Randy May of the Free State Foundation has a good piece out today, picking up on an prediction by the investment firm of Stifel Nicolaus that the exact meaning of “open access” under yesterday’s 700 MHz decision likely won’t be determined for years. Stifel Nicolaus says 2009 is the likely date — that strikes May (and me) as optimistic, given the eight years it took to settle the unbundling rules under the 1996 telecom act.
This definitional long tail has consequences, May points out. This is because that veritable economic theorem that “people don’t want to provide a pig in a poke” holds true, even for the FCC. “Think about it,” he says. “In how many auctions have you bid when the rules concerning what you can do with your winning bid won’t be known until several years later?”
A good, but hardly reassuring, point. So you might as well get comfortable. This may go on for a while.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.