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InvisibleDiploidM
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AT&T Slams Google Over Open-access Wireless Network Proposal
    #7176651 - 07/14/07 09:13 PM (16 years, 8 months ago)

The Federal Communications Commission this week is deliberating an auction, slated for January, of newly available airwaves. The regulator is expected, later this summer, to decide how to allocate great chunks of the 700 MHz spectrum, which TV broadcasters are vacating as they convert to digital signals.

Some companies, notably Google, have asked the FCC impose open-access requirements on the spectrum, which means any device could be used over the airwaves. Skype and satellite companies DirecTV and EchoStar are among the various proponents of an open-access network.

FCC chair Kevin Martin has reportedly written a proposal, which has not yet been made public, to make most of the 700MHz spectrum open access. On Tuesday, US carrier Verizon Wireless, which is second only to AT&T in terms of market share, on Tuesday asked Martin to reconsider.

"The one-size-fits-all mentality that characterizes open access regimes for the wireless industry would begin the process of stifling innovation and creativity in our industry," Verizon Wireless general counsel Steven Zipperstein said to the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Zipperstein said that while congress and the FCC had been "barraged" with requests to regulate the spectrum with open-access requirements, there is no evidence of how the current closed wireless market has failed consumers.

Yesterday, AT&T weighed in. In a letter to the FCC, AT&T said Google's "eleventh hour request" was self-serving because it would encumber licenses in the forthcoming auction "with a laundry list of intrusive 'open access' requirements that would, perhaps, entice Google to participate in the auction. By its own admission, Google's request is intended to diminish the value of those licenses, thus preventing wireless service providers such as AT&T from bidding on them and clearing the path for Google to obtain them at below-market rates."

AT&T also said an open-access network would deprive taxpayers of billions of dollars, and inhibit the growth of wireless broadband in the country.

Google, which on Monday acknowledged it was considering bidding in the auction in January, said in its letter to the FCC earlier this week that if the big wireless carriers win the spectrum "they would probably use it to protect their existing business models and thwart the entry of new competitors -- both understandable actions from a rational business perspective. Beyond the loss of a valuable public resource, however, that outcome would not bring us any closer to fostering much-needed competition in the broadband market, or providing innovative new web applications and service offerings."

Similar arguments were made to a House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet on Tuesday by the Open Internet Coalition. Its basic argument is that an open-access national network would enable the US to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of wireless innovation. Until now, the four major wireless carriers in the US have limited which networks certain phones can be used and blocked some third-party applications.

Our View

Whether or not Google is readying to build a nationwide wireless network may be a moot argument. Martin's proposal reportedly contains provisions that would divide up the spectrum into six large geographic regions, rather than a single nationwide block. That would mean an incumbent operator could buy just one region to prevent such a network.

There also, reportedly, is no language in the proposal that requires an auction winner to build a network at all. This means an incumbent could buy a regional spectrum merely as a way to block any such nationwide network.

cbronline.com


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1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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