How the New Spectrum Bill Would Harm the Tech Community

An anonymous reader writes "One version of new spectrum legislation poses a threat to unlicensed wireless, which is where technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth operate. Your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies are safe, but the future of the proposed White Spaces broadband also known as Super Wi-Fi, and new unlicensed spectrum is in doubt under the draft bill. And hiding in those unlicensed airwaves could be the next Wi-Fi. 'The draft bill says that in order for unlicensed spectrum to win out over a licensed bidder, an entity or a group of people would have to collectively bid more than a licensed bidder would. This would be akin to having a group of people who want more unlicensed airwaves going up against Verizon or AT&T. As a reminder Verizon spent $9.63 billion on spectrum licenses in the last auction while AT&T spent $6.64 billion. The legislators may have envisioned Google playing a heroic role here and thus enabling the government to make some extra money in a spectrum auction as opposed to just letting such potentially lucrative spectrum become a public radio panacea regulated by the FCC.'"

Good that this crap is US only.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope the rest won't get anything similar.

this is the whole point of auctions

[alen]

if you pay almost $10 billion for frequencies then you're going to use them for something that produces revenue. not act like some of the russians i know and say you need them for the future and keep them unused for years

US mindset

[Anonymous Coward]

So there's an opportunity cost X $ to leaving this spectrum public and there's a hard-to-calculate benefit Y $ to doing so. Suppose Y is significantly greater than X. Then the government can raise taxes by X and leave the spectrum open. This gives the government the same amount of funding while benefiting the economy by Y-X $. Making these kinds of decisions the right way is what ultimately separates third and first world countries. If the government is truly worrying about generating income, instead of what actually benefits the economy, then that's because irrational sentiments somewhere are constraining the government's ability to make the right decisions. There's also the possibility that X Y, in which case this shouldn't be done. The question is, are X and Y really the center of this discussion, as they should be?

Only in America...

[WoollyMittens]

Of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.

Re:this is the whole point of auctions

[WoollyMittens]

You're implying that if you don't pay 10 billion you won't use them for something that produces revenue? Using them to produce revenue doesn't mean they're used for something that benefits society. Comparing the USA to Russia is useless.

Re:this is the whole point of auctions

[bberens]

$10 Billion is a small price to pay for an oligopoly on mobile services. IMHO the price is paid in order to stop others from entering the market.