so, I live in the UK. And we are just in the process of rolling out 4 G mobile Internet. This technology promises extremely high speeds for its users. No doubt this speed will come at a price. But I'm not talking about paying for mobile Internet access. I'm talking about free mobile access.
It occurs to me that our government has missed a trick here. I guess, that they have auctioned off the spectrum to the highest bidders. This is what any normal economist would tell them to do. However, they are a government, and that they should not always act like a profit maximising organisation.
Supposing, the UK government had incorporated a public service requirement into their conditions for rewarding access to spectrum. Such a public service requirement might simply require any operator to provide free access to their network. Albeit, at a very low speeds. the speed would have to be sufficiently low that the service could not be used to carry VoIP phone calls. Such a proposal would open up the mobile Internet to a large number of people who would not pay for it without cannibalising the customers of the network provider.
Costs could be controlled by allowing the network providers to agree amongst themselves which of them would provide the public service Internet access for a given area.
Such a move would have wide benefits for society as a whole. And, might well benefit the operators as they may well find that once people experience the joys of the mobile Internet at low speeds, they then decide to upgrade to a faster speed.
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