Chris Barton: The sky's the limit when it comes to greed

They're selling the sky again.

It was a silly idea to sell it in the first place. It's even sillier this time around because the buyer is Telecom, which is worried other owners will use their bits of sky to threaten its phone lines monopoly. What better reason do we need to ban Telecom from owning these heavens?

I'm talking about radio spectrum - that mysterious form of invisible energy that travels both in waves and pulses through the air - and delivers fabulous communications at home and on the move.

In this particular instance, the sky for sale is in the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) frequency range, a chunk of which Counties Power is offloading, having lost its nerve and given up trying to compete with Telecom.

Which is another good reason why the Commerce Commission shouldn't allow this sale to go ahead. New Zealand's experiments in wireless infrastructure have failed to make any dent in Telecom's monopoly. The most any of the fledgling wireless operators hope for is to be a "healthy dwarf" that Telecom would tolerate.

But Telecom's bid to buy into this wireless space shows it's clearly worried - particularly by Broadcast Communications, Vodafone and TelstraClear, which already hold management rights to 3.5GHz sky. Not that any of them are using it much for our benefit at present.

Telecom's big worry is WiMax, an emerging wireless standard that doesn't need direct line of sight for transmission, can travel long distances and provides broadband internet access at 10 megabits a second - five times better than Telecom's best residential offering.

For those familiar with WiFi - the short-range wireless standard that lets you connect your notebook to the net as long as you are in range of a wireless hotspot - WiMax is WiFi on steroids. But despite Intel's hype, it is unlikely to have any great take-up for at least 10 years.

Which is the main reason why selling the sky like this is so stupid - because large tracts get bought up by fat cats who keep it dormant for future use. The sky should be available to all who walk under it.

There are signs the Ministry of Economic Development - long wedded to the idea of property rights in the air - is beginning to see the error of its ways. In its April review of radio spectrum policy (www.med.govt.nz/rsm/spp/review/report/index.html) it notes: "The Government's primary role is to promote the public benefit, and in a commercial spectrum market ... a significant number of desirable social and cultural outcomes might be defeated."

That's a roundabout way of saying if you sell spectrum to fat, greedy cats, the public often gets zilch. One of the main effects of the ministry's scheme to slice, dice and sell the airwaves has been to lock up swathes of sky that no one can use for decades. What a waste.

To be fair, the ministry has set aside some spectrum for "public parks" (in the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz frequencies), available at no cost for anyone to use as long as they follow a few politeness rules.

There is no doubt such parks, also referred to as wireless commons, provide a fantastic development ground for emerging wireless technologies. Witness the wireless community developments here by groups such as zephyr.net.nz, www.nzwireless.org and www.cafenet.co.nz..

It's perhaps with this in mind that the ministry is considering whether to "progressively allocate more spectrum to public park uses".

Good idea - and let's start now with 3.5GHz. How better to promote the development of WiMax and, hopefully, broadband competition than to set the frequency free for all (including Telecom) to use?

If the ministry wanted to make a bold, visionary move, it would buy back the spectrum it sold to Counties Power ($540,000) and some of the chunks Vodafone ($730,000), Broadcast Communications ($710,000) and TelstraClear ($675,000) don't really need, and make it all public park.

Not only would it allow big organisations and community groups alike to take control of their communication needs, it might also provide just the kick that's needed to at last get some real broadband and phone competition in New Zealand.

I put this idea to radio spectrum planning manager Brian Miller, who said it would be "inappropriate to consider in the short term", mainly because "sensible" decisions about selling off all the available 3.5GHz spectrum have already been made.

Yes, Brian, sensible for a few hoarding companies, but not at all sensible for the public.