Dear Editor:
While Communications Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth sings a soliloquy of regulatory and technical evolution, the state of future technological applications lies in disarray (“Opinion”, RCR Wireless News, Oct. 30, page 14). The commissioner speaks against government “creationism” of new technological standards, particularly in reference to third-generation wireless telecommunication standards. Clearly, new as well as extant technologies are developed by industry and academia. However, standards arise only by widespread recognition and acceptance by the parties involved. Standards are historically set by recognized standards-defining entities, whether government or industry. Furchtgott-Roth tells us that debate over 3G issues has been conducted in a vacuum. Is anyone surprised to hear this? What may be surprising is to realize that the vacuum starts and ends at The Portals.
The new 3G standard is actually a family of technological standards whose interoperability is debatable. The disparate wireless standards currently in use in North America are the direct result of a void in leadership at the FCC. There is no standard. The United States simply cannot be a world leader in telecommunications technology when it cannot set direction in policy, particularly in terms of technology. Industry itself has failed to find such direction. The private sector has managed to tie its own two shoes, but has great difficulty taking coordinated steps into the future. Europe’s purported advancement in wireless telecommunications is a direct result of that continent’s limiting itself to just a very few wireless technologies. Stateside, the utopianphilosophy of a market-based telecommunications economy where anything goes has led to stagnation and indecision.
Property rights? The commission has failed to act as guardian of our precious, limited spectrum. The prostitution of our airwaves, at the direction of Congress, has led to the illogical concept of electromagnetic ether being regarded as real estate. Why not sell highways to the highest bidder, or auction the air we breathe? Let the “property” owners sit on unused spectrum for years while they get their financial house in order. Allow speculators to buy and trade bandwidth while consumers frantically pound the buttons on their wireless phones, unable to get a clear traffic channel. A do-nothing emasculated FCC that cannot or will not provide the necessary leadership will surely serve to facilitate the further stagnation of our industry here in the United States.
Alan Dixon
Former Republican candidate for appointments to the FCC (1986).
