Cook | The Stupidity of Spectrum Auctions

The Stupidity of Spectrum Auctions in a World of SDR | August 7th, 2007 by Gordon Cook

We had some informative discussion on spectrum policy on my list in July. (...)

(...) Basically it is because spectrum regulation was built on a 1920s knowledge of spectrum behavior. What we have put in place is something similar to economics as run by the Chicago school of macro economics.

(...) All of the above are techniques - ones that are not employed, and in many cases, not legal for employment because they postdate the 1934 regulatory structure and are too hard for the lawyers to incorporate into a fundamentally decade-time-constant static frequency allocation scheme. In other words, the rate of change *built in* to the radio systems in the field by the *laws* is that radio system innovations take 10-20 years to introduce, though they now take 12 months to invent, and soon will take days to invent (with Software Defined Radio).”