making spectrum use subject to monthly fees and taxes.  The  
continuing revenue coming from this system could be put to public  
use, such as a citywide government-owned UWB network, or WiMax.  With  
a SIP phone and wireless card in each of the hands of the public  
we’re ensured that although we can’t make use of the spectrum, we  
still get to reap the benefits.  Let’s make point-to-point speech-  
and data-transmissions a fundamental right, available to all, at no  
cost.  We all agree broadband internet is overpriced and relatively  
crummy too for that matter, and traditional telecoms was dying  
anyway.  You want more than speech?  In come the commercial minded  
and offer you television on your hand, video-telephony or some other  
gadget you previously had no notion of your need for.

In effect what you’re doing is separating content from carriage.  The  
way things are set up now is that you pay for both.   
Telecommunication floats on the sale of carrying your content.   
Broadcasting builds on selling you their content, as well as their  
carriage.  By making carriage free, your point-to-point content gets  
to stay free, while you would only pay for their copyrighted content,  
should you decide you want that.  By analogy it actually makes sense  
too; in a bar you’re not paying the proprietor for chatting with your  
buddy, only for drinking his beer.

So will this all work?  Probably not, unless the vested powers  
overnight decide to shift to socialism and start believing in free  
culture.  And even if they would, they’d probably just revise the  
allocation in its entirety and give us some unregulated frequencies  
to fool around with anyway.  But it’s still a nice idea.  Maybe it’ll  
work in twenty years.  Either that, or we explore piracy again.


Word count: 998


[1] see Steve Macek & Mitchell Szczepanczyk, “Targeting TV”, at:  
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2006/macek0206.html
[2] see generally B.K. Marcus, “The Spectrum Should be Private  
Property”, at: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1662# ftnref52
[3] see Judith Oppenheimer, “Ding Dong, the Auction’s Dead”, at:  
http://judithoppenheimer.com/pressetc/dingdongtheauctionsdead.html
[4] United States Frequency Allocation Chart of 2003, at: http:// 
www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf
[5] see Kevin Werbach, "Open Spectrum: The New Wireless Paradigm."  
2002, at: http://werbach.com/docs/new wireless paradigm.htm
[6] see Robert X. Cringly “The 100 Mile-per-Gallon Carburetor” at  
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020124.html.
  
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