I was recently at a conference addressed by Bob Lucky, former head of    
Bell Labs, who often, these days, writes on the tragedy of the    
commons as applied to spectrum. His view, arising out of some of his    
recent work which I did not get a chance to explore in any detail    
with him, would imply that there is no scarcity of spectrum. There    
are no limits.  
  
The value of McCaw's licenses is not relevant to the issue. If the    
FCC or some other agency has created scarcity by insisting, with the    
support of the state,  that people have licenses from them to use    
spectrum, then Craig McCaw's licenses would be worth whatever they    
were worth. In this circumstance, the FCC is selling, and McCaw is    
reselling, what is normally called "protection".  
  
Ken Gordon