Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

Re:Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tec... by rayiner on Monday December 07, 2015 @01:18PM (#10691350)

So there is a lot of theoretical economic work on how to allocate limited rival resources like spectrum (and water). The consensus is that the efficient way to do it is auctions. I have quibbles with certain assumptions in that research,[1] but for stuff like cellular spectrum (where the owner can achieve extremely high utilization), auctioning to private companies is probably quite close to efficient. It would be more efficient if we got rid of restrictions on use and transfer.

Yes, that does mean that you end up with mega-corps providing your cellular service. But the same is true for say retail. Amazon will eat the whole industry. Physics as well as economics strongly favor mega-corps. Startups have advantages, but specific and narrow ones.

[1] See https://www.scribd.com/doc/292530059/Spectrum-Allocation-Loc...

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tec... by gst on Monday December 07, 2015 @01:36PM (#10691509)

An alternative would be to split wireless companies into 1) infrastructure companies and 2) companies that sell actual products to end users. The infrastructure companies would be allowed to bid on limited shared resources (= the spectrum), but a requirement for this would be that they would need to provide fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access to the resources to other companies.

This is similar to the approach that some countries used when privatizing railroad companies: Instead of creating a new private company that's effectively a monopoly, they created one company that provides the infrastructure and another company that runs the trains. This allowed new private companies to enter the market, as they were allowed to use the resources under the same conditions as the former monopoly.

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tec... by barrkel on Monday December 07, 2015 @01:51PM (#10691665)

Are we happy with mega-corps providing our wifi service? Our bluetooth service? These are also using limited rival resources. Under an auction system, we'd be paying rent on this spectrum (through expensive closed devices, or time-limited licensed systems) to guarantee non-interference.

I personally would be less than pleased to have to pay extra on an ongoing basis just to have a wifi router in my home, or a wifi radio on my laptop. Extending private property rights into what is currently a commons would seem to imply that though.

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