> The best way to resolve these issues is never "force the bad guys to do good things" but rather destroy the walls which enable their rent seeking.

The walls here are defined by physics. There's only so much spectrum to go around.

You can't have more than 3-4 large cell phone operators working in the same area. Decoupling the radio part and forcing everyone to play as MVNOs is a way to work around this.

Or as I once heard by way of explanation: the capacity of an early analog cellular ~30km AMPS cell was ~60 simultaneous calls.

Modern protocols do magic things with spectrum efficiency, but there's only so much you can do.

That sort of decoupling could be fascinating. IMO, the walls may be as much a function of economics as physics.

Running a small number of powerful radios on low-frequency spectrum is a cost-effective way to cover large areas. Physics constrains how much of that can happen in the same area. But if networks are willing spend cash, they can get a ton of capacity by densely deploying high-frequency radios. Don't think we're anywhere near hitting the walls on what's possible there.

Putting this another way, networks provide enough bandwidth for everyone in Manhattan. It's just expensive.

It won't help much. Radio waves start getting too much attenuation to be useful outside the LoS around 5GHz.

That's still not a lot of spectrum. And you need to share it with other consumers (WiFi).

Then you start getting into the practicalities. You'll need to spam EVERYTHING with your access points. Can you imagine dozens of different wireless providers installing access points on every floor of every building? It's just not going to happen.

We the People should own infrastructure. Want to start a new shipping company to compete with UPS? You don't have to build roads, We the People provide those to you. So, do the same with wireless.

Nothing prevents you from working with liked minded individuals to create your own "infra". The phrase "we the people" sounds cool but in reality what you mean is "your money, my idea".

Roads is a very common argument, but none of the roads are build by "we the people". Government takes your money by force irrespective of how you think it should be spent and then a completely unaccountable red tapy system that employs otherwise unemployable people decides how to spend it. After a massive waste you have some roads which are poorly built even worse maintained.

There is no need for roads to be public infrastructure. It can be fully privatized and people be asked to pay for its use. (While entire compontent of taxes that go towards road building be returned back to the people.)

We will have better roads, less traffic and more money in pocket with that model.

> Government takes your money by force

Oh good grief.

> We will have better roads, less traffic and more money in pocket with that model.

I call bullshit.

> There is no need for roads to be public infrastructure. It can be fully privatized and people be asked to pay for its use. (While entire compontent of taxes that go towards road building be returned back to the people.) We will have better roads, less traffic and more money in pocket with that model.

As evidenced by the many successful and popular real-world cases where it's played out exactly this way. For example, um, uh...

>a completely unaccountable red tapy system that employs otherwise unemployable people decides how to spend it.

The "accountability" is people voting in/out politicians. I agree they need more accounability, but in this case the folly falls on the ignorant for not properly researching who will lead and manage their towns.

>There is no need for roads to be public infrastructure. It can be fully privatized and people be asked to pay for its use.

Sounds like an awful idea. Land isn't infinite, so it falls into the same problem we have with housing. Lots of inefficiently crafted roads and a nightmare of tolls to manage based on the route you take. Which finals down to a few big boys either battling for the best roads, or worse, colluding with each other to keep tolls high. Navigation now has to incorporate not only for physical distance, but approximate cost as well.

I fail to see an upside here unless your underlying narrative is to force people onto public transportation. Even then that doesn't mean public transportation imroves for those with bad access (also managed by "unaccountable red tapy system")/

This is the biggest solution to the problem that many people seem to ignore. If you want your communities to prosper, then the public needs to own the infrastructure that companies provide services for. Full stop.

Anything less is giving companies control over something they should not have control over.

I think there's an argument to be had on 'owned by the public, but operated by private industry.'

Another on 'built by private industry, but owned by the public.'

Government ownership isn't a panacea and has historically faultered when faced with innovative and expert requirements.

But I do think anything that trends towards monopoly makes sense as 'let the public own the simplest level, exposed via standards, and innovation happen above and/or below that.'

That's a terrible idea. If the government owned wireless infrastructure then we'd still be stuck with 1G analog service. Competition between private cellular carriers is the primary factor driving innovation.

> We the People should own infrastructure

Going 4 to 3 sucked, let’s go all the way to a state monopoly!

Right, because we only have one single shipping company using all the roads...

It didn't suck for the shareholders of the remaining 3. With a state monopoly, we'd all be shareholders. Win!

There is no "We the People". There is a government, or really layers of government, composed largely of politicians and bureaucrats. Whether those people running the cellular network is good or not ought to be assessed on what actually exists or is reasonably possible, not appeals to vague abstractions.

And yet even with all that infrastructure, the market has coalesced around 3-5 shipping companies for vast majority of consumer shipments.

Regulators cannot magic spectrum into existence.

The problem is that there is finite spectrum available. The upfront cost of building a national cellular network are also astronomical, regardless of regulatory hurdles.

The FCC was created to manage the scarcity inherent to the radio spectrum. It's not an area where regular free market economics apply. GP's proposal would actually make it easier for startups to horn in on the territory of the big established players, since the underlying infrastructure would effectively be socialized.

Out of curiosity: What are some examples of "regular free markets"?

There are finite amounts of everything. Free market economics solve this problem all the time. There are finite amounts of food, land, energy, shelter, human resources, etc. The problem isn't that spectrum is finite, it's that there is no way to prevent interference.

It's questionable if the FCC is really optimal though. There are huge amounts of spectrum still devoted to dying industries like AM/FM radio and broadcast television.

In USA the CBRS band allows running real LTE or better, real 5G SA on very lightly licensed spectrum.

All kinds of more experimental community networks make use of it. Even better, Magma core is a free 5G core and multiple vendors like Baicells make cheap 5G CBRS base station hardware. CBRS also fully overlaps international 3.5GHz 5G bands, so phones and modems are cheap.