Correct, more or less. You're right that the public ends up paying for something they own (but this is a case where ownership means an unexploited resource whic

Correct, more or less. You're right that the public ends up paying for something they own (but this is a case where ownership means an unexploited resource which earns nobody anything). The second, controversial result was a wildly overextended telco industry that suffered in the markets from 3G license costs and consequently dragged their feet implementing 4G: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecoms_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecoms_crash