| | The FCC did not create the radio spectrum nor does it have some homesteading claim to the near-infinitesimal ranges found within it. It is, simply, a bureaucratic sophistry, which oddly enough believes it can distribute something it does not own
In all fairness, they've created a usable resource out of what would otherwise be unusable, going back to the days before spread spectrum.
Unlike fibre, the open spectrum has limited usable real estate, because of water vapor, etc. The atmosphere is opaque to much more than it is transparent to. In terms of usable bandwidth, there is some unGodly unimaginable ratio between the entire open atmosphere and a single fibre channel, like 35 billion to 1, because a fibre is 'clean.' It is only through relatively recent technology, spread spectrum, that the issue that originally led to the creation of the FCC has become less important than it once was for the open spectrum. The totally open market you describe would require everything to be converted to spread spectrum(or something like it, where every in channel signal is noise to every other in channel signal except its own, because of Walsh encoding or some other bit of cleverness.)
We can see what human systems that rely on self regulation look like. Bangladesh's streets have such a system. There is only one rule, and that rule is followed meticulously: the local biggest vehicle goes wherever its driver wants to, when its driver wants to.
Applied to the open spectrum before the advent of spread spectrum, this would have been, the strongest transmitting signal du jour wins. To claim a channel, all you would need to do is put up the strongest signal in that channel in your area which you would find usable until someone broadcast with a stronger signal still, which could simply mean, any transmitter closer to a receiver. The open spectrum would be totally unusable chaos. It would be like those 'open phone lines' from our youth, where you call a pnone number and can hear all of humanity talking at the same time, in other words, noise.
But, even in a world where the free market is going to use nothing but spread spectrum, that is no magic bullet if it operating in the wild, wild west, where anybody can throw up a transmitter and have at it. Not even spread spectrum has infinite abilility to recover signal from overhwlming noise, it just has enhanced capability.
Regulation of the open spectrum by some neutral third party/authority was a necessary evil to turn nothing into a usable something, and still is(for other than spread spectrum.) It is a classic problem of the commons, and there is no evidence that on average, the commons takes care of itself. On average, the commons gets trashed and is unusable by anybody.
I think it is still required untul spread spectrum is predominant in everything that uses the open spectrum (broadcast, comm, satellites, ...) In otherwords, for the foreseeable future. At the very least, the folks who we have empowered to project violence in our name are going to protect their use of that same spectrum in carrying out their mission. Its not like there is one open spectrum for the military and defense satellites, etc., and one for the rest of us distributing porn.
Fibre is a whole different issue. The fact that it crosses state lines in commerce is the absolute only hook into it.
regards,
Fred
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