Tim Lee has some interesting comments on Yochai Benkler's argument for a spectrum commons and points to a paper by Gerald Faulhaber and David Farber, two University of Pennsylvania professors and former FCC Chief Economist and CTO, respectively, that Benkler cites. When I read Benkler's book, the Wharton link was down, but Lee provides it here and that 25-pp paper is worth reading along with Lee's post if you're interested in spectrum management. Lee writes:
... If Benkler is right that new technologies will allow costless sharing of spectrum, then adopting a property regime will simply mean that society bears some unnecessary transaction costs as the manufacturers of equipment have to purchase spectrum rights for their products. The market value of a non-scarce resource tends toward zero, so we would expect the price of obtaining such a license to fall rapidly once efficient sharing technologies came onto the scene. You would still be able to do everything under a property regime that you would under a commons regime, the costs of administering the system would just be somewhat higher. ΒΆ In contrast, converting the entire spectrum to a commons rules out many traditional uses, such as traditional radio and television broadcasting. If we adopted a commons regime all at once, and commons-based wireless technologies turn out to be inferior to exclusive uses for some purposes, there will be no easy way to reintroduce exclusive uses. Our only alternative will be to lobby Congress to change the rules. ...
Link: Technology Liberation Front. --Dennis
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