Just read a report about the ongoing spectrum auction in the US. T-Mobile is already willing to pay over 3 billion dollars to get a nation wide spectrum allotme nt. Observers expect the total revenue generated by the auction from all companies involved to be over 15 billion dollars. It kind of reminds me of what happend
in Germany a couple of years ago when the total sum for 3G licenses was about 50 billion euros or about 70 billion dollars.
So what will happen to the money? Will the US be as short sighted as Germany and just use the money to reduce the national debt or will they reinvest at least a
part of the money into the wireless industry? Just imagine what 10% of this sum would do when invested into wireless projects and new services…
Anyone aware what will happen to the money?
I hope the US government doesn’t do any investing on its own. That’s the quickest way to kill innovation…get the public sector directly involved.
If they were to invest the money, the best way would be to offer low interest loans to entrepreneurs or to place some portion of the money with private equity (not sure how this would be viewed by the American public).
That being said, the US is facing a deficit that poses a threat to the world economy. I can think of much worse things to do with the money then pay down a part of that deficit.
Call me master of the obvious, but the creation of the Internet in the 1960s and 70s was a public sector project. The growth of the Internet was managed by the US. National Science Foundation prior to it being released to the private sector in 1993 or 1994.
The creation of GPS in the US was a public sector project.
In fact, both of these technologies began as military funded research.
I’m just saying.