The MSS spectrum is a valuable resource that is currently being wasted. Moreover, because it is already licensed and doesn’t need to be auctioned, it can be deployed for mobile broadband more rapidly than can other spectrum blocks in the FCC’s inventory.
In the case of LightSquared, a business plan was relatively advanced before it was derailed by the GPS dispute. The FCC should learn from this experience the critical importance of clearly defined rights. The absence of such rights, and therefore a market mechanism for moving spectrum to higher-valued uses, is the cause of the failure to resolve the LightSquared-GPS dispute in an economically efficient manner. In order to minimize the likelihood of similar failures in the future, the FCC should convert all of the MSS licenses to flexible-use licenses.
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Thomas Lenard is Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute. Lenard is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on telecommunications, electricity, antitrust, privacy, e-commerce and other regulatory issues. His publications include Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated?; The Digital Economy Fact Book; Privacy and the Commercial Use of Personal Information; Competition, Innovation and the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace; and Deregulating Electricity: The Federal Role.
Before joining the Technology Policy Institute, Lenard was acting president, senior vice president for research and senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He has served in senior economics positions at the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Trade Commission and the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and was a member of the economics faculty at the University of California, Davis. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Economists Club.
Lenard is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He can be reached at [email protected]
