Using spectrum for the common good

Service delivery is lost in pursuing auctions

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”  Individual profiling by marketers, for instance, epitomised by internet platforms such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp, Netflix and so on. But tread carefully, O Reader, because whether we think about it or not, what we do has real consequences. 

Here is a cautionary tale about auctions, more particularly, spectrum auctions.  Recently, the Nobel for economics, the Sveriges Riksbank prize, was awarded to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson for auction design. In the words of the award committee, “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats”.