700 MHz Auction Begins Tomorrow

necro81 writes "On Thursday, after much speculation and wrangling, the FCC will begin auctioning licenses to the coveted 700 MHz band that will be vacated by analog TV in 2009. The NY Times has a good summary of the players (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Google, et al.), how the auction will work, how Google has already scored an open networks victory, and what it could all mean for consumers. The auction will go on for several months, but you can keep tabs on the bids at this FCC site."

So why NOT Google?

[AltGrendel]

I know the article says that their main goal was to make sure that whoever does get the license keeps the airwaves open to a "wider range of hardware", but I really don't see any reason why Google couldn't get serious and really try to bid for some air space.

Cynical prediction

[UbuntuDupe]

A major telco, or a coalition of the major telcos, will go deep into dept to bid an extremely high price that no one can match, then win, then use their effective monopoly to continue the USA's crappy position in telecommunication quality, and thereby charge high enough prices to pay back the debt from their bid.

I want to be wrong, but I want credit if I'm right.

I hope Google can get enough money to outbid. Maybe sell "Gbonds" so they can pay absurdly low yields on borrowed money :-P

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[gandhi_2]

WTF??

Let big business pay for the privilege of using our spectrum. This is a good way to raise revenue without raising taxes. I would argue that we don't charge enough for spectrum. It's our most renewable resource.

This isn't the ANWR drilling we are talking about dude. What do you want, lowest bidder? Seriously, you are king of the world...how would you handle this?

What exactly did you lose?

Same thing as rest areas...

[coolmoose25]

The government builds a highway, and then opens a rest area. They sell restaurant/gas/convenience store space to the highest bidder. Then the company that leases the space charges more for a Big Mac or a gallon of gas than in the city. Everybody's a winner - except the consumer.

They should take that spectrum, and award it based on the public good that will come of it. How low a price will you charge for the services you provide for that spectrum... not how much can we, the government, make off of it.

Good Luck With That

[asphaltjesus]

Don't pin your hopes for lower-cost, widely available internet access on this auction.

In the current political/business climate in the U.S. the chances that nothing good for the consumer will come from this auction are excellent.

It's not just about the auction itself. Imagine for a moment a telco doesn't win the spectrum. The telcos still have the experience and access to the senate and congress to write regulations that increase the cost of doing business with the spectrum. Recent history is filled with examples.

-VOIP regulations, patent litigation parties
-Limited consumer access to bandwidth.
-Limited throughput.
-NSA shenanigans. The get out of jail free cards have already been issued.
 

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just leave it unregulated, and give the spectrum to whoever wins the war to have the most powerful transmitter.

I'd love to see this actually tried for once. With todays technology, power isn't the only way to get past noise.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[dattaway]

This isn't the ANWR drilling we are talking about dude. What do you want, lowest bidder? Seriously, you are king of the world...how would you handle this?

DHSS. Use the same technology in our wireless cards. Make this a truely public spectrum. There's always a technological solution to a government problem. Why sell what we can use for free?

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Eravnrekaree]

It could be given out to, in the case of broadcasters, to strictly locally owners assuring a decentralised media that is not controlled by large corporations. Remember the FCCs ownership rules? They prevented a company from owning more than a handful of radio stations and more than one or two stations in a particular market, assuring a broad diversity of sources of information, news,etc. Now the FCC has pretty much gutted these rules, and a few large corporations now control most radio outlets (clear channel), tv outlets, and now broadcasters will be allowed to own newspapers as well, furthering the consolidation. Allegedly we have free speech, but the means to free expression is increasingly being controlled by a few large corporations who, due to their rapidly expanding power and how they own government and seem to be above the law, the laws are made for them and government is a puppet that they own.

There was a push to get low power FM passed through, which would not have interfered with larger stations and which would have been required to be licenced to only small locally owners, but was opposed by corporations, on a complete lie that it would interfere with their large high power stations, which is a lie since the lpfm licences would require an engineering study to assure they didnt. The corporations just didnt want people freely expressing themselves and are hell bent on controlling all forms of communication.

Public to private? almost 60 years ago.

[Vellmont]

I remember setting up a TV with the ol' rabbit ears and tin foil and it worked for "free" no problems.

It was still private. 60 or so years ago when television first appeared, the spectrum was licensed to various TV stations (though with some restrictions on that license of course). It "belonged" to them in the same sense as the spectrum will "belong" to whoever wins the auctions. The fact that broadcast TV is "free as in beer" to you doesn't mean it was "public" in the sense that you're talking about.

but it's there also a law about government not taking what's yours without compensation?

Hmm.. that's kind of a strange distinction. "The Government" is supposed to be "the people" in a democracy. I'm not sure what you're really driving at here.. who's the "you" in this sentence, and why isn't "the you" represented by "the government"?

Where does the money go?

[whisper_jeff]

(I'm Canadian, so this doesn't affect me beyond the influence factor, but I'm curious none-the-less.)

Where does the money go? The FCC will raise the money, but where does that substantial bankroll go? Does it just roll into the federal budget to be dished out as the government sees fit with the rest of the money or is it earmarked for a specific use (debt repayment, for example)?

(And, heck, with the Canadian government about to do a similar auction, if anyone has the answer in regards to Canada, feel free to share it as well.)

Public land != radio spectrum

[mstahl]

The radio spectrum is NOT public. Even the citizen's band has transmitting power limits (4w for AM and 12w for SSB)[reference] [wikipedia.org], and amateur radio bands are the same way.

Think of it this way. Public forests being sold so that oil can be drilled wrecks those forests, right? The oil isn't there anymore afterwards and all the pollution from the oil drilling and construction processes damages the land so that it is no longer as valuable. Unused spectrum meanwhile is completely empty until someone is permitted to transmit on it. Then it is occupied. After the permission to transmit expires or the spectrum segment is no longer used, it's still there and just as good. It's available to be used again.

Above all, what would you do with it and, in all fairness, how do you know your purpose is more noble or better for the common good than what the big businesses have come up with?

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Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 range?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I use several wireless microphones that operate in the UHF 66 to 69 range, high 700 Mhz to low 800s. Is that part of the spectrum that's going to be "vacated" next year? Any other audio guys who know more about the impact, what gear I should be buying to replace the old stuff?

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[evilviper]

Never heard of the shortwave band?

Clearly, he hasn't. That "amateur radio band" he mentioned in his second sentence is something else... But certainly not shortwave...

DHSS? 802.11?

802.11 works reasonably well because it's is on a nearly line-of-sight frequency, and required to stay very low power. Requiring users of the 700MHz spectrum to only broadcast at low power would eliminate any benefits it has over the existing unregulated frequencies.

Technology always has an answer. Government regulations always have questions.

That's crap. Government regulation of the airwaves gives us cell phones, broadcast TV, radio, etc. Would you care to explain what's wrong with those?

Government regulations are what keep your neighbor's microwave, wireless speakers, 802.11 router, etc. from crapping all over the spectrum, and making it completely useless for you. It's also what keeps the phone companies from setting up an 802.11 jammer on every street corner... Not to mention that it's government regulation that is kicking companies off the 700MHz frequencies they were previously using, and making it available for other uses. It's government regulation that has been pushing for old equipment that inefficiently utilizes spectrum to be replaced.

There needs to be rationing of the spectrum of some sort. Claiming anarchy will make everything fine and dandy is idiotic.