USE IT OR LOSE IT:

Seen properly, the solution to today's spectrum problem is to permit any spectrum that's immediately deployable to be immediately deployed by those who can make use of it. Tomorrow's problem, which government will have to solve in any case, is to reform spectrum allocation so all users--government, business, military--have incentive to use the airwaves efficiently or transfer their rights to those who can.

Verizon and AT&T, it's true, value spectrum partly because Washington has created artificial scarcity. Nor are they above lobbying to stop new supplies from coming into the wireless market via innovators like LightSquared and Dish.

But spectrum is an input that allows the quickest, cheapest expansion of mobile broadband capacity, and standing in the way is especially dumb right now given what else is going on in the larger broadband marketplace.

A lot of reasons might explain why investment in fiber-to-the-home and advanced DSL has dropped off dramatically. TV was supposed to help carry the weight of such deployments, but the economics of TV are falling apart. Weirdness in Washington and a slow-growth recovery don't help either to whet appetites for investments with long and uncertain paybacks. But whatever the reasons, the withering of the urge by phone companies and others to compete with cable in supplying high-speed bandwidth to homes is a phenomenon that deserves more attention.

We're convinced the biggest factor is paralysis over the potential of wireless to bypass expensively laid physical lines.

Verizon, with the country's first 4G network, already allows users in some neighborhoods to get their home Internet via a wireless link, i.e., a network designed for mobile. Yes, it's expensive and slow for now, as all new bandwidth platforms are at first. Verizon has also experimented in marrying its mobile network with DirecTV to deliver a fully cable-like experience to homes.

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