Spectrum of Greed

You find out how tough your adversaries are when they are backed into a corner.  Such is the place that the NAB finds itself these days, as the FCC works to strip valuable spectrum from the punch drunk broadcast companies and award it to the up and coming challengers in the broadband space.  Gordon Smith started his early rounds with the FCC hearings asking for an objective review of all spectrum, including federal government bands, asking that utilization be carefully reviewed as well.  That was December.  (continue reading…)

According to initial hearings with Congress over the FCC’s sweeping new broadband plan, there is an immediate determination to take back at least 120Mhz of spectrum from television broadcasters and allocate it to mobile phone providers.  Apparently up to 500Mhz may be targeted within the next 10 years.  I don’t think that is going far enough.  Obviously the broadcasters are not taking this well.  Mobile data providers are pretty juiced though! (continue reading…)

They are the antithesis of grassroots organizations, the ‘wolves in sheeps clothing’ - big business telecom organizations posing as ordinary citizens in order to convince both legislators and the unsuspecting public that Net Neutrality, open wireless standards &  iPhone independence are NOT good for consumers.  FreePress has launched a new information campaign to expose these fake grassroots organizations for what they are, just as things are heating up on the FCC playing field in Washington.  According to a Computerworld article, several related investigations are now being made into current wireless industry practices by the FCC.  As extensive as the FreePress list of organizations is, believe it or not there are more.  In the state of Michigan, the Consumers for Innovative Technology group is one more that could be added to this list.

Click on the puppeteer arms above to learn more about each of the puppet masters that are putting on quite a show in Washington.

Wireless Revenue Juggernaut

It is past April fools, but I couldn’t resist.  AOL isn’t really charging per IM - but cell phone providers are.  As a means to grasp what is going on in the text messaging world, downloading the song Complication by Nine Inch Nails would cost $9,512.50…if you paid current text message rates of .24 per 140 characters of text sent.  That’s right - IMing on a cell phone generates big bucks!  SMS, or text messaging, is the fastest growing part of the cell phone providers product portfolio, and the least costly to provide.  Compared to downloading music or video, the little text messages barely make a blip on the traffic monitors of internet service providers.  This means BIG margins for those that provide text messaging services.  This explains why in America’s toughest economy in more than a decade, cell phone provider profits were up substantially.  Maybe AIG isn’t the only place that a little outrage should be directed.

Gregg Christofferson, who’s 13 year old daughter Dena sent 10,000 texts to friends in the course of a month and received a similar number, received a shocking bill for $4,756.25.  The total amount of data that was moved by the wireless ISP for this charge?  2.67 Megabytes.  If Comcast or another wired ISP charged this for people using IM, the nation would be outraged.  Dad was understandably outraged, and took his frustration out on his daughters cell phone.  Great headlines for the media to play with, but shouldn’t we look a little harder at these incidents?  (continue reading…)