It blatantly should. Except for allocations to things like scientific research of naturally occuring radio waves, there is no reason any spectrum should be held “in fee” — it should all be rented. Period. I believe the government has the uncontested right to do this.

Fiber optics has made P2P microwave obsolete technically, but fiber optics have their own problem, incumbent telephone monopolies who are only interested in having business customers pay $100 per hour per man plus materials, plus $150 per hour per engineering staff member, in a cost plus billing system to run a fiber optic line, then pay mileage charges forever on the loop. Municipalities that require $60 per hour per officer police details for any ROW construction work are another impediment (yet there are no officers when the municipal DOT staff comes to change street light bulbs or flags on street lights). Franchise agreements, building permits, environmental law (including “noise” and “dirt” controls), public hearings, mandatory building code variances, etc, all make it impossible to install fiber unless your connect and an incumbent. Satellite spectrum is another story. Satellite spectrum can be reused easily with directional antennas, just like cell phone spectrum. The analog radiolocation systems need to go. So does all the analog military spectrum. Its currently politically impossible to take back ANY spectrum from ANY users. The TV spectrum takebacks were only possible because of Digital OTA TV’s sharp signal drop off curve (either you get it crystal clear, or you don’t get it at all). No broadcast licenses were lost in the process. There are no use or coverage requirements for spectrum, so you can buy it/get it, and sit on it for decades. Look at Clearwire’s WiMAX system, it runs off of MMDS (Wireless Cable TV), BRS and EBS (Educational Broadcasting Services). Churches and non-profits have made a killing from leasing their never used EBS spectrum to Clearwire. Any non-profit in the 1980s qualified for EBS licenses from the FCC.

The USA is a federation, not a unitary state, so all the republics/states of the USA act only in their self interest and are a dog in the manger that block their pork from being taken away. A heavy handed communist or European socialist approach to clean up all the incumbents and their economic rent on spectrum, and force users to share spectrum and to move all users that don’t require portability to landline communications. A national/TVA/communist FTTH network would make the transition from fixed wireless to wireline affordable.

Perhaps renting spectrum, rather that auctioning it, or giving it away on “merit” is the solution to get rid of inefficient spectrum use. My house has property tax, why doesn’t spectrum have a property tax?

I find all of this to be amazing myself