FCC Boss Insists He Was Proven Right About Spectrum Crunch - Just As Many Start Realizing Crunch Was Bogus

We've long noted that the bogeyman of dwindling broadband capacity has been a useful lobbying and policy tool to scare regulators into doing things companies want, even if it's not supported by factual data. The repeatedly debunked "Exaflood" was one such example, wherein carrier lobbyists, think tanks, fauxcademics and fauxsumer advocates all insisted the Internet would implode if carriers weren't given what they wanted -- be that subsidies, steadily-eroded consumer protections, fewer rate caps, regulatory merger approval, etc.

The so-called "spectrum crunch" has played a starring role in this stage play, with incumbent carriers breathlessly insisting we all face wireless armageddon unless carriers again get what they want. Primarily what AT&T and Verizon want is all the spectrum for them, with little left for any new competitors.

In reality, it's less of a capacity crisis and more of a broad, inefficient use of spectrum, thanks to companies that are too sluggish in refarming 2G network spectrum, blundering archaic government agencies, speculators, and spectrum squatters.

Still, in a recent speech at the University of Pennsylvania, FCC boss Julius Genachowski proclaimed that belief in a specrtum crunch is no longer even a question -- it's a universally agreed upon fact:

In my first speech to the wireless industry (back in 2009), about 3 months after being sworn in, I spoke about the looming spectrum crunch. There were many skeptics then about whether we faced a spectrum crunch. Today virtually every expert confirms it.

The amusing part is that Genachowski is saying this just as the press and said experts are starting to notice that the spectrum crunch is effectively bogus. While everyone with a vested interest in cashing in on either selling or holding spectrum (the government, stock jocks, carriers) has a vested interest in supporting the myth, when people actually bother to look around they notice there wasn't much of a crisis at all. Note recent comments in a piece by Fierce Wireless's Phil Goldstein:

"I think it [the spectrum crunch] was overblown. And everyone had an interest in pumping up a spectrum crisis," said TMF Associates analyst Tim Farrar. He said the FCC wanted to promote itself as the agency that could spur innovation and expand broadband access; Verizon and AT&T didn't want the FCC to cap the amount of spectrum available to them; companies that speculated with spectrum did not want the market to think they had worthless assets; and smaller carriers wanted more spectrum on the market to lower the price of all spectrum. "Everybody had an interest in talking it up and no one had an interest in saying the emperor has no clothes," he said.

Genachowski clearly wants his legacy to be the man who ushered us into a new wireless age, and what better way to go about that then by conquering a non-existent enemy? Meanwhile his real legacy won't be quite so sexy; incumbent carriers continue to hoard oceans of a precious publicly-owned resource, in the process elbowing out potential competitors for generations to come.

just stahp

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Spectrum Crunch is all BS

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Fix for crunch?

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Doesn't He Just Look Like a Tool?

refarm

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Devils' Advocate

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Everything is A-OK

Unless I see their farmed / stocked spectrum being used

Re: Unless I see their farmed / stocked spectrum being used