Thanks for the correction. $20M does seem just a bit too low! Here is WSJ tidbit on US spectrum issues with lots of links below:
When a Spectrum Becomes Political
THE ELECTROMAGNETIC radio spectrum is invisible. But for $6, the government sells a multicolored wall chart that renders the spectrum as seven horizontal bands sliced into hundreds of segments. These show who is using which frequencies -- a fat blue band for broadcast television, a small yellow square for radio astronomy, a variety of purple bars for mobile telephones.
The chart is standard decoration in the offices of telecommunications and broadcasting lobbyists, and for good reason. Each slice represents the triumph of one industry over another. Some segments show the outcomes of battles fought decades ago by radio and TV broadcasters. Others are fields on which battles for tomorrow's mobile-phone services are fought today.
The result is neither a rational, administrative solution to competing demands for scarce spectrum nor the harsh verdict of an efficient market. It's a mess, and it isn't likely to be cleaned up soon.
Politically potent television broadcasters sit on valuable frequencies even though 81% of U.S. households get TV via cable or direct-broadcast satellite. Backers of third-generation mobile phones, key to the much-ballyhooed wireless Internet, warn that the U.S. will fall behind Europe and Japan unless they get more spectrum soon. The Pentagon counters that the nation's security will suffer if it loses more spectrum to commercial use.
This has some resemblance to the tax code, which blends public purpose and special interest. If the government dared to print a multicolored chart of that, it would show a big blue swath for the income tax, a much smaller one for the corporate-profits tax and scores of thin stripes for "tax-exempt private activity bonds," "intangible drilling costs" and similar provisions valuable to one or another interest.
No one set out to design a tax code like this. Economists regularly fantasize about starting from scratch but offer little advice about getting from today's code to tax utopia. Some do the same about allocating parts of the spectrum.
THAT CHORE IS DIVIDED between the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency that manages commercial use, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a Commerce Department unit that manages government uses from missile guidance to weather forecasts. Congress, which has discovered that auctioning rights to chunks of spectrum can raise billions, intervenes periodically.
Please send comments to capital@wsj.com1. We'll post selected replies at WSJ.com/CapitalExchange2 on Monday.
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3See a copy of the electromagnetic radio spectrum chart in Adobe Acrobat format. (Adobe Acrobat is required. To obtain a copy, go to www.adobe.com4.)
See more information about some of the items mentioned in this column.
This regulatory apparatus dates to the first wireless revolution. In the beginning, radio stations proliferated with few government rules. Fears that stations' signals would interfere with each other, anxiety about chaos in the airwaves and profit-protecting lobbying by major broadcasters led Congress to create in 1927 the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the FCC.
Within months, the commission assigned frequencies to specific stations for the first time. Whether such regulation was technically necessary is debated still, but the biggest commercial radio stations and networks were clear winners.
A lot has changed since then. Some things haven't. The FCC still weighs competing applications for the same swath of spectrum. The advent of auctions for rights to use the spectrum introduced market forces. But auctions occur only after the FCC decides precisely what use can be made of the frequencies up for grabs.
SOME OF THIS REGULATION is the coordination necessary to allow the same low-cost mobile phone to work equally well in Atlanta and Albuquerque, and maybe some day in Amsterdam; some is not. Drawing the line between the two is difficult.
The FCC and NTIA are now eyeing parts of the spectrum for third-generation mobile phones. All are claimed already. One chunk has been taken by the Pentagon, another by a mix of schools, churches and an evolving, though not yet widely used, form of wireless communications. Existing cellular-phone services already have one slice. And then there's the space used by TV channels 60 through 69 in towns that have them. Each camp offers arguments why one of the others should relocate to a less-desirable location to make room for the future.
President Clinton tried a let's-all-reason-together approach, setting a timetable for reaching consensus inside the government. An interim report is due Friday, and a decision this summer.
An alternative is to let spectrum-rights holders sell them freely for any use, just as landholders can. "Regulation looks orderly, but it creates ... too little use of radio waves," says Thomas Hazlett, an American Enterprise Institute economist. "Year after year, vast tracks of valuable frequencies are walled off, while communications networks, investors and wireless entrepreneurs go begging for access to airwaves."
Incumbent frequency owners celebrate each delay; those with new technologies that need a slice of spectrum to flourish grow impatient. History suggests the winners will be those with clout, rather than those with reasons. Congress won't take on broadcasters. New FCC chief Michael Powell calls for "a coherent, nationally harmonized spectrum policy," but he has yet to challenge broadcasters or the Defense Department. Attempts to split the difference, he'll soon learn, will produce lawsuits that delay change -- and the next phase of the Internet revolution.
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Resources
To see (or purchase) the color chart showing spectrum allocation in the U.S., see:
ntia.doc.gov
For the spectrum made easy, see:
ntia.doc.gov
For more on AEI's Thomas Hazlett, see:
aei.org
For a Pentagon primer on spectrum issues, see:
c3i.osd.mil
For an FCC primer, see:
fcc.gov
For the trade association for one group whose spectrum is targeted for 3G use, see:
wcai.com
For the cellular-phone industry's views, see:
wow-com.com
Jim |
