Gilder>
THE WIRELESS INDUSTRY'S PREMIERE SOURCE OF ELECTRONIC NEWS AND INFO
<http://www.commnow.com/protectwn/subshomepage.html>
========================================================================
It's Not Just What You Know...It's When You Know It
========================================================================
WirelessNOW presents the second in a series of excerpts from the new
book "Speaking of George Gilder," a compilation of essays, speeches and
interviews featuring the sometimes-controversial industry notable.
According to author Frank Gregorsky, this book "is the only George
Gilder book for those with short attention spans - in short, a Gilder
assembly for the stressed-out majority."
GEORGE GILDER ON SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT
WirelessNOW encourages your feedback and seeks opposing views. If you
would like to respond to this column, please send email to
editor@commnow.com to arrange for a publication opportunity.
========================================================================
Among his many accomplishments, Gilder was a co-founder of the Discovery
Institute in Seattle, where he was named the first senior fellow and
head of the group's technology and public- policy program. He also
co-launched "Forbes ASAP," a division of the parent Forbes magazine
group. Gilder also authors "The Gilder Technology Report" newsletter,
which is regarded as a digital compass for investors.
In this second installment, Gilder waxes poetic on the FCC, of which he
has been an observer and a critic for some time. In this age of
increasing technology, his take on spectrum management is an interesting
one. RF frequencies, to Gilder, are not natural resources -- a term
embraced by the FCC and other government agencies and branches. The
following excerpt details some of Gilder's opinions regarding current
FCC spectrum-management policies:
GEORGE GILDER ON SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT
"If I was the FCC, I wouldn't be eager, in the face of these new
technologies, to assign exclusive rights to frequencies. CDMA allows
lots of different people to use the same frequencies in the same cell.
You can differentiate the calls by their codes, not by their
frequencies. So you have a situation where the assignment of these
specific frequency channels just no longer makes sense.
Rather than issuing spectrum licenses, they [should] issue driver's
licenses. Anybody can use spectrum as long as they don't interfere with
other users or they don't exceed the speed limit - use too much power or
pollute the environment by all sorts of uncontrolled frequencies.
I think the FCC should promote the emergence of free spectrum, in which
the user of spectrum is responsible for finding unoccupied frequencies.
That role is increasingly capable of being performed by 'smart radios'
that can survey a span of spectrum and identify ways to use it,
unobtrusively. So, rather than clearing the whole Massachusetts Turnpike
in order to accommodate one truck down its length - which is controlled
by the two ends - you have thousands of people using the Mass Turnpike
at the same time, with each one responsible for driving their own
vehicle and not crashing into other vehicles or interfering with the
flow of traffic or using excessive power or polluting the environment.
That kind of regulation makes sense and would allow a real efflorescence
of creativity in the industry.
The roads are already there. But we're really going to rue the day we
established the principle that spectrum was scarce and should be
husbanded and taxed and regulated and auctioned and parceled out in
exclusive spans to favored companies.
Spectrum is in no sense a 'natural resource." It's created by the
incredible ingenuity of the radio-engineering community, which has
created all these new devices that make it possible to generate
microwaves and manipulate them and receive them and process them…These
are amazing technologies, and they create spectrum. Spectrum is not
something that's just 'there;' it's created by these technologies. And
most of the technologies are American.
Yet, here we are establishing the principle that, all around the world,
people can start taxing the emissions of these valuable American
products. I'm afraid that, at some point, the UN will get involved.
Because so many regions aren't owned by any particular country, the UN
will start to extract taxes. As time passes, they'll want more and more.
So it was a terrible principle for conservatives and liberals to agree
that spectrum is a natural resource. 'Precious beachfront property' is
the analogy. That's really what's behind the auction model today in the
United States, and it favors old technologies. If you can give people
exclusive spectrum, then analog technology work s pretty well."
========================================================================
|
