A lot of people here are saying that asking for a plan like this is like asking for the proverbial free lunch. Cellphone companies operate over a public good. Regulatory requisites for spectrum allocation, as something like this could become, should not be thought of as a free lunch. A free lunch (for operators) is to manage the spectrum in a way that does not maximize public interest.
If it's the cellphone companies then in the end the payers will be the taxpayers (through subsidies or lower spectrum license fee receipts as the cellphone companies factor in the costs of the free service obligation when bidding) and/or the customers, as costs are passed on to them.
I would love to see the numbers on this. It's not clear the plan would incur costs for operators unless there is no room left to optimize their use of the allocated spectrum. The article also lays out the argument for a value increase in the whole network (granted not limited to each operator) that could offset any costs. Even with inescapable costs that would be factored into the spectrum bids, why would it no be preferable for that value to be transferred directly to the public, in the form of free internet access, than to have it flow into governments for indirect redistribution?
9.6 kbps is about 3GB per month. That's between $44 (Finland) and $360 (US) in retail prices per year. It adds up to a lot, approximately $880 million to $7.2 billion per million users over a 20 year license. How many millions of subscribers did you want to subsidize?
> It's not clear the plan would incur costs for operators unless there is no room left to optimize their use of the allocated spectrum.
You cannot just consider the marginal costs. You have to take into consideration the fully loaded costs including operating and upgrading the network when you run out of capacity.
> The article also lays out the argument for a value increase in the whole network (granted not limited to each operator) that could offset any costs.
The cellphone companies don't care about imaginary money that does not flow to the bottom line.
> Even with inescapable costs that would be factored into the spectrum bids, why would it no be preferable for that value to be transferred directly to the public, in the form of free internet access, than to have it flow into governments for indirect redistribution?
The answer to this depends on whatever political views you subscribe to.
