FCC license must first certify that it will not assert any propertied interest in
radio spectrum.)[12-24] As Dave Hughes has asked:

____ [W]hy should AT&T, who is offering a wireless service,... consent to
____ competitors in their own area?... [I]t's not just a question of interference
____ now. Now it becomes... opening the door by their consent to competi-
____ tion. And the last damn thing big companies want is competition.[12-25]

///\\\

The danger in selling spectrum or, more precisely, in not experimenting
broadly with unlicensed spectrum is that existing spectrum users will be
able to use purchased spectrum to resist changes in spectrum policy that
might threaten their business models.[12-26] By selling spectrum now, before al-
ternative uses can be developed, we create a world where the resources for
these new alternatives are held by those _with_the_strongest_incentive_to_stop_
_them._ As Eli Noam puts it, it is like "having the old AT&T auction off the
right to compete against it. Under such a system, MCI would not have
emerged."[12-27]

The concern is not just about spectrum owners; it is also about the nature
of the existing spectrum uses. The dominant and fastest-growing spectrum
use right now is mobile telephone systems. These systems are architected in
just the way the old telephone network was -- intelligence is located not at
the ends, but instead in the network itself. The cellular phone companies
retain control over how the cellular technology develops; if you want a new
application for your (increasingly powerful) phone, you will get it only if the
telephone company wants you to.

This architecture for a wireless system creates the obvious protectionist
risks. And as Charmed Technologies CEO Alex Lightman puts it, we are al-
ready seeing these risks mature into protectionist practices.

____ [T]here is a nice little cozy menage a trois between the companies that are
____ providing infrastructure and the companies that provide the handsets, and
____ the monopoly carriers or the oligopoly carriers.[12-28]

By selling the spectrum, the carriers have a strong incentive to assure re-
turns sufficient to recover the investment in spectrum. These returns are
best assured (or at least it seems to the companies that are best assured) if the
companies husband the market power that is carried over from the non-
competitive telephone world (recall: much of the action here is inter-
national, where competitive phone systems don't yet exist). Thus, the

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