Those who paid for licenses would be rather put out, and there would be large and painful disruptions in service. But probably not as bad as can be imagined. A lot of stuff would probably still work just fine, and only suffer occasional outages.
My cellphone already doesn't work reliably now, but my wi-fi would still work, as I blast my neighbors' routers out of my living room by increasing my transmitter power, and we might even have a grand war of RF attrition, which could spill over into previously reserved bands, including air, military, and emergency services. Or maybe the next version of router firmware handles it.
Wi-fi is in unlicensed spectrum. It already has to contend with cordless landline phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, garage door openers, and home security cameras. And that has prompted the creation of new technology to make it work. So now I can enjoy an encrypted Mbps link from the wall to my workstation without running a wire, even as neighbors on all sides do the same thing.
I'd guess that the market for SDRs, highly-directional custom-geometry antennas, laser-optical data links, and wired network building retrofits would explode. Mobile phone service would backslide in quality. GPS would be frequently jammed or spoofed. Eventually, someone would mess with air or ship traffic and get arrested for terrorism. TV would have to come up with some way to sign its signal, so that no one can interrupt kids' programming with shock imagery, or inject pirate ads over the normal ads. Or maybe they just give up, and stream their feed over the Internet, in competition with everyone who wasn't protected by an FCC license.
The FCC keeps everything working by the FCC's system. Without the FCC, it would have to work by a different system, or it might not work for everyone, for all existing use cases. It is not guaranteed that any such future theoretical system would protect any given usage of RF broadcast. Nor is it guaranteed that any usage would be threatened. If you don't run a service that is an uncontroversially unmitigated good--or at the least unremarkably banal--someone will probably try to interfere with you or usurp your station squat, and that will be your problem to solve. In order to get back what was lost with the disappearance of the FCC, some work would be required. In my view, developing the frequency to be more usable, more beneficial, or more accessible to the public is what gives you the right to use it. Other people may have different criteria.
Lets not delve into the RF Purge, and instead let the research into Cognitive Radio lead us to this kind of free-for-all future, in a managed, automated, non-chaotic kind of way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio
My cellphone already doesn't work reliably now, but my wi-fi would still work, as I blast my neighbors' routers out of my living room by increasing my transmitter power, and we might even have a grand war of RF attrition, which could spill over into previously reserved bands, including air, military, and emergency services. Or maybe the next version of router firmware handles it.
Wi-fi is in unlicensed spectrum. It already has to contend with cordless landline phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, garage door openers, and home security cameras. And that has prompted the creation of new technology to make it work. So now I can enjoy an encrypted Mbps link from the wall to my workstation without running a wire, even as neighbors on all sides do the same thing.
I'd guess that the market for SDRs, highly-directional custom-geometry antennas, laser-optical data links, and wired network building retrofits would explode. Mobile phone service would backslide in quality. GPS would be frequently jammed or spoofed. Eventually, someone would mess with air or ship traffic and get arrested for terrorism. TV would have to come up with some way to sign its signal, so that no one can interrupt kids' programming with shock imagery, or inject pirate ads over the normal ads. Or maybe they just give up, and stream their feed over the Internet, in competition with everyone who wasn't protected by an FCC license.
The FCC keeps everything working by the FCC's system. Without the FCC, it would have to work by a different system, or it might not work for everyone, for all existing use cases. It is not guaranteed that any such future theoretical system would protect any given usage of RF broadcast. Nor is it guaranteed that any usage would be threatened. If you don't run a service that is an uncontroversially unmitigated good--or at the least unremarkably banal--someone will probably try to interfere with you or usurp your station squat, and that will be your problem to solve. In order to get back what was lost with the disappearance of the FCC, some work would be required. In my view, developing the frequency to be more usable, more beneficial, or more accessible to the public is what gives you the right to use it. Other people may have different criteria.