The siren call of Cyren Call seems to have gone a bit flat yesterday. Morgan O’Brien, the company’s founder, testified Thursday to the Senate Commerce Committee on his plan to give 30 MHz of spectrum to public safety agencies, rather than go through with a planned auction. According to Anne Veigle in Communications Daily (subscription), senators were less than impressed. “This is creating a new FCC, isn’t it?” asked Vice-chair Ted Stevens (one FCC presumably being more than enough). Former FCC chair Michael Powell, in a letter to Stevens, was even harsher. “Follow the money,” Powell wrote: “Who is going to benefit the most, those in uniform who are sworn to serve or those in suits who are set to profit?” The theme was picked up by Senator McCaskill of Missouri. “I’m assuming that this proposal is predicated on the idea that it will make a profit,” she said to O’Brien. That probably wasn’t the aspect of the plan the telecom entrepreneur wanted to stress. All in all, it doesn’t sound like it was a good day for Cyren Call.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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