700 MHz Auction Begins Tomorrow 187
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cynical prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Big businesses win, we lose! (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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! (Score:3, Interesting)
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! (Score:5, Interesting)
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! (Score:3, Interesting)
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. (Score:4, Interesting)
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Big businesses win, we lose! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's all well and good and you won't find too many people on my side of the fence that disagree with that concept.
What bothers me is that outfits like AT&T and Verizon that already own large swaths of the cellular (850mhz) band are going to be allowed to gobble up large swaths of the 700mhz band. Nobody has asked them to justify why they need this much spectrum. One would think that with the pending shutdown of AMPS that they'd have lots of free spectrum in 850mhz to do whatever they'd like with.
Why the hell are we allowing AT&T and Verizon to further cement their stranglehold on the wireless industry in the United States? If you believe that the airwaves should be used for the public benefit then you should want to see a more competitive market for wireless services emerge. This isn't going to happen as long as we allow two large [att.com] companies [verizon.com] (combined with two smaller [sprintnextel.com] ones [t-mobile.com]) to completely dominate an industry. We should be taking steps to bring more companies into this market, not further cementing the position of the existing ones.
What would I do differently? At the very least I would require a justification of the existing use of the spectrum that they have and detailed roll-out plans. I'd also exclude AT&T and Verizon from the 700mhz band in any market where they already have cellular (850mhz) licenses. Let the carriers stuck with the poorer-performing PCS (1900mhz) band have the first shot at this valuable space. I'd also mandate stricter rules on what they can do with these bands, including a full adoption of carterfone rules and the elimination of their practice of locking people up into long term contracts with hefty termination fees.
Did you know that in some markets AT&T owns more then 50% of the available wireless (cellular, PCS and AWS) licenses? If you combine them with Verizon in those markets the two manage to own 75-80% of the available spectrum. What's wrong with that picture? AT&T previously justified by it by saying they needed to run three (AMPS/TDMA/GSM) networks. What's the excuse now?
Re:So why NOT Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Google isn't interested in being the delivery-person, they are interested in creating the product that he is bringing to your house.
In fact, I would be terrified of Google getting into the content-delivery business. Forgot about "do no evil". Take a look at your friendly local cable provider to see what happens when you allow a media company to control the pipe that comes into your house.
Content delivery needs to be separate from content creation. Otherwise the delivery provider has a vested interest in locking you into his product and removing your freedom of choice. Can you imagine if UPS opened up their own online bookstore and tried to use their position as a shipping provider to price Amazon and Barnes & Noble out of the market?
Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 range? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Public land != radio spectrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Clearly, he hasn't. That "amateur radio band" he mentioned in his second sentence is something else... But certainly not shortwave...
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.
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.