3 ms·

True. But it is just the government trying to get a slice of a pie. regulatory cost.

• jandrese 8y ago
  It makes sense that the government wants to only hand out this extremely limited resource to organizations that will actually use it. And there is some sense that if someone pays a half a trillion dollars for the spectrum that they'll be highly motivated to use it to recover those costs, but in the end it basically guarantees that the service will be expensive because they have to make back that investment. But the only other solution I can see is to have the government just pick a company and hand them the license, and that's effectively guaranteed to be breathtakingly corrupt since the incentives to cheat are overwhelming. At least with the market solution the money goes into the government's general fund instead of into the pockets of the party official in charge of making the decision.
  • iguy 8y ago
    > but in the end it basically guarantees that the service will be expensive because they have to make back that investment Isn't it exactly the other way around? They bid high because they estimate that they will be able to make back the investment. The sole reason for making that investment is to sell it on to customers.
    • jandrese 8y ago
      Either way they're expecting to make that money back in a reasonable timeframe. Eventually the costs need to be passed onto the customers.
    • mcv 8y ago
      It works both ways. They bid high because they expect to be able to made back that investment, but having bid so high, they also need to meet that expectation, or they're in trouble.
  • dzhiurgis 8y ago
    Gov can run the network and make all providers MVNO’s