Spectrum of Greed

FUBAR Communications Commission (according to Lessig?)

While manufacturing, finance, construction, real estate and most other industries are awash in red ink and reeling from Ponzi scheme’s and bad financial decisions, there is one place where currency is flowing against the tide - wireless telecom.

How could this be? Well, it all started back during the primary election excitement in the first few months of 2008. While Oprah and the country were trying to determine who would be the Democratic and Republican front runners, the FCC was doing what it does best, moving stealthily behind the headlines, inviting a few close friends in, and asking them just how much they would be willing to pay for the exclusive rights to some radio spectrum that they were taking away from the TV stations because they didn’t need it anymore. (continue reading…)

Larry Lessig (pardon my familiarity, I am just a lazy typist) made a controversial statement that the FCC was corrupt beyond salvaging, and should be shut down.  If that weren’t outrageous enough, Larry then suggests, “In their place, Congress should create something we could call the Innovation Environment Protection Agency (iEPA), charged with a simple founding mission: ‘minimal intervention to maximize innovation.’ The iEPA’s core purpose would be to protect innovation from its two historical enemies-excessive government favors, and excessive private monopoly power.” Original Newsweek article.

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Is this sliding under Kevin's radar too?

If I were to try to convert this to layman’s terms, the CTIA is petitioning to change cellular licensing with the FCC to more accurately reflect geographic market areas.  What they are actually requesting is re-issuance of spectrum licenses.   This looks like an attempt to get to a contract that more  accurately reflects what the incumbents would like as opposed to the original license intent of the FCC that is not being enforced.  One of the benefits of this change is protecting “incumbent” cellular licensees from interference from potential new entrants.

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“Remember, you only get to do this once, so you want to build the widest highway possible.”

This was the comment delivered by Carl Russo, CEO of Calix, which supplies equipment to phone and cable providers.  He says Congress should define broadband as 10 megabits per second so the networks it builds now will be able to support bandwidth-hogging applications of the future, such as high-definition video.

This reminds me of the famous quote by the director of the US Patent office in 1959 when he said, “Everything that can be invented has, so we are not going to have much to do next year.”  I paraphrase, but you get the idea.  Carl gets major cudos from his big wallet customers, the telcos, the telcos get an ‘impartial’ testimonial to give them some federal bailout money to stimulate the economy, and everyone goes to the bank happy - except the customer/taxpayer.

To read how the vendors are lining up at the trough, click here.

Wireless would be a far superior alternative to many of the rural and single vendor scenarios that the telcos want to address, but unfortunately under current regulatory rules, wireless broadband in our country is still limited to cell phones/aircards.

Thanks to CircleID for the heads up.