(2009-06-01) Frankston Spectrum Auction Wrong Framing

Bob Frankston says that a Spectrum Auction is mis-FramIng connectivity. (OpenNet, Open Spectrum). We should be asking for bids on contracts to maintain common facilities rather than auctioning off our ability to communicate to service providers. More like roads than railroads.

The “company store” model has a direct and devastating effect on the economy and Public Safety by leaving us unable to take advantage of the essentially zero marginal cost of using our Infrastructure. Instead we are stuck with an E911 system that costs lives because it is brittle and for emergencies only. It’s like having a medical system without the concept of preventative medicine or even ongoing care.

I can understand people having a trouble with some of what I’ve said. One problem is that without technical understanding it seems necessary for networking to be a service. With the bit commons we’d have people facilitating transport of bits. Finding a path from one end point to another is more like driving using the common physical infrastructure than like being forced to buy a ride. When I say facilitating – I mean that operators are rewarded for providing capacity but not paid for the transport of content because that would and does reward Scarcity.

If we learn the lessons of the amazingly growing capacity of the cellular phone system we ‘d notice that you can increase wireless capacity arbitrarily by hopping on the nearest wired path instead competing for “spectrum” over a large footprint. This is what you’d get if you’d make all the existing access points transit points and then improve the technology. http://www.bnettv.com/player.php?id=2536 is interesting in seeing how the cellular industry manages to create scarcity by entangling itself in the Regulatorium and thus finding refuge from the threat of Abundance.