AT&T Admits There's No Spectrum Crisis → Sigh

Why is it that haters insist on there be a spectrum crunch BEFORE companies can act? That's like the morons that prepared for Sandy when it was an few hours away. How did that turn out for them? Are people that prepares for hurricane season in May stupid to you even though there is no threat of a hurricane and may not be one? Or are they being practical?

Why is it the people who want to let corporate Amerika run roughshod and rip off people for all they are worth call those that want a semblance of honesty and truth to enter the discussion "haters"? There will some day be an oil shortage, so effective tomorrow Exon will be charging YOU $175.00 per gallon of gasoline and limit you to 3 gallons per week. I suppose you're fine with that too.

That depends on whether we solve the need by granting every available mhz to incumbents or if there is a need for an alternative that motivates new competitors invest and provide the additional capacity.

If current players don't have a crunch but create one and then proceed to acquire all they can, it leaves competitors with whatever crumbs are left or leasing wholesale capacity from incumbents.

There's nothing wrong with corporations doing all they can to increase their competitive edge. We expect no less from sports teams that exploit every possible talent achieve a winning record. However, when they try to do it by pulling a Jeff Gillooly (Tonya Harding), there has to be a good set of rules and a diligent referee/umpires/judge mechanism to prevent it. If it's already occurred, then they alert the executive branch so they can step in and enforce the rules.

It's also part of every corporation's mission to complain about the rules and, if they can, get them changed to their advantage.

The real question is do we have such rules and such a mechanism to adequately govern telecommunications free enterprise? Maybe we do. Maybe we don't.

In closing, whats wrong with consumers voicing concerns in opposition of corporations that use every conceivable angle to separate us from our money and be successful?

Because radio spectrum is finite and the available spectrum (except what's hoarded) is already being used by someone. If you have hurricane shutters, you wouldn't like it if the government said we have to take the hurricane shutters from your house because protecting this richer person's house is more important.

+1. I like that description

The problem is with the way the spectrum was allocated. If there weren't so many different frequencies and so many different types of service allocated on certain frequencies this would be less of a problem. It's not that the big duo doesn't have enough spectrum, it's that they don't have enough of what they want. T has some 2300 WCS spectrum that they don't have in use yet but they are probably waiting for the right company to swap that to so they can get better spectrum. Just the same as Verizon not using the AWS spectrum that they have. It's all over the place though and makes deploying and making equipment to use all these frequencies more expensive.

A two year "Use it or Lose it" policy with the spectrum holder required to show significant, meaningful progress towards using the spectrum for its intended purpose would solve the whole squatting problem and the alleged "crunch". Unfortunately, since our government is the best that can be bought, don't expect anything like that to happen.