Pagers are now on wristwatches, the cellular-phone market doubles in size every few years, and mobile phones are destined to become as ubiquitous as cars, boats and airplanes. The Federal Communications Commission has awarded some 20 experimental licenses for new, short-range cellular networks that promise to put a portable phone in every shirt pocket. With the rapid cabling of America, land lines have surpassed the airwaves for distributing entertainment, and they are perfectly suited to the voracious transmission requirements of high-definition television. And as the broadcast world moves underground, with wires running side by side with the telephone system, competition between the two systems, air and ground, is not only natural but also inevitable. Rather than smoothing the transition and embracing competition, it is plodding forward with the murkiest imaginable scheme for new rate regulation of cable television.
Trouble is, retransmission is galloping the way of the woolly mammoth.
Fifty million homes are already cabled, and as cable becomes as ubiquitous as telephone wire, television signals in the air will make about as much sense as flying elephants. These spectrum-devouring leviathans can better be transmitted underground, and their airspace is now badly needed for new mobile applications. Happily, for once, Congress' dependable ineptitude in telecommunications matters won't much matter. The planned legislation will be made obsolete by the market long before the regulators and federal judges have begun to guess at what it means. The veto threatened by the White House may not even be worth the trouble.