David A. Harding
Thursday, 03 Jul 2008
You can't buy a part of the radio spectrum in the United States. You can't even lease a part of it from the government for a fixed amount of time—say 15 years. No, if you want to use the radio spectrum, you must lease part of it for an indefinite amount of time; you get to use it until the government says you can't anymore. For example, Congress recently confiscated and auctioned off spectrum belonging to serveral TV stations.
Imagine if you could only buy normal property for an indefinite amount of time. That book you just bought could be taken away tomorrow; so could your house. You'd live in perpetual fear of losing your property, and you'd probably try to persuade the government not to take it. If the government was a rational one, you'd hire the best sophists to persuade them of your need. If the government was a venal one, you'd bribe them outright. Economists call regulatory capture the idea that the people most affected by a regulation are the people who will work the hardest to influence the regulators in their favor. Congress has been captured.
Instead of blaming the wireless industry for corrupting Congress, or blaming Congress for becoming corrupted, I demand that Congress sell or lease radio spectrum with definite guarantees. Spectrum buyers should know what they can do with their property and for how long they can do it, and they should know this in advance. There is no other simple way to free Congress from bondage to the wireless industry.