2 ms·
That's trivializing a not so simple problem. In a pure market, with no regulation whatsover, anybody could just stick an high power antena on it's roof, and b
by ardit33 18y ago
That's trivializing a not so simple problem. In a pure market, with no regulation whatsover, anybody could just stick an high power antena on it's roof, and bam, they have their own network.
But, also spectrum is finite, especially on what we can use with the current technologies. If everybody puts it's own high powered antenas, it would just make everbody's service unsuable. And taking out your competitor, ment to just place a bigger antena.
Also, high costs and barriers of entry don't just come b/c regulation. There is huge capital costs to build a infrastructure (towers, technology, etc.) Look at Wimax, (which has less regulations than cellular telephone) where two companies had to merge in order to make it feasable.
What I would like, is option 2. The goverment makes sure there is fair competition for services, and where a carrier shouldn't lock your devices, and not allow you have your own apps and services in your phone.
If you look a classical use of goverment regulation: Road traffic, traffic lights, rules etc. In the early days of the car, none existed, and it used to be every man for each own. Result was lots of accidents, traffic jams (deadlocks everywhere), making cities almost too chaotic. People driving without knowing how to really drive (accident rates where very high). Regulation brought some control to the chaos, where it made roads usable, traffic flowing, and make sure only people that know how to drive, drove.
But, regulation can also go too far, but making things expensive, excessive tickets that serve only to make revenue to cities and states. etc.
And yes, I have real life experience with this. I come from an ex-communist country, where twice in my life time goverment basically ceased to exist (once in 90-92, and once in 97). It was everybody on it's own, and it wasn't pretty.
I remember my favorite TV channel went off air, b/c one their competitors decided to erect a bigger antena, and use the same band.
Overegulation is bad, but under regulation is surely aweful. And I lived through it. Most of you probably just dream about it, and think it is cool, but it is not.
- biohacker42 18y agoSpectrum is finite. But consider that the "junk" spectrum was left unregulated, completely unregulated and pretty much every exciting wireless tech started in this unregulated junk spectrum. Obviously you're right too, we could come up with examples all day long, suffice it to say I think that a big part of texting costs is due to regulation driven high entry costs.
- evgen 18y ago> But consider that the "junk" spectrum was left unregulated, completely unregulated and pretty much every exciting wireless tech started in this unregulated junk spectrum It was not "unregulated." If it was then I could have built my 1000 Watt 802.11b network to cover an entire city. There were rules and regulations on this spectrum, it was just not reserved for specific users.
- kingkongrevenge 18y agoI'm not sure I buy this "all was chaos, and then the government brought order" narrative. I'm just as apt to believe that the system self organized as people figured out what worked in a new situation. Anyway, the "tragedy of the commons" problems you get with spectrum and such-like call for legal solutions, not regulatory ones. You need clear precedents and fair courts. But that's not the situation. We have monstrously complex regulation and federal intervention instead. The original justification for all the telecommunication regulation was that phone and telegraph lines are a "natural monopoly" and resources are wasted by allowing many competitors. I believe this original justification affects the current situation.
- greendestiny 18y agoReplacing regulation with legal action is absurd. Instead of providing a positive legal framework that a company can adhere to, companies have to live in fear of unlikely but enormously expensive legal retribution. While the idea of as few laws and regulations as possible is very appealing - I don't see any reason to hold laws above regulation.
- kingkongrevenge 18y agoI don't follow. The FCC making up rules as it sees fit is somehow better than a body of legal precedent and perhaps some fixed legislation?
- snprbob86 18y agoIs spectrum really finite? Quite a few smart people don't think so... See: http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/OpenSpectrumFAQ.html http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/OpenSpectrumFAQ.html (btw, I am also a libertarian :-)
- dmv 18y agoClaude Shannon, a pretty smart person, would probably disagree with you and them. Shannon-Hartley helps to derive a maximum on how much information can be transmitted at a given frequency with a given power bound. If you allow that the power devoted to transmission is bounded -- that there is only so much of the global power supply available for broadcast by all parties -- you can work out max ranges of how much information could be transmitted globally. While that quantity of potential information is substantially more than the available quantity, that's a different assertion than infinite spectrum. And yes, this reply basically says that if we require angels to comply with physics, there is an upper bound on the number of angels on the head of a pin. So what?
- jkent 18y agoRegulation is not the same as ownership rights. If you can own, make exclusive use of and trade that ownership, it should deliver an efficient outcome - at least from an Economics lens.