So there they were on one panel, George Gilder, Nicholas Negroponte and Peter Huber-the creme de la creme of spectrum seers-brought before the Senate Commerce Committee last Thursday to enlighten lawmakers about how to reform the airwaves.
Each had his own unique style, but the heady message delivered was that nothing less than a radical overhaul of the present system was in order.
Gilder, the feisty and cantankerous scribe of Forbes’ ASAP, expounded on and on about what he’s written about over and over in recent years: moving to spectrum overlay technology, like Code Division Multiple Access, and smart radios.
To get there, Gilder recommended the abolition of exclusive use spectrum allocations, auctions and analog broadcasters.
Gilder, setting himself credibly apart from other self-made experts, opposes auctions. He sees auctions as a tax on technological innovation.
“We should never, ever have used this word, natural resource of spectrum,” exclaimed Gilder. “It is not a natural resource. The air is not a resource; it is the environment. The value of electromagnetic frequencies is entirely created by companies that create the technology that makes it possible to use them.”
Negroponte, the professorial one from MIT’s Media Lab, reiterated the theory that made him famous; that is, that wired systems should go wireless and fixed wireless systems go wired. Translated: Move broadcasters to fiber.
Huber, the zany brainy, anti-Washington high-tech militia man, declared that dezoning spectrum would make the world a better place.
By their very nature, these intelligent men could never be satisfied with the status quo. What intrigues them is discovering new worlds, new paradigms. Understand, this is mostly an intellectual exercise largely devoid of practical, social and political considerations.
The spectrum utopia they believe they’ve identified will not be found. There’s no freedom in a spectrum free-for-all; most rights would be lost in chaos. That government has a limited hand in overseeing telecommunications offers consumers perhaps the greatest freedom.
Radical change-don’t count on it. The telecom landscape 10 years from now will look different, like pre-1984. I predict, too, that free, over-the-air TV will still be around then. And, what’s wrong with that? Today’s spectrum policy is not a failure by a long shot, and federal regulators are beginning to judiciously implement reforms like auctions and spectrum flexibility.
