PCSTEL, it's an unpleasant idea that governments deliberately keep a shortage of spectrum available, when there's a lot of it waiting to be used, for the purposes of maintaining a high tax take [by auction] from those who want to use spectrum. That's nothing less than extortion.
Worse, to require people to use inefficient technologies, such as GSM, so that the tax take on the spectrum remains high. Of course they don't say that and actually I doubt that that is true. I think they just have a central planner's mindset and like the old USSR Kremlin style of life, which is fine for those hanging around the government, but bad for everyone else. It's also bad for the central planners who eventually end up looking over the fence at the good places and realizing that life in charge of a pig pen isn't that great, especially when having to live in that pig pen, albeit with gold doorknobs.
My theory has no flaws and is not a theory. It's an accurate description of exactly how things work. Sure, you can argue that everything is a theory, but that's semantics. Water runs downhill is a theory. With GSRS it will run uphill [and since GSRS doesn't work in practise yet, it is just a theory]. But water runs downhill in reality, which is only theoretical. Well, the theory that it runs downhill because of gravity is the theory I suppose rather than the description of the trajectory.
<If you charge too little.. And competition is fierce. Then it becomes a commodity. >
I disagree with that. Charging too little is just a marketing mistake, reducing profit, it doesn't make something into a commodity. A commodity is something which is fungible [meaning any supplier's product will do the job]. Differentiated products with special features and functions are not commodities.
Margins on commodities are very fine and cost control is crucial to stay in business. That's because anyone can enter the business. Coal, oil, gas, minutes, megabytes are commodities. The delivery systems and add-ons, such as voice mail, BREW applications and the like are not necessarily commodities, but can be. Voicemail for example, is a commodity [there are so many options]. Okay, this isn't meant to be a lecture, so I'll stop.
My point is that charging a low price for minutes doesn't make minutes into a commodity. Minutes are fungible [especially when people have multimode, multiband handsets] and that's what makes them a commodity. Because minutes are a commodity, margins can be expected to be tight unless good stuff can be added on to those minutes, such as great handsets, high quality voice, BREW applications, gpsOne, PacketVideo, Q transactions [or PayPal], coverage [Globalstar].
Competition for subscriber minutes is fierce, even in the satellite-supplied hinterlands market. If Globalstar slashes prices, that won't make minutes a commodity, because they already are [voice delay and quality and handset size and a few things like that notwithstanding], but it will generate a huge increase in sales to people who can't afford the current charges of about US$120 per hour [excluding handset costs and monthly charges].
The sweet spot for the public is to put all the spectrum on the market so that people can decide what to use, unencumbered by technology specification. It might be that there are technology reasons or international co-operation reasons to retain some spectrum for future applications rather than sell spectrum to purely speculative companies at a time when prices might be lower due to financial problems and declining markets. But artificial shortages shouldn't be created [which is what you were suggesting].
The sweet spot for service providers and subscribers is to have zero-cost spectrum. That would maximize demand. Because spectrum is limited, the cost won't be zero, even if all was on the market. So it would still be necessary to have CDMA so that capacity in a limited resource would be maximized [because the cost of CDMA technology is near zero compared with the other option of building millions of inefficient TDMA/GSM picocell base stations].
<So by controlling the technology deployment, and the amount of spectrum available. European regulators have been able to assure a acceptable level of public service, and a comfortable business environment to the Wireless Service Providers which allow them to stay out of the Bankruptcy Courts, for the most part.>
There is nothing comfortable about paying $100 billion for spectrum. That doesn't assure an acceptable level of public service. It would be far better for service providers if there was more spectrum available so that prices were more like $100 million. Zero would be better still. Zero would mean CDMA would not make any money [as it would imply there is no shortage of spectrum and the invention of CDMA was pointless - apart from other benefits].
<I agree that there is a point to be made that technology can make spectrum worth additional monies. But, there comes a point where unchecked gains in the capacity of spectrum via technology can destroy the underlying value of spectrum due to the imbalance of supply and demand. >
Absolutely right! That's why I've been looking out like a frightened rabbit for any competing technology which might make CDMA as obsolete as analogue. Years ago I thought that pulses would do the trick and then Time Domain came on the scene. I also discovered a nest of OFDM researchers when I was prowling around Auckland University's Engineering department a few years ago. We discussed those way back then and they were obviously good technologies but I decided they weren't sufficient competitive threat to devalue CDMA much.
Even with an order of magnitude improvement over analogue and nearing that over GSM [once the technology pathway already in sample stages is complete], it has been a hell of a battle to gain market share. So far, after a decade it's only about 13%.
Since OFDM for voice is little improvement and pulsed monocycles are going to be tricky in various ways, it's going to be in the decades before CDMA is usurped to any extent. Of course there will be fixed applications which CDMA would otherwise have served instead of OFDM, but that's not the end of the world. Anyway, OFDM might fit handily into a CDMA-based ASIC [I guess], increasing the demand for CDMA-based handsets, which will reduce the commodity effect.
If something could make spectrum fit everything into it [Time Domain makes claims along those lines if I remember rightly], then yes, it would reduce the value of spectrum to near-zero. I have no idea how spectrum will be managed in a world of pulsed monocycles across whole swathes of spectrum. Maybe devices would be power-limited and that would be the only control [with the hope that not too many congregated in one area].
Right now though, there seems little threat that spectrum congestion is going away any time soon [like before 2010], even with all CDMA being used.
I'll leave the bankruptcy laws and NextWave for now! It seems that a company's property is not up for grabs just because it's in bankruptcy and that includes spectrum. Hence the deal which fell through [due to Hollings' obstruction].
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