<The US Public Lost and Lost!> Hi PCS.
All due to the absurd auction rules that the FCC established at the behest of an ignorant Congress, with special treatment for melanin-rich small companies with Great Gender, no cash on the barrel-head BEFORE the auction, silly anti-monopoly ideas [fragmented spectrum].
Congress and the FCC should simply have sold the spectrum to the highest bidders in an open-market free-for-all.
The spectrum would have been full of petabits of voice and data at lower subscriber prices for the best part of a decade. The artificial shortage has cause higher cyberphone usage prices and stymied all sorts of development.
It was a lose, lose, lose deal. But NextWave made some money from the stupidity. So did whole garrisons of lawyers! The citizens who owned the spectrum lost out in a big way by not getting full value and as it was also they who could have been using the spectrum instead of leaving it fallow for a decade.
What a ridiculous saga.
But not as bad as the current Iraqi War on Terror mess.
Mqurice
PS: The Globalstar episode was small compared with the NextWave C-block saga. Have you noticed that Globalstar is still going, though shareholders and creditors were pretty much obliterated? With Thermo in charge, it might even end up, in 2010, with a revamped constellation and new, improved handsets, as the brilliant service it should have and could have been, but for the obstinacy and stupidity of Globalstar and Service Providers, which was as bad as the FCC/NextWave efforts. |
