FCC Goes Halfway On Opening 700 MHz Spectrum 192
The FCC has set rules for the upcoming auction of 700-MHz spectrum and they went halfway on the four open access principles that Google and others had called for. The agency said yes to "open devices" and "open applications," thus requiring the auction winner to permit consumers to use any device or application on the network. But the FCC turned down "open services" and "open networks," so the winners will not be obligated to let others buy access at wholesale prices in order to offer network services. This vote would seem to mean that Google won't bid in the spectrum auction. Ars has a more in-depth look at the outcome.
Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Google sure has been trying to throw their weight around a lot lately.
Is there a purpose for the FCC anymore? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this even make sense? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you have one without the other? If the winner is required to allow free use of the spectrum for devices and applications doesn't that include devices used to provide services? I mean sure, they wouldn't have to let you use their infrastructure or buy access at wholesale prices, but they couldn't stop you from building your own infrastructure.
Are spectra sold or leased? (Score:1, Interesting)
And how about other countries?
(Yes, I could look it up, but... here's your chance to educate the thread.
--
http://www.metagovernment.org/ [metagovernment.org] - Power to the people. Completely.
Re:Abolish the FCC! (Score:3, Interesting)
Democracy [US version, noun]: "Where each dollar gets an equal vote."
Comparable to the Retail Electric Industry (Score:5, Interesting)
The US essentially has two types systems for moving electricity around: the Transmission System and the Distribution System. Transmission System lines are typically high voltage and used for wholesale sales of electricity. They are predominately federally regulated. Distribution System lines are typically lower voltage and used for distribution of power to retail end-use customers.
However the open access requirements are quite different. Transmission Systems are open to any user (with lots of strings, but in theory anyway). So someone who wants to sell power at wholesale essentially has the same right of access to the transmission lines as the utility that owns the lines does. In other words, the utility's transmission functions are no longer vertically integrated (at least in theory) with their power generation functions. This concept is known as "comparability." Sadly, the FCC rejected this type of open access.
For distribution systems, the utilities are still far more vertically integrated and largely control who has access to their power lines. While they still have to provide some level of access to competing users, there's no comparability concept and no sense that the utility is in the business of "renting" its system to all users and that its affiliated branches are just another user. Instead, we are going to continue to see integrated networks where the owner of the spectrum is able to stiffle innovation. Requiring that the purchaser of the spectrum re-sell it to competing companies would have guaranteed far more interesting uses of this spectrum.
Of course, allowing for phone transferability and the other items are good; but is a public safety system really the biggest concession that the FCC could extract? Yes, it is important. But nobody was going to object to giving fire fighters the communications equipment they needed.
Sad.
FCC steals our First Amendment. (Score:1, Interesting)
This is what is call it the bands where we watched TV.
So rather then give a small part of the spectrum to
the public for open commerce. The FCC sell out
airwaves to the biggest monopoly.
With out an open network we will never have more then a
few providers of the last mile(access to the Internet).
the result will be take over, not competition.
There goes your chances to compete with the international
community.
see Krugman On the Connectivity Power Shift [slashdot.org]
Re:Halfway is no good (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Google May Bid Yet (Score:3, Interesting)
This is going to be on hell of a bidding war, I'll tell you that!
Re:Abolish the FCC! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a circular definition. The FCC defines what is proper for a broadcaster; then requires that stations be proper. Technically speaking, what keeps a broadcast station on the proper frequency and at the proper fidelity is hardware, and fully functional hardware that can do this is extremely inexpensive these days.
Without the FCC, broadcast stations still have motivation to stay in one place, primarily so that they are easily located, and easily retrieved from memory, both human and hardware. Without the FCC, stations still have motivation to maintain high quality signals, because listeners prefer such signals. Without the FCC, stations would no longer have a monopoly on listeners, and you and I could start our own stations. Without the FCC, putting up a very high quality local radio station capable of covering ten square miles or so would cost well under $100 and have a maintenance cost of a few cents a month. With the FCC, the same low power station costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you can get them to issue you a license, which you probably cannot. Without the FCC, all manner of clever services and hardware would be possible and most likely would appear. For instance, your radio could read out the weather forecast or stocks or whatever using sub 20-hz encoding. Without the FCC, you could actually broadcast your own opinions and those of your peers (and I strongly suspect this is one of the key reasons you'll never see low power stations easily licensed.)
The FCC is absolutely and totally a tool of the corporations. Other than maintaining their monopoly, it has no reason to prevent the average citizen from having free access to a decent broadcast band, not to mention a great deal of the rest of the spectrum. But corporations are completely against this (and with good reason - I could put a far better "talk" station on the air than anything you've ever heard from a corporation in the last 25 years or so, at which point it would be easy to consume part of "their" demographic. So could a lot of other people.)
I am perfectly willing to say that the FCC, or an agency like it, needs to regulate access to, and interference with, enough of the spectrum so that (a) emergency services are enabled and nor compromised, (b) people are not endangered by RF in the "can cook you" portions of the spectrum, (c) science, such as radio astronomy, is not compromised and (d) people's liberty and privacy are not compromised. None of this in any way provides for corporate dominance of the airwaves.
Re:Google May Bid Yet (Score:4, Interesting)
It's never just about having money to buy stuff. You also need to make extra investments and assets to buy this kind of infrastructure. And they cost a lot of money.
Spending half of Google's money on airwaves would also mean opening thousands of new jobs, creating new departments and searching for customers. And the investors are not happy with the current situation of Google. "I will not innovate if I can just use the investor's money to buy commoditized stuff and partially-inovating trendy companies like YouTube" will really hurt Google in the long run. Yeah, ok, the new market of internet advertising might grow to dozens of billions of dollars a year. That's why Google is worth so much, because of a new market. Investing on telecom commodities is not why they have so much money, to create this kind of old-business infrastructure.
What's next, Google buying oil refineries just because "they can"? I'd be pretty pissed off if the company holding my money (shares) started abusing it.
Re:Google May Bid Yet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Abolish the FCC! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Abolish the FCC! (Score:2, Interesting)
With regard to your fear of Scientologists broadcasting on every available frequency, they can't afford to alienate entire communities by greedily consuming limited public resources at everyone else's expense any more than any other organization that depends upon picking up recruits from the rank and file can.
Look, it has nothing to do with whether I like what is on the air or not. It has to do with the liberty to speak to and otherwise broadly communicate over radio with one's fellow citizens. If you're not interested in that, fine. Many people are, however, and it is not a matter of what "I want."
My suggestion has been that a band be made available which allows broadcast. There are numerous bands available that do not such as citizens band, ham bands, public service bands, etc. No band - anywhere - allows citizens to broadcast. Broadcasting is limited to those with money, power. Citizens are locked out. All we need to enable citizen broadcasting is one chunk of space. Of any size, though certainly an FM band at least comparable to the commercial FM band (about 20 MHz at or above 110 MHz) would be appropriate for several technical reasons. The FCC or a more reasonable replacement can stay out of it unless someone causes interference outside the band. Nothing would happen to FM-band broadcasters, AM-band broadcasters, etc - citizens would just have a space of our own we could broadcast opinion in, broadcast our own dramatic or musical productions in, talk about our businesses or conduct our business in. For the first time since such equipment was inexpensive.
You will not see such a thing, however, because the people you should be worried about, the government, will never allow it.