Slicing the Geostationary Pie: Property Rights in Orbit
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There may be no free lunch, but dessert is on the house at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). For the second time in twelve months, the commission is about to give away a large number of shares of an outer-space resource that has become a mouth-watering delicacy to the telecommunications industry. But deciding who gets pieces of the pie is not easy. It requires the commission to assess and compare the technological sophistication, financial viability, and commitment to the “public interest” of all applicants—which, this time around, total twenty-one telecommunications providers and would-be providers. Nor is it really a “free” giveaway, even though users do not pay for the resource. In fact, the FCC’s generosity may soon force every American business and household having a telephone, TV, radio, or computer modem to pay needlessly high rates for services.
If the FCC were willing to organize a market for this extraterrestrial resource, it could overcome both difficulties. A market would be much easier to administer than the current system of bureaucratic allocation and would ensure that the price of most communications services fairly reflects their costs. So far, however, the commissioners have yet to endorse the sale rather than the rationing of their wares.
