Comment The reason this band is cheap. (Score 5, Insightful) 195
There's a reason why this spectrum is much cheaper than others, in that it's assigned to satellite communication.
The assumption being made is that if you license this spectrum, you need to make significant costs to actually put satellites into space, so the licensing is cheaper.
So they want both now (cake meme), cheap spectrum, but not put satellites into orbit (which their original proposal by the way *did* have), but instead use it as ground based spectrum (which is much more expensive to license)
Car analogy: I buy a classic old timer, so I don't have to pay road taxes (or much less anyway) and much less insurance. Now I put those license plates on a Hummer and still expect to not pay the road taxes and much less insurance...