Spectrum War: Karate Road vs. Defense

In hyping President Obama's decision on Monday to allocate 500 MHz of very scarce spectrum for mobile wireless broadband services, his economic adviser Lawrence Summers said this amounted to the best use of spectrum currently used by federal agencies and TV broadcasters.

Summers told a packed crowd at The New America Foundation on Monday that commercial carriers can use this new spectrum to bring about a revolution in life as we know it, especially all the nifty stuff folks can do on their smart phones.

Since I have so far sat out the smart phone revolution, I decided I needed to find out what folks are doing on their gizmos that is so captivating that they tend to walk into light posts or me, rather than look where they are going as they amble down New Hampshire Ave.

I typed "10 most popular iPhone apps" into Google and came up with a list from Apple, which, if it marks the start of a revolution, is one I do not care to join.

Summers and the president also wanted us all to know America's economic future is tied to mobile broadband, an assertion hard to square with the Karate Road "battle action game," which tops Apple's most popular iPhone app list.

Karate Road comes from an outfit called Splax.net, and clicking on the game's URL took me to a website filled with kanji characters. This makes sense because a domain search shows Splax hangs out in Sakura, Japan, instead of a town like Zap, N.D., where the town's 213 residents could probably use a gig bolting together some iPhone apps.

The No. 2 iPhone app on the list is My Signature, described as "an easy tool to help you generate a personalized signature and use it in your email." It also hails from abroad, the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

I can definitely live a rich and full life without either of the above -- or any of other top iPhone apps such as Zoltap: The Insulting Fortune Teller or Your Personal Tarot Card Reader -- but I wonder if the republic can afford taking away spectrum used by the Defense Department for command and control systems to support such silliness.