Hi. Ray - "The multiple standards game as played in the US seems to be more of a navel-gazing exercise among engineers that doesn't adequetely address the ultimate goal of providing innovative and inexpensive services to the customer.
Well said.
"Let the market decide"? Look at the 2.4 GHz madhouse. Let's see the engineers sort that one out.
As a generalization, without particular reference to telecoms, we learned long ago that you can't just hand over resources to industry to use, as they see fit. Spectrum is such a resource.
There's a gradient between total regulation and the free market, and it gets to be a question of where you want to make your tradeoffs - more time, and more input on the standardization process, on a level playing field, or endless tinkering, after the fact, trying to match disparate implementatioms.
It's a kind of Holy War, which gets warped in the eyes of many, into "government intervention" vs. "the free market".
But it's not that at all: it's a simple recognition of historical fact. We can't rely on industry to use resources to the ultimate benefit of the owners: us.
Of course, there's the other question: the right kind of intervention, and standardization. You and justone accurately note the historical accident that left Europe in its present wireless position: wasn't that a failure to implement American-style intervention (deregulation)?
Nevertheless, the playing field has to be laid out, and the rules defined, or there'll be chaos. That's the lesson of history.
Also, JMO ;-)
Jim |
