FCC Fails To Mark Its Place In History

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1. salim madjd
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 2:37 pm

   As always the power of lobby and special interest groups is going to outweigh what is best for the consumers. No surprises here.

2. al
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 2:47 pm

   Its good to see that a compromise was reached. While what Google wanted would benefit us all the end result is that by Google getting invloved they did force some concessions that otherwise wouldnt have been made. This also helps Googles ‘do no evil’ image as they wanted things open for everyone.

   I hope that Google will still bid on this.

3. Nathan Kaiser
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 3:24 pm

   Unfortunately, not much of a surprise here. The FCC needs some young reformers on its’ board. Arrington, you interested?

4. Wonketter
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 3:36 pm

   Michael, I think you should have acknowledged each person’s partisan affiliation:

   Per Wikipedia: Chairman Kevin Martin (FCC) (R-NC), Commissioner Michael Copps (D-WI), Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein (D-SD), Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate (R-TN), Commissioner Robert M. McDowell(R-VA)

   Chairman Martin, Republican, sided with the two Democrats. I think it’s fair to characterize which parties are on which sides of the debate here.

5. Larry Chiang
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 3:39 pm

   Silicon Valley needs a bigger DC push.

6. S. Brown
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 3:54 pm

   Exactly. More people should support Public Knowledge: http://www.publicknowledge.org (like EFF, but they’re in Washington DC, and work to stop the bad law before it happens rather than litigate it once it’s passed.)

7. Brian
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 3:56 pm

   What incentive would companies have to build out networks if they are totally open? Most of the wireless carriers still have spotty coverage, so what reason would they have to further invest in the network. They could easily stop their buildouts and invest more heavily in markeitng and advertising to obtain customers and allow the customers to leech off of other networks. The open idea of the networks sounds good, but it immediately negates billions of dollars invested in the networks to get them where they are today. How would the wireless carriers be compensated for their years of investment? We know how Google would be compensated!

8. chris
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 3:59 pm

   and america will continue to lag behind europe in the mobile marketplace…

9. Natalie
   

   July 31st, 2007 at 4:50 pm

   [As a disclaimer, I produce a tech policy conference so I have a vested interest in bringing together Silicon Valley and D.C.] I am glad to see Larry’s comment b/c I couldn’t agree more about the need for greater Silicon Valley involvement in D.C. Whatever your political affiliation, or your opinion of politicians and lobbyists, the reality is that there’s a lot happening in D.C. that impacts - or stands to impact - tech companies and consumers. Today’s FCC decision is just one example. There are resources, organizations, grassroots movements, etc. you can find online to learn more and get involved at the individual level.

10. Jeffrey Nelson
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    First things first: I’m a PR guy for Verizon Wireless. jeffrey.nelson@verizonwireless.com

    Plenty of interesting comments, and a fair debate is always good - but this hasn’t been one between David and Goliath, though - Google is a $150billion company and hasn’t been involved in the ongoing debate because they’re nice.

    One thing I’ll take on though: the myth of the US tech “lag behind Europe” stuff is baloney. In Europe, you pay an average of 22cents/minute to TALK on your mobile phone vs. 7cents in the US. There’s a different model for communicating. It’s why SMS took off first in Europe - not because it was so cheap or advanced, but because it cost too damn much to make a call.

11. David
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    I’m a bit confused, the post says “Just for record keeping purposes, Kevin Martin (Chairman) and commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps are willing to fight for openness.” Isn’t that 3 against 2?

    Also, if Google is so intent on having an open network, couldn’t they buy the rights to the spectrum, then still go ahead and lease access to it?
    If this is really better for innovation, then Google could clean house by owning the spectrum that leapfrogs the carriers’.

12. EH
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 5:16 pm

    “What incentive would companies have to build out networks if they are totally open?”

    The public interest, who owns the spectrum in the first place. Crazy idea, I know, doing things to benefit the user. Spotty coverage might not be such an issue if the carriers were all upgrading the same network instead of each of them having a separate one. I guess those Verizon “those people? my network” commercials wouldn’t be as snappy if all providers had to share the same quality. Imagine that, separate networks provide differences that are then used by marketing to distinguish themselves from their competitors. So we have a company charging their users first to upgrade their proprietary infrastructure, and then again to advertise the differences of their networks! How ever would they maintain their current rates and employee numbers if this distinction was removed from the equation?

    How much 700MHz infrastructure has been rolled out so far? Is it really billions of dollars?

13. EH
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 5:17 pm

    @10: How about Asia, then?

14. cdr
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    FCC is totally irrelevant and unnecessary .

    if america was actually a free country, and the right to use frequencies didn’t have to be purchased from the govt thered be a spread-spectrum free-for-all and we’d already be browsing at a a few mb a second from iphones by now.. sad

15. Joaquin
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 5:54 pm

    Thanks for the post, but your assertion that Kevin Martin is willing to fight for openness is not accurate. Had he actually been willing (as he proclaimed during his visit to Silicon Valley) the vote would have been 3 (Martin, Adelstein, Copps) to 2 (Tate, McDowell) to really open things up. Martin is just a much better politician – which is a good thing, since that is what he wants to do with his future. After today’s vote, Martin should have the solid backing of the telcos for his political career.

16. Adam
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 6:12 pm

    Brian your absolutely right. Google can now easily buy the spectrum and run their part anyway they want too, but it will cost billions of dollars to build an infrastructure. Everyone wants something for free, and in a capitalist society no less.

    If you want it done right the government should rent out the spectrum and allow anyone to use it. But companies would still have have to build their own infrastructure to do it. This would level the playing field to anyone who has the resources to build out a network… Google, Apple, MSFT, and such.

    I am sure none of us would want to work hard building a house and than have someone tell you that you have to rent it at a lower price than you could get.

17. Rowan
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 6:39 pm

    @Jeffrey Nelson

    “In Europe, you pay an average of 22cents/minute to TALK on your mobile phone vs. 7cents in the US.”

    But outside the US you don’t pay for calls you receive, so a fairer comparison would be 11c to 7c for an average minute of conversation.

18. David Mackey
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 7:33 pm

    Two out of four is better than I expected.

19. Phil Wolff
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 8:59 pm

    @adam/10: “I am sure none of us would want to work hard building a house and than have someone tell you that you have to rent it at a lower price than you could get.”

    but it wouldn’t be too bad if you knew the rental rates before you bought the land and built the house. you’d know what to build to make money.

20. Austin Storm
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 9:34 pm

    @4 Wonketter…

    Republicans and Democrats might as well be the same thing when it comes to these issues. What we need is politicians who understand the power of a free market. Libertarians, or old-school liberals.

21. anon
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 9:43 pm

    It’s pretty clear what’s going to happen from here - the incumbants will do everything they can to prevent Google from winning the auction, should Google decide to bid.

    Yeah, it’s an anonymous auction, but I’d suspect that some form of collusion will take place.

22. Michael Fischer
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 10:50 pm

    Jeffrey Nelson: Open and free > cheap and hemmed in.

23. smash
    

    July 31st, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    @Jeffrey Nelson

    “it’s why SMS took off first in Europe - not because it was so cheap or advanced, but because it cost too damn much to make a call.”

    that comment is absurd. SMS is far more efficient to get burst communication across. no time (read $) wasted on pointless greetings, catch-ups, etc, just state your message and youre done. replies are done in the same manner. the information flow is also done *without having to tie up both parties at the same time*. and no, voicemail is not equally convenient thanks to dialing in and menu navigation. SMS is not just financially beneficial, its time and effort efficient.

    you work for a communication company and don’t realize something as basic as this?

    no wonder US telcoms got their heads up their !@&$#…

24. Morgan
    

    August 1st, 2007 at 12:53 am

    Um. First just to offer post continuity, SMS in Europe certainly benefited from high costs of voice - if you want to convince the telcoms guys you aren’t retarded, don’t act retarded.

    BUT REALLY, can somebody clue me in to the difference between an application and a service?

    It strikes me that EVERY thid party application on an open device is by definition an open service. VOIP, chat, location, etc.

    As long as individuals pay for the bandwidth it doesn’t look like someone gets to lock down anything on either side of the transport layer. As the contrapositive, see iPhone it is locked by apple on both sides of the radio.

    I think the telcos are already stunned by this Bush FCC decision - cellular just saw cost-per-minute drop to under 3 cents.

    Not to pee in y’alls pool… but I thought it was disingenuous for Google to seek wholesale rates - before it would bid - huh? Like, ensure we don’t have to win and can therefore buy wholesale bandwidth, so we don’t have to bid, and for the trouble, we’ll put up a number we’re sure the other guys will outpay, so we go home happy losers - with our $4.6B in our pockets.

    Mike c’mon. Logic above loyalty - even to the web.

    It actually smells like a company afraid to trade half of it’s $12B in cash (easily + buildout) to buy spectrum. Maybe it ain’t that big a dog. Maybe it wa serious it shoulda asked MSFT for help.

    Maybe it’s time to notice the market cap on niche advertising in the long tail, just ran dead into the 3rd quarter wall (ie the value of human attention seeking nich content). maybe adwords/sense can’t grow exponentially - cause well, not enough people use the web to find the stuff in those crazy search server logs tp justify 11 cents a search. Maybe, repeating history, Cuban just shorted Yahoo.

25. Todd
    

    August 1st, 2007 at 6:27 am

    History will see the FCC decision and the FCC en mas for that matter, in the same light as 1930’s Chicago - hopelessly corrupt. And the big telcos playing the part of Al Capone.

    “…True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.”
    –Larry Wall

26. Geek Speaker
    

    August 1st, 2007 at 9:45 am

    See my entry on techmeme for more info. Basically I feel thankful to Google for going to bat for us, but I want to point out that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo will all probably be bidding because the next race for advertising will take place in the car, where more money is spent than on the internet.

    The spectrum was owned by ABC, NBC, and CBS and so on before, why would we put a middle man in the picture, worst yet, a telco??? This makes no sense! We need open open open open so that innovation rules the future. Innovation will build the pipes telco-joe! Innovation is a water cooler joke and 90 percent of the telcos, there is no value in the connection itself, but the quality of services that are delivered on it. That’s like the plumber getting a cut on my water bill.

27. David H. Deans
    

    August 1st, 2007 at 7:21 pm

    Jeff Nelson’s comments are a subset of the storyline that the CTIA was spinning in Washington for several weeks. The U.S. mobile service provider status quo is fueled by calculated ‘restraint of trade’ business practices — and that’s no myth.

    The CTIA members (including Verizon) have selective memory recall — when comparing the U.S. model to the global market leaders, they make no mention of the locked phones that can’t be switched between service providers, or the two year contracts with heavy penalties, or the ‘walled garden’ service delivery platforms that inhibit value-added service innovation from independent developers, etc.

    Clearly, the U.S. market really needed a quantum leap in policy transformation to change the current restrictive status quo — full “open access” policy would have given the U.S. a fighting chance to catch up to the global market leaders. The FCC’s decision will help the cause of the shackled U.S. consumer, but it won’t turn the tide on wireless application innovation.