For forty years spanning five decades, as the world’s first communications economist, [Dr. Levin] researched, published, and proposed innovative economic and regulatory solutions that anticipated -- and later addressed -- the problems of competing rights and access to the airwaves, or electromagnetic spectrum.  His research and proposals anticipated the evolution of television, space satellites, cellular telephones, electronic remote devices, and wireless Internet -- all quite "far-fetched" when he began his work in the 1940s and '50s.  As his space economist protégé Molly Macauley indicated, the competing demands on the increasingly congested electromagnetic field – whose uses range from "radio, television, and everyday telecommunications to wildlife tracking, astronomy, garage door openers, and national defense" – proved his predictions and concerns correct.

But who was the person behind these polices?  To understand that, one must understand his life, where the seeds and groundwork for such policies were laid and nurtured.  This book attempts to answer that question.

Focusing on its political ramifications, [his] work was the first to illustrate the economic necessity and benefits of equitable, global allocation of the airwaves as a limited – or "invisible" – resource, and diversification of its ownership.  He continued to penetrate the frontiers of communications economics even after it evolved into the highly pertinent field it is today – an evolution due, in large part, to his own contributions. In short, as his friend and colleague Harold Wattel put it, he espoused "open communication for the weak as well as the strong," and "his books will long be sought in the libraries throughout the world…" Such achievements impelled [his] election to membership in the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C., an association of persons deemed to "have done meritorious original work in science, literature, or the arts, or… recognized as distinguished in a learned profession or in public service." They also earned him an invitation to place his papers in the Archive of Contemporary History, devoted to "the history and development of individuals who have played a prominent role in the twentieth century’s social, political, legal and economic scene."

Although, in the tradition of scholarly credibility, [he] was a stickler for scientific evidence and economic viability, he also viewed economics as an art.  He saw it as a vehicle for facilitating social progress in creative ways, particularly the rights, opportunities, facilities and technologies of the underprivileged in America as well as in emerging third world countries.  Most notably, he proposed a system in which latecomer users and emerging, underdeveloped countries would not be deprived of their use of the airwaves by the world powers or monopolies controlling the market…

…the challenges of his childhood and early adulthood, as a visionary outcast ahead of his time, foreshadowed his uphill triumphs later in life, particularly his posthumous vindication in telecommunications, which allowed the field of communications economics to grow from [Dr. Levin] as the sole economist to numerous economists and scholars throughout the world.  

In particularly, as I saw Walter Morgan’s interesting material – and it occurred to me the questions he didn’t ask – he had an awful lot of stuff that presumably could be thrust away, that you could say, what does it mean to go from C to KA to KU? He had a lot of dates in there – he had a lot of technologies and development. I didn’t get the feeling, however, of what it meant to come in today, as opposed to if you’d gone in ten or twenty years ago – what differences would that have made? How would that bear on what we are facing, in terms of our U.S. position visa vi the space WARC, and the position we can take visa vi latecomer nations, where there’s supposed to be burden-sharing. If you’re a latecomer, you’re not supposed to pick it all up by yourself – that’s the argument. We’re wrestling with that. And it seems to be, there must be a tale that can be told in a very exciting way out of what the NASA experience with KA was, in terms of why they chose to do it, what they had to do it in order to do it, what kind of opposition they faced, and why – that kind of thing.

Alright, let me go on just for a moment here to John Ledger’s very interesting paper. And he gave us all a nice economics lesson. I was glad to be there in the first or second row getting the economics lesson at the same time. And I would just say, there was a gentleman – I’m not sure he’s still here – who said he wanted to talk about auctions… The FCC would like to talk about auctions, or at least randomize distribution of grants in the way of lotteries. There’s even talk now, there’s supposed to be new legislation in our country and in Britain with regard to the fact that the orbit spectrum assignments have value – it would be nice to be able to price them. And, indeed, it’s even been said that it would be nice to collect some of that and use it for infrastructure development in places that we can’t new grants – if you like – for funding. And I suppose they have third world countries in mind. There is some legislation flowing around on both sides of the Atlantic, let’s say. I would only say this. John’s paper was very beautifully done. He may not want to follow all the doors he opened. That’s understandable. Nevertheless, he did open them, and he can’t say he didn’t. Okay.

[Group laughter]

Now, in any case… I would say that John did focus our attention on the common pool problem, which he very nicely illustrated, and the phenomena of market failure – and he illustrated that too. And I just couldn’t help but feel that John, of all people, knows that there are mechanisms that are built to do this. Now they may be hypothetical, theoretic mechanisms, but they’re mechanisms, and they’re called pricing mechanisms. And if you had a pricing mechanism – and this is what the non-economist – oh, what’s it going to do to me? Alright, if you had the pricing mechanism operating you would then have a kind of verdict appear without having to come in with a governmental blunderbuss. I mean, that’s what economists like to feel – it would work out better. But how will we get this pricing mechanism to work? I mean, it’s just impossible. On the Space WARC Advisory Committee, I have many opportunities to be bruised. And I’m pleased to be bruised. I don’t mind that at all. And sometimes in the bruising process, I hear a couple of nice things such as, "Well, if you kept doing this for another thirty years, you might get through." And my answer is, you know, I don’t have a particular time horizon which says it must be done by the next Space WARC. Indeed, I’m rather optimistic. I’ve seen a lot of developments since 1979 Space WARC. And so I think we’re moving, though we might be moving in a very slow way.

The only thing is, I would like to leave on the table – and particularly for John and my other colleagues to ponder a bit – and that is that we have some interesting evidence that there is indeed a market out there, and it is already operating, even without the kind of fully transferable right mechanisms that University of Chicago would tell us we really ought to move towards and have, and that we ought to configure these rights, and all of that. I would say, today in its crudest form we have a mechanism in the international field. And I would like to give you – and I would love to hear from you as to what you think of some of these examples and episodes, which I’m starting to analyze and work on a bit. And I’ve got four of them that strike me, and I had a chance in New Orleans – for some of us sat around at something – a panel called "Emergent Markets for Common Property Resources" – an economist would go up in flames: now how can you have a market for common property resources? And the answer was a very simple one. Given the common property syndrome, you can’t have a market, so what do you do? So you have an administrative implement. And that sounds like you’re throwing the market out the window. But you’re not. Because you can then have markets for the administrative implements. Oh boy, that’s it – you know – the economist always has an answer. We have – markets for airport landing rights, and we have markets for fishery licenses that are traded, okay? And we have an emission trading program of the EPA. And I would propose, in a quiet way, that we can have them for orbit spectrum assignments too. Okay? And I would say, we are already having some crude examples – some crude evidence – that there is a trading of orbit spectrum assignments. I’ll just give you – you know, this is maybe just a terrible oversimplification, but I can’t see it any other way. There was something Annex C that we all know about – Telesat Canada – and they had some unused capacity, and RCA and GT & E were a little on the short side – I don’t know if that was when they’d lost one of theirs, or whatever it was – they were looking around, and they would like to buy it. And they finally struck a price! Yes! They struck a price with the unused capacity of Annex C. And you say, oh, well, that was for Annex C transponder. And I say, well, wait a minute now. What is an Annex C transponder worth on the ground in a second hand market, and what is it worth in place with an orbit spectrum assignment operating? And I say, that’s the first approach to get the value of the implicit use of the orbit spectrum that Canada had, which they were renting out for two million dollars a year for transponder to RCA – and at another time, I believe, GT & E. So that’s one proposition which I’d be glad to have you comment on, or write to me, or whatever. I have these comments in writing, if you like.

There’s another interesting one called "PAC Star". We have a U.S. corporation, TRT, that has a subsidiary Pacific Satellite. They wanted to create a system in the south Pacific, and they needed an assignment to do it. Now, they could have waited in line at FCC and the ITU. But they thought, well, once they got this thing on the drawing board, you know, it was going to take some time, and there could be island nation opposition. So let them go to a third world country and get it to request the orbit spectrum assignment, which Papa New Guinea (PNG) – its PTT – was glad to do. And they did it. And, indeed, the PCI brought the capital of the know-how into the picture. And PCI paid Papa New Guinea one free transponder. I don’t know whether it was in perpetuity. Certainly until the equipment wears out. But perhaps it was longer. And that had a certain value. And they did that in order to get PNG to get the orbit spectrum assignment from ITU. And that has – it’s in process. I can’t get a straight word as to how far it’s gone.

Let me give you a third example: Panamsat that we know about. They could not gain access to the part of the orbit spectrum they wanted without a foreign correspondent. Well, apparently potential foreign correspondents were nervous, they were members of Intelsat and they didn’t want to get on the bad side of Intelsat, and no one came forward. But finally Peru came forward. There might have been some other inducements to Peru – some side payments – I don’t know all of the facts on that one. But finally Panamsat struck a bargain with Peru. Peru was its foreign correspondent, and Panamsat could gain access, and gain access to the orbit spectrum. And they paid Peru one free transponder – or it was the right to buy a transponder for a dollar, I think is the way it was put. And they got it that way.

Alright, let me give you my fourth example – and you can get all these in Satellite Communications, FCC application office and whatever: SIGNUS. Panamsat and SIGNUS. I don’t know where that one stands – you may know. They were on the verge of a transaction. Okay? And what it is is this: SIGNUS had a right to operate in KU. And when I tuned in on this a while back, they had one more year to go in their right. But they had nothing to operate with. They had no equipment up there. Whereas, Panamsat had twenty-four C-band transponders, lower down and less costly to operate, but no – and they did not have permission to use their twelve KU-band transponders. So Panamsat had the KU-band transponders – CIGNUS had the right. Alright? In other words, Panamsat didn’t have right to use that. They had a hybrid satellite, okay? They could only use the first set which were essentially VCs. Okay? So I couldn’t help but feel intuitively that a transaction of some sort between these two companies must materialize – you know, it’s like in the works. It hasn’t emerged yet. Maybe it has by now. But you can see it coming down the pike when you hear the possibility that CIGNUS might acquire Panamsat – or Panamsat acquire CIGNUS – or that they might both create a joint venture to do this thing. What else is that but a market-type transaction?

So – okay – these are the little tales. Okay? I would just like to say that this strikes me as being evidence that there already is a market process going on – it’s crude. And if you let economists into this "cabbage patch", it may be possible to systematize some of the results, and to use them along with other results to try to put a few bullets on that price – the orbit spectrum thing that we’re talking about – which is, I think, where John leads us with his open doors that he himself doesn’t want to go through. Thank you.

[Group laughter]