In my comments to the FCC in the 700 MHz proceeding, I addressed the Commission’s insistence that the licensee of a national public safety spectrum license be a non-profit entity. At the time I said,
This is odd since there are several commercial communications companies with the comparative advantage and expertise in designing, building-out, and maintaining wireless broadband networks. A for-profit mission and quality service to first responders should not be considered mutually exclusive ideals.
The Commission’s 312-page final order cited my comment, but sadly as an example of the sort of proposal they weren’t going to adopt. Instead, they decided that they would create a license for 10 MHz of public safety spectrum (worth billions) and give it to a Public Safety Broadband Licensee. And who is the Public Safety Broadband Licensee? They have no idea, but in the Order they lay out the requirements for any entity who wishes to apply to be the Public Safety Broadband Licensee. These include,
- No commercial interest may be held in the licensee, nor may any commercial interest participate in the management of the licensee
- The entity must be non-profit
- The entity must be “broadly representative of the public safety radio user community”
Well, applications to be the Public Safety Broadband Licensee are due this Wednesday, and so far there’s only one applicant, an organization called the Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corporation (sorry, no website). If they are chosen as the Licensee, the PSST will help set the public safety requirements any bidder will have to satisfy in order to purchase the commercial-public safety shared D Block that will be auctioned in January. (Frontline has committed to bid, while Verizon has also shown an interest.) So who makes up the PSST? According to their recent press release,
The PSST Board of Directors is comprised of representatives of the following organizations: the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO); the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International (APCO); the Forestry Conservation Communications Association (FCCA); the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP); the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC); the International Municipal Signal Association (IMSA); the National Association of State Emergency Medical Services Officials (NASEMSO); the National Emergency Number Association (NENA); and the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA).
That is, the lobbying groups for public safety. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the lobbyists themselves potentially getting a license. Also, these groups supported the Cyren Call plan last year to reallocate spectrum from commercial to public safety use. Guess who they chose last week to be their “Public Safety Advisor“?
Many of your humble Technology Liberation Front contributors will be attending PFF’s annual Aspen Summit next week and we think many of you will too. So, we’ve decided to hold the fourth in our series of Alcohol Liberation Front get-togethers on Tuesday, 8/21, at 9 p.m. at the Sky Bar located at the base of the Aspen Mountain. Like we did last time, we’ll also be recording our contributors (and hopefully some of you) pontificating for our podcast, Tech Policy Weekly. So drop on by and have a drink with your favorite TLF bloggers.
In the most recent podcast, Jim Harper and I had a little back-and-forth about the idea of a commons model for spectrum. I made the point that while I was hopeful for the future, technology that makes spectrum scarcity a thing of the past (thus allowing a commons to work) isn’t quite here yet. Regulating based on theoretical technology, I said, doesn’t bode well for the here and now.
Well, today comes word that the FCC has rejected the mystery whitespace devices that Google, Microsoft, and others in a consortium pushing for commons treatment of parts of the 700 MHz, had offered for testing. A year ago, the New America Foundation put out a paper called “Why Unlicensed Use of Vacant TV Spectrum Will Not Interfere with Television Reception.” According to The Washington Post today,
After four months of testing, the agency concluded that the devices either interfered with TV signals or could not detect them in order to skirt them. Now the coalition of companies backing the devices, which includes Dell, Intel, EarthLink, Hewlett-Packard and Philips, is going back to the drawing board, possibly to redesign the devices and meet with FCC engineers to explore other options. The FCC said Tuesday that it would continue experimenting with such devices, which use vacant TV frequencies.
I really hope they succeed because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with allowing free use of
true whitespaces or commons as long as the technology really works and use truly doesn’t cause interference to an adjacent licenses holder. That said, we can’t devalue otherwise useful spectrum by allocating it as a commons until we know the tech works.
The FCC’s 700 MHz plan adopted yesterday embraces, for the most part, Frontline Wireless’s plan for a national public safety network. It’s really an amazing thing considering that nine months ago Frontline Wireless didn’t exist (at least not in public), while Cyren Call had been making noise for months. As I’ve said before, I’m not crazy about Frontline’s plan, but I like it better than Cyren Call’s ill-fated proposal. That said, here are the pros and cons of the new rules ad I see them (and without the benefit of the actual rules in front of me because the FCC apparently hasn’t heard of this publishing technology called the World Wide Web).
Continue reading →
Last week, Jerry Ellig and I filed a reply commment (PDF) in the FCC’s ongoing broadband competition proceeding. In it we examined the evidence put forth during the comment period. Today we summarize our findings in an op-ed in TCS Daily:
The Federal Communications Commission recently asked for evidence that broadband Internet companies currently engage in data discrimination that would justify regulation of the Internet. …
… the Commission explicitly asked commenters to “provide specific, verifiable examples with supporting documentation, and [to] limit their comments to those practices that are technically feasible today.” Close to 10,000 comments were submitted to the FCC, yet all but 143 were what the FCC calls “brief text comments,” many of which were form letters generated at the behest of advocacy groups.
Of the 143 more extensive comments, only 66 are longer than two pages, and of these only 20 advocate some form of new regulation. None of these 20 offers any significant empirical evidence to suggest that there currently exists a “market failure” or other systemic problem justifying regulatory intervention in the name of net neutrality.
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