IP: F.C.C. to Promote a Trading System to Sell Airwaves

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/biztech/articles/13spec.html

F.C.C. to Promote a Trading System to Sell Airwaves

By STEPHEN LABATON


  -- As the airwaves grow ever more congested with modern wireless 
communications, the federal government is developing plans to open up the 
spectrum by, in effect, treating its frequencies as commodities to be 
bought and sold as routinely as pork bellies or soybeans in the open market.

Officials at the Federal Communications Commission say they are preparing 
rules that would create a trading system in which telecommunications 
companies of all kinds, from old-fashioned radio stations and telephone 
companies to purveyors of wireless Internet services, could bid for 
underused slivers of the spectrum that are already under the control of 
other companies.