Four reasons the FCC is ill-suited to handle spectrum allocation

[Commentary] Today, only 16 percent of US spectrum resources are allocated to fuel the mobile boom in the private sector. Meanwhile, government sits on as much as 70 percent of valuable beachfront spectrum, either leaving it fallow or wasting it with inefficient technologies. The significant shortcomings in the supply of spectrum are getting attention in Congress. During the week of July 27, both chambers will tackle the lack of wireless spectrum and what must be done to refill the spectrum “pipeline” to fuel the burgeoning Internet of Things (IOT). On July 29, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Internet of Things and the Senate Commerce Committee will tackle the overall spectrum landscape in the US, hearing testimony from CTIA, among others. Let’s hope Congress will take on the major underlying question in spectrum allocation: Is the FCC, in its current form, suited to handle this task? There are several reasons to think otherwise:

1. The FCC has been dragging its feet on spectrum auctions for decades.
2. Regulators are generally not well-suited to handle spectrum allocation.
3. The FCC is incentivized to limit the amount of spectrum available.
4. The FCC has down-prioritized their spectrum allocation duties.

[Roslyn Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark]