[UPDATE 1] Facing Recond Budget Deficits, Bush Floats Idea to Tax Unlicensed Wireless.

US President George Bush proposed on Monday that unlicensed spectrum be taxed. It's unclear how he proposes to do this, who is supposed to pay these fees, or how it's supposed to raise $3.6 billion dollars -- but hey, what does that matter. In fact, it's unclear how this proposal in any way helps bring about universal affordable broadband access by 2007 -- but then again, it's been unclear from the start how George Bush plans to achieve this goal at all.

With the recent agreement to open up more than 255 megahertz of new bandwidth in the 5GHz band, this also begs the question, why is US spectrum policy so completely schizophrenic?

[UPDATE 1]

Telecommunications expert Harold Feld explains, it's the trade press that has it wrong, there's no proposed unlicensed tax.