Regulatory Agencies and the Stockholm Syndrome

Dr. Michael J. Marcus has a website full of interesting information on spectrum policy.  I only regret that I hadn't visited his site in several years but I've been back today as I stumbled on a talk Dr. Marcus gave, in the Netherlands in May, on the history of the civilian use spread spectrum communications at the 10th Economics of Infrastructures Conference at Delft University of Technology.

If you are interested in how today's WiFi came about, look at his history page.  It's best such history I'm aware of — no surprise as Dr. Marcus was at the FCC and participated in the early work that set the stage for today's WiFi industry.

But if you have the time, listen to the his presentation for a real flavor of what went on, and for its implications for spectrum regulation today.

Finally, to justify the title of this post, here's one great slide from the presentation:

(Note:  Dr. M. J. Marcus is not to be confused with J. Scott Marcus whose work on communications policy I have also quoted in the past.)