Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone by Thomas Winslow Hazlett (review)

From early in the twentieth century the response has been the parallel growth of a bureaucracy, at national and international levels, that has assigned frequencies and constructed the radio spectrum as a space to be sub-divided, occupied, and protected from trespass. Even public bodies that might be considered to have an overriding reason to be granted clear spectrum, such as first responders and the military, should, says Hazlett, be forced to purchase commercial wireless services and be subject to these processes of market liberalization. See, for example, the FRC's rejection of a plan to extend the range of AM frequencies in 1927 due to "the manifest inconvenience to the listening public which would result" (p. 48); Hazlett lambasts this action because it would force consumers to buy new receiver sets.