Harvesting the Invisible Resource

The following is a summary of a new book Dr. Levin was preparing at the time of his death in April 1992. Conceived, in part, as a follow-up to his influential book, The Invisible Resource: Use and Regulation of the Radio Spectrum, it was scheduled to be completed by 1994 and published by Oxford University Press. The summary is excerpted from the book's prospectus, which also contains a detailed outline and summaries of each of the book's sixteen chapters. In addition to addressing the "significance of the policy issues", as Dr. Levin described the summary, it offers a glimpse of his ideas and conclusions about global spectrum management at the end of his life, after forty years of scholarly work and consulting.

The credibility of U.S. communications policies abroad appears vulnerable to inconsistencies with comparable policies at home. My proposed book would address such inconsistencies. One dramatic example relates to longstanding U.S. resistance to Third World calls for a "balanced" information flow. Balanced flow implies the right to monitor trans-border data flows, to control foreign media and journalists, and to require "prior consent" before any advanced nation can blanket a less developed one with foreign based news service by a direct broadcast satellite or otherwise.

The U.S. often opposes "prior consent" as tantamount to government censorship, and in direct conflict with its longstanding commitment to a free flow of information. Yet domestically, the U.S. has at least endorsed policies to promote media balance, fairness, equal access, and output diversity each of which may in some way qualify "free flow". True, U.S. fairness policies stop well short of any governmental requirement of "prior consent" (as in the New World Information Order). Nor has the U.S. been effective in promoting such policies in practice. Yet those same fairness policies clearly act to restrain individual private entrepreneurs in broadcasting from exercising their full, unencumbered editorial discretion, in a profit-maximizing fashion.

A second inconsistency in U.S. policies pertains to its continued opposition to Third World demands for a priori planning of the geostationary orbit, of space frequencies, and of shortwave (HF) spectrum. This opposition to spectrum planning abroad contrasts with the quite different domestic U.S. approval of pre-planned TV and FM allocation tables. Its opposition contrasts, also, with the domestic U.S. policy of long-term channel reservations whose purpose is to safeguard latecomer access in TV and FM by less affluent public, minority, and local community applicants.

In both cases, failure to address an apparent inconsistency publicly left the U.S. open to criticisms which could undermine its credibility. The implied U.S. negotiating strategy was to 'let sleeping dogs lie' until someone else raised the issue, and this acted to validate those critics of U.S. policy planning for the then latest World Administrative Radio Conferences (e.g., WARC/79) who found it "reactive, introspective (and aimed) primarily at protecting (our) already substantial uses of the spectrum."

The latter objective may be "natural" enough, and acceptable so long as pursued with flexibility, sensibility, and intelligence. The U.S. can, however, ill afford to run the risk of being caught in unavoidable contradictions and double standards in what is at best a delicate negotiating process where the other side is particularly sensitive to this.

By way of extrication from such double standards my study would undertake a constructive response, first, by considering the sense in which the seeming contradictions were in fact real; second, by developing a fall-back analysis of ways to combine a priori spectrum plans with market incentives in global spectrum management; and third, by considering ways to help develop the mass media infrastructure of developing nations so that their demand for "controlled balance" could be assuaged at least in part (as increasingly with the U.S.) by greater structural diversity.

But how to fund all this? One answer may lie in the MacBride Commission's proposal to tax spectrum or orbital use internationally, or the sale of international communications equipment. There, the proceeds could presumably be earmarked to bolster the telecommunications infrastructure of poor countries in Africa, East Asia, South America, the Pacific Basin, etc. Another way out may be to create arrangements whereby the poor countries can sublease unused assignments to governments or companies in the developed countries with the technology and know-how to proceed. The payments could be made in cash or kind (e.g., free domestic circuits for LDCs whose orbit spectrum assignments are used). The problems in, and prospects for, such mechanisms will be discussed in some detail.

Of central concern throughout the book is the following paradox: On one hand, the Third World seems increasingly bent on using its voting strength in the ITU to impose detailed a priori plans on advanced economies like the U.S. On the other hand, developed nations, in particular the U.S., seemingly favor retention of the current evolutionary system of first come, first served. By the same token, developing nations seem likely to continue to resist the strong Western commitment to "free" information flow at least until the Third World's communications infrastructure permits its more extensive participation in a manysided transnational exchange.

Sorely needed at this time, therefore, is a careful review of alternative middle-range strategies for managing orbit spectrum between the polar bounds of first come, first served and detailed a priori planning. Such a review would consider market-type leasing arrangements, techniques, and safeguards to guarantee equitable access without formal spectrum reservations; routine planning conferences with greater frequency than the current 20-year hiatus between WARCs; and the possible role of regional consortia of intergovernmental spectrum users. But equally important also are studies of mechanisms to divert recaptured spectral rents into technical assistance, communications hardware, and software (personnel, training, news services, programming, etc.). Such studies are part of a concerted effort to develop Third World communications infrastructure adequate for a multilateral information flow.