“In today’s globally competitive era, the United States cannot continue to delay its transition to Internet-enabled infrastructure.”
Last week the Department of Defense (DoD) filed comments with the FCC in its proceeding examining the transition from outdated telephone technologies to Internet Protocol (the “IP-transition”). The comments, which were filed “on behalf of the consumer interests” of the DoD by a civilian attorney in the Army’s Regulatory Law Office (emphasis added), ask the FCC to “consider potential adverse consequences on public safety and national security” of requiring federal agencies to “prematurely transition to different technologies.”
What are these potential adverse consequences? The italicized “interests” of the DoD provide the answer: It wants to avoid incurring any costs to upgrade its outdated telephone technologies to modern, Internet Protocol technologies when its current communications contracts expire in 2017. Continue reading →
Senator Marco Rubio is right on immigration. In his remarks regarding the immigration bill passed by the Senate last week, Rubio noted that immigration is an American story.
For over two hundred years now, they have come. . . . From Ireland and Poland, from Germany and France. From Mexico and Cuba, they have come. They have come because in the land of their birth, their dreams were bigger than their opportunities.
As Jack Kemp so famously said, “We are a nation of immigrants.” From the Native Americans who crossed the land bridge over what is now the Bering Strait to the apex of European immigration in the early 20th Century (when 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States), America has always been the land of opportunity.
Continue reading →
“Permitting voluntary spectrum transactions between federal and commercial users would harness the power of market forces to put both commercial and federal spectrum to its highest and best uses.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology is holding a hearing today to ask, “How can Congress meet the needs of Federal agencies while addressing carriers’ spiraling demand for spectrum in the age of the data-intensive smartphone?” In my view, the answer requires a flexible approach that permits experimentation among multiple approaches.
There are challenges and opportunities for both (1) clearing and reallocating federal spectrum for commercial use and (2) sharing spectrum among federal and commercial users. Economic and technical issues may require different strategies for different spectrum bands and different uses. Experience indicates that voluntary negotiations among interested parties – not bureaucratic fiat – are likely to produce the most efficient strategy in any particular instance. Unfortunately, current law does not provide market incentives or mechanisms for the relevant parties (federal and commercial spectrum users and spectrum regulators) to achieve efficient outcomes.
Congressional action creating markets for spectrum transactions between federal and commercial users would provide the relevant parties with an opportunity to maximize their spectrum use through voluntary negotiation. A market-oriented approach would permit experimentation, encourage innovation, and promote investment while increasing the efficiency of spectrum use. The result would benefit consumers, federal agencies, and the economy. Continue reading →
The Department of Justice has suddenly reversed course from its previous findings that mobile providers who lack spectrum below 1 GHz can become “strong competitors” in rural markets and are “well-positioned” to drive competition locally and nationally. Those supporting government intervention as a means of avoiding competition in the upcoming incentive auction attempt to avoid these findings by highlighting misleading FCC statistics, including the assertion that Verizon owns “approximately 45 percent of the licensed MHz-POPs of the combined [800 MHz] Cellular and 700 MHz band spectrum, while AT&T holds approximately 39 percent.”
Sprint Nextel Corporation (Sprint Nextel) recently sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) signed by Dick Thornburgh, a former US Attorney General who is currently of counsel at K&L Gates, expressing his support for the ex parte submission of the Department of Justice (DOJ) that was recently filed in the FCC’s spectrum aggregation proceeding. The DOJ ex parte recommends that the FCC “ensure” Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile obtain a nationwide block of mobile spectrum in the upcoming broadcast incentive auction. In his letter of support on behalf of Sprint Nextel, Mr. Thornburgh states he believes the DOJ ex parte “is fully consistent with its longstanding approach to competition policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike.”
Mr. Thornburgh is mistaken. The principle finding on which the DOJ’s new recommendation is based – that the FCC should adopt an inflexible, nationwide restriction on spectrum holdings below 1 GHz – is clearly inconsistent with the DOJ’s previous approach to competition policy in the mobile marketplace. Both the FCC and the DOJ have traditionally found that there is no factual basis for making competitive distinctions among mobile spectrum bands in urban markets, and the DOJ has distinguished among mobile spectrum bands only in rural markets. Continue reading →
This post is a parody of “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” written by Galileo Galilei in 1632, which attempted to prove that the earth revolves around the sun (the Copernican system). Although the Copernican system was ultimately proven to be scientifically correct, Galileo was convicted of heresy and his book was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books for more than two hundred years.
Galileo’s book was written as a dialogue between three characters, Salviati, who supported Galileo’s view, Simplicio, who believed the universe revolves around the earth (the Ptolemaic system), and Sagredo, an open-minded person with no established position. In this parody, Salviati supports the use of actual or de facto guard bands between broadcast and mobile services, Simplicio supports the FCC’s competing guard band proposals in the 600 MHz and 700 MHz bands, and Sagredo remains open-minded.
INTERLOCUTORS
Salviati, Sagredo, Simplicio
SALVIATI. We resolved to meet today and discuss the differences in the FCC’s approach to the potential for harmful interference between broadcast and mobile services in the 600 MHz band on the one hand and the lower 700 MHz band on the other. Continue reading →
” . . . the cooperative process envisioned by the National Broadband Plan is at risk of shifting to the traditionally contentious band plan process that has delayed spectrum auctions in the past.”
The National Broadband Plan proposed a new way to reassign reallocated spectrum. The Plan noted that, “Contentious spectrum proceedings can be time-consuming, sometimes taking many years to resolve, and incurring significant opportunity costs.” It proposed “shifting [this] contentious process to a cooperative one” to “accelerate productive use of encumbered spectrum” by “motivating existing licensees to voluntarily clear spectrum through incentive auctions.” Congress implemented this recommendation through legislation requiring the FCC to transition additional broadcast spectrum to mobile use through a voluntary incentive auction process rather than traditional FCC mandates.
Among other things, the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking initiating the broadcast incentive auction proceeding proposed a “lead” band plan approach and several alternative options, including the “down from 51” approach. An overwhelming majority of broadcasters, wireless providers, equipment manufacturers, and consumer groups rejected the “lead” approach and endorsed the alternative “down from 51” approach. This remarkably broad consensus on the basic approach to the band plan promised to meet the goals of the National Broadband Plan by accelerating the proceeding and motivating voluntary participation in the auction.
That promise was broken when the FCC’s Wireless Bureau unilaterally decided to issue a Public Notice seeking additional comment on a variation of the FCC’s “lead” proposal as well as a TDD approach to the band plan. The Bureau issued this notice over the objection of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who issued a separate statement expressing his concern that seeking comment on additional approaches to the band plan when there is a “growing consensus” in favor of the “down from 51” approach could unnecessarily delay the incentive auction. This statement “peeved” Harold Feld, Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge, who declared that there is no consensus and that the “down from 51” plan would be a “disaster.” As a result, the cooperative process envisioned by the National Broadband Plan is at risk of shifting to the traditionally contentious band plan process that has delayed spectrum auctions in the past. Continue reading →
This week at CTIA 2013, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel presented ten ideas for spectrum policy. Though I don’t agree with all of them, she articulated a reasonable vision for spectrum policy that prioritizes consumer demand, incorporates market-oriented solutions, and establishes transparent goals and timelines. Commissioner Rosenworcel’s principled approach stands in stark contrast to the intellectually bankrupt incentive auction recommendation offered by the Department of Justice last month. Continue reading →
Frontline relied on the DOJ foreclosure theory to predict that the lack of eligibility restrictions in the 700 MHz auction would “inevitably” increase prices, stifle innovation, and reduce the diversity of service offerings as Verizon and AT&T warehoused the spectrum. In reality, the exact opposite occurred.
The DOJ recently recommended that the FCC rig the upcoming incentive auction to ensure Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are winners and Verizon and AT&T are losers. I previously noted that the DOJ spectrum plan (1) inconsistent with its own findings in recent merger proceedings and the intent of Congress, (2) inherently discriminatory, and (3) irrational as applied. Additional analysis indicates that it isn’t supported by economic theory or FCC factual findings either. Continue reading →
As the “real-world” continues its inexorable march toward our all-IP future, the FCC remains stuck in the mud fighting the regulatory wars of yesteryear, wielding its traditional weapon of bureaucratic delay to mask its own agenda.
Late last Friday the Technology Transitions Policy Task Force at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Public Notice proposing to trial three narrow issues related to the IP transition (the transition of 20th Century telephone systems to the native Internet networks of the 21stCentury). Outgoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says these “real-world trials [would] help accelerate the ongoing technology transitions moving us to modern broadband networks.” Though the proposed trials could prove useful, in the “real-world”, the Public Notice is more likely to discourage future investment in Internet infrastructure than to accelerate it. Continue reading →
If broadband Internet infrastructure had been built to the same extent as public water-supply systems, more than twice as many Americans would lack fixed broadband Internet access.
After abandoning the “information superhighway” analogy for the Internet, net neutrality advocates began analogizing the Internet to waterworks. I’ve previously discussed the fundamental difference between infrastructure that distributes commodities (e.g., water) and the Internet, which distributes speech protected by the First Amendment – a difference that is alone sufficient to reject any notion that governments should own and control the infrastructure of the Internet. For those who remain unconvinced that the means of disseminating mass communications (e.g., Internet infrastructure) is protected by the First Amendment, however, there is another flaw in the waterworks analogy: If broadband Internet infrastructure had been built to the same extent as public water-supply systems, more than twice as many Americans would lack fixed broadband Internet access. Continue reading →
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