White Space

When I think about white space (the spectrum that lies between two TV channels) , the first thing that comes to mind is the license raj in India. Before 1980s , most of commodities (cement and steel) were licensed by government. Back then , cement was one of the most scarce resource in India. You need to stand and wait in ques to grab a bag of cement and many times request local politicians / officials for a favor.

The net net was, very poor rate of development , corruption and inferior quality of construction. In a span of 20 short years after deregulation of cement , India today is one of the largest producer of cement and fastest growing economy in world. Private organizations produce best quality cement at a fraction of price.

It kinda made sense to regulate spectrum back in early 19th century when technology was not mature enough to avoid interference. Today more than a billion devices work perfectly well on junkiest 2.4 GHz.

FCC can argue it might lose little revenue for not being able to lease those small chunks of spectrum . How lame !!! revenue can very easily be made up by the new economic activity that will come in by opening up . Imagine a billion wi fi based devices in an year. I guess government makes more money in taxes and other ecosystem activities of 2.4 Mz than it makes by leasing rest of the best quality spectrum to likes of AT&T and Verizon. And goes without saying there is no price for invigorating innovation that we all need so desperately to keep the boundaries of knowledge and human endeavor expanding.

Once again , Google has done the right thing in standing up to the monopolies of our age. This is what makes them a real leader.