lett.[5-16] A system of government licenses, Hazlett argues, chills innovation. A
world where holders of rights in spectrum cannot sell those rights chills the
process by which new uses of spectrum develop. Far better, Hazlett argues,
if the holders of spectrum rights had the freedom to sell those rights to the
highest bidder. Then, Hazlett argues, more creative and innovative uses of
spectrum would be enabled.[5-17]

Hazlett has done an extraordinary service demonstrating the harm of
government-managed spectrum. He is certainly right that the current
regime stifles innovation in spectrum use. If the innovator must first get
permission from the government, then the innovator is much less likely to
try. Permission from the government is an expensive commodity. New ideas
rarely have this kind of support. Old ideas often have deep legislative con-
nections to defend them against the new.

But to demonstrate the harm in government control of a resource is not
yet to demonstrate the need for private control. Hazlett is right if control is
necessary. But is control necessary? Even if the market is a better system for
allocating control than the state, is the market in spectrum better than free
spectrum, if no ex ante allocation is required?

the answer is: Maybe not.[5-18] Increasingly, there are strong technical ar-
guments for a different way of allocating spectrum -- or, better, arguments
for a different way of _not_ allocating spectrum. These "different ways" we can
abbreviate as "wideband technologies." These technologies include "spread
spectrum" technologies as well as technologies that allow some spectrum
uses to be "overlayed" on top of others.[5-19] Wideband technologies would
allow many different users to "share" spectrum without the government or
the market handing out rights to use the spectrum up front. Just as users of
the Internet "share" the resources of the Internet through protocols that co-
ordinate multiple, unplanned use, so too users of spectrum could "share"
the resources of spectrum through protocols that coordinate multiple, un-
planned use. Rather than controlled, spectrum would be, in this model,
"free." Rather than permission to use it, the right to use it would be granted
to anyone who wanted it. Rather than property, spectrum would be a com-
mons.

This would not mean, as I will explain more fully below, that use of the
spectrum would not be regulated. The regulation would simply be differ-
ent. We speak of the "freeway" system to refer to highways. Highways are
"free" in the sense that I mean: they are a commons open to anyone to use.

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