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. Kevin Werbach Supernova Group LLC Spectrum Policy: Property or Commons? Stanford University March 2003. Comments on Property Papers. . . . Where We Agree. Current system is heavily flawed. Property and commons not mutually exclusive.
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Kevin WerbachSupernova Group LLCSpectrum Policy: Property or Commons?Stanford UniversityMarch 2003 Comments on Property Papers
Where We Agree • Current system is heavily flawed. • Property and commons not mutually exclusive. • Uncertainty = need room for experimentation and reconfiguration. • Scarcity and transaction costs are deciding factors between models.
Primacy • Papers advocate property as the primary regime, with commons inside it as parkland. • Problems with the park concept. • Hasn’t happened so far with flexible use auctions. • Insufficient incentives to pay present spectrum value based on guesses about future commons uses. • E.g. value of 2.4 GHz “junk band” • Commons not just unlicensed or spread spectrum.
Parks are the Wrong Analogy • Parks compete with development for land, but not for the same use. • Both spectrum models support similar services. • Each enables and precludes certain business models. • More accurate analogies: • Parks vs. private nature preserves, forests, campgrounds. • Public highways vs. toll roads. • Linux vs. Windows. • In all cases, either commons is primary or both have plenty of room.
Scarcity • Papers treat spectrum as a fixed resource. • But... availability of spectrum is a function of technical and business architectures. • Unlimited bandwidth, in the fractal coastline sense. • May be locally unlimited (e.g. highways) • Property regime creates scarcity by foreclosing other kinds of uses. • E.g., UWB requires a sufficiently wide band. • Easements must be big and solid enough to be viable. • Burden of proof on easement users. • Why not all commons and auction low-power wideband?
Transaction Costs • Increase for property regimes as the environment becomes more dynamic. • Every degree of flexibility requires transactions. • Kwerel/Williams give examples of complexities that are difficult to support even for the initial transition. • DTV transition had low transaction costs too. • Commons create incentives for realtime decision-making by participants. • For property, recourse is a transaction, vs. alternate path (as with Internet routing) • Ex ante vs. route around damage transaction • A “failed” commons today may succeed tomorrow with new technology.
