"If these companies don't like the terms, they don't have to use the spectrum." That's right - they don't. But the current owner of the spectrum - the FCC - is

"If these companies don't like the terms, they don't have to use the spectrum." That's right - they don't. But the current owner of the spectrum - the FCC - is an illegitimate one: Read Declan McCullagh's June 7, 2004 column for news.com, "Why the FCC should die" (http://news.cnet.com/Why-the-FCC-should-die/2010-1028_3-5226979.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news http://news.cnet.com/Why-the-FCC-should-die/2010-1028_3-5226...) If you really want more competition in the telecommunications industry, you'll find the FCC standing in the way. They don't serve any technical purpose anymore (except to keep technology down and to allow old radios to work), but they sure as hell get in the way of new companies that might compete with existing ones. Keep in mind that without companies to build the radios and service the networks and so on that make the spectrum valuable, who would be able to use it, other than a few thousand engineers? What good would all the oil in Saudi Arabia do you if someone didn't know how to get it out of the ground, how to refine it, and how to build cars to use it? Remember that when you declare something like spectrum public, you inherently lose the ability to maintain everyone's rights. "There is no limit to the amount of greed." Not true - at and above a certain price for any good or service, customers won't buy. This is econ 101 stuff. "limited spectrum" - you would do well to take a signals processing class. Spectrum is only limited in the physical sense (the electromagnetic spectrum is what it is), but beyond that, there are many ways to transfer more information across the same spectrum through additional processing. Surely you know about things like DSL and 802.11, neither of which were possible before cheap processors became commonplace.