Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The Communications Liberty and Innovation Project (CLIP) recently filed comments at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opposing an interoperability mandate in the 700 MHz band. CLIP argued that the proposed interoperability mandate would be manifestly unjust. The Supreme Court’s holding in the healthcare opinion issued last week indicates that the mandate could be more than merely unjust: it might be unconstitutional. Continue reading →
(Adapted from Bloomberg BNA Daily Report for Executives, May 16th, 2012.)
Two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan raised alarms about the future of mobile broadband. Given unprecedented increases in consumer demand for new devices and new services, the agency said, network operators would need far more radio frequency assigned to them, and soon. Without additional spectrum, the report noted ominously, mobile networks could grind to a halt, hitting a wall as soon as 2015.
That’s one reason President Obama used last year’s State of the Union address to renew calls for the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to take bold action, and to do so quickly. The White House, after all, had set an ambitious goal of making mobile broadband available to 98 percent of all Americans by 2016. To support that objective, the president told the agencies to identify quickly an additional 500 MHz of spectrum for mobile networks.
By auctioning that spectrum to network operators, the president noted, the deficit could be reduced by nearly $10 billion. That way, the Internet economy could not only be accelerated, but taxpayers would actually save money in the process.
A good plan. So how is it working out?
Unfortunately, the short answer is: Not well. Speaking this week at the annual meeting of the mobile trade group CTIA, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski had to acknowledge the sad truth: “the overall amount of spectrum available has not changed, except for steps we’re taking to add new spectrum on the market.” Continue reading →
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932)
On Fierce Mobile IT, I’ve posted a detailed analysis of the NTIA’s recent report on government spectrum holdings in the 1755-1850 MHz. range and the possibility of freeing up some or all of it for mobile broadband users.
The report follows from a 2010 White House directive issued shortly after the FCC’s National Broadband Plan was published, in which the FCC raised the alarm of an imminent “spectrum crunch” for mobile users.
By the FCC’s estimates, mobile broadband will need an additional 300 MHz. of spectrum by 2015 and 500 MHz. by 2020, in order to satisfy increases in demand that have only amped up since the report was issued. So far, only a small amount of additional spectrum has been allocated. Increasingly, the FCC appears rudderless in efforts to supply the rest, and to do so in time. Continue reading →
On CNET today, I have a longish post on the FCC’s continued machinations over LightSquared and Dish Networks respective efforts to use existing satellite spectrum to build terrestrial mobile broadband networks. Both companies plan to build 4G LTE networks; LightSquared has already spent $4 billion in build-out for its network, which it plans to offer wholesale.
After first granting and then, a year later, revoking LightSquared’s waiver to repurpose its satellite spectrum, the agency has taken a more conservative (albeit slower) course with Dish. Yesterday, the agency initiated a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would, if adopted, assign flexible use rights to about 40 Mhz. of MSS spectrum licensed to Dish.
Current allocations of spectrum have little to do with the technical characteristics of different bands. That existing licenses limit Dish and LightSquared to satellite applications, for example, is simply an artifact of more-or-less random carve-outs to the absurdly complicated spectrum map managed by the agency since 1934. Advances in technology makes it possible to successfully use many different bands for many different purposes.
But the legacy of the FCC’s command-and-control model for allocations to favor “new” services (new, that is, until they are made obsolete in later years or decades) and shape competition to its changing whims is a confusing and unnecessary pile-up of limitations and conditions that severely and artificially limit the ways in which spectrum can be redeployed as technology and consumer demands change. Today, the FCC sits squarely in the middle of each of over 50,000 licenses, a huge bottleneck that is making the imminent spectrum crisis in mobile broadband even worse. Continue reading →
After three years of politicking, it now looks like Congress may actually give the FCC authority to conduct incentive auctions for mobile spectrum, and soon. That, at least, is what the FCC seems to think.
At CES last week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski largely repeated the speech he has now given three years in a row. But there was a subtle twist this time, one echoed by comments from Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan at a separate panel.
Instead of simply warning of a spectrum crunch and touting the benefits of the incentive auction idea, the Chairman took aim at a House Republican bill that would authorize the auctions but limit the agency’s “flexibility” in designing and conducting them. “My message on incentive auctions today is simple,” he said, “we need to get it done now, and we need to get it done right.” Continue reading →
I’ve written several articles in the last few weeks critical of the dangerously unprincipled turn at the Federal Communications Commission toward a quixotic, political agenda. But as I reflect more broadly on the agency’s behavior over the last few years, I find something deeper and even more disturbing is at work. The agency’s unreconstructed view of communications, embedded deep in the Communications Act and codified in every one of hundreds of color changes on the spectrum map, has become dangerously anachronistic.
The FCC is required by law to see separate communications technologies delivering specific kinds of content over incompatible channels requiring distinct bands of protected spectrum. But that world ceased to exist, and it’s not coming back. It is as if regulators from the Victorian Age were deciding the future of communications in the 21 st century. The FCC is moving from rogue to steampunk.
With the unprecedented release of the staff’s draft report on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, a turning point seems to have been reached. I wrote on CNET (see “FCC: Ready for Reform Yet?”) that the clumsy decision to release the draft report without the Commissioners having reviewed or voted on it, for a deal that had been withdrawn, was at the very least ill-timed, coming in the midst of Congressional debate on reforming the agency. Pending bills in the House and Senate, for example, are especially critical of how the agency has recently handled its reports, records, and merger reviews. And each new draft of a spectrum auction bill expresses increased concern about giving the agency “flexibility” to define conditions and terms for the auctions.
The release of the draft report, which edges the independent agency that much closer to doing the unconstitutional bidding not of Congress but the White House, won’t help the agency convince anyone that it can be trusted with any new powers. Let alone the novel authority to hold voluntary incentive auctions to free up underutilized broadcast spectrum.
[Cross posted at Truth on the Market]
As everyone knows by now, AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile has hit a bureaucratic snag at the FCC. The remarkable decision to refer the merger to the Commission’s Administrative Law Judge (in an effort to derail the deal) and the public release of the FCC staff’s internal, draft report are problematic and poorly considered. But far worse is the content of the report on which the decision to attempt to kill the deal was based.
With this report the FCC staff joins the exalted company of AT&T’s complaining competitors (surely the least reliable judges of the desirability of the proposed merger if ever there were any) and the antitrust policy scolds and consumer “advocates” who, quite literally, have never met a merger of which they approved.
In this post I’m going to hit a few of the most glaring problems in the staff’s report, and I hope to return again soon with further analysis.
As it happens, AT&T’s own response to the report is actually very good and it effectively highlights many of the key problems with the staff’s report. While it might make sense to take AT&T’s own reply with a grain of salt, in this case the reply is, if anything, too tame. No doubt the company wants to keep in the Commission’s good graces (it is the very definition of a repeat player at the agency, after all). But I am not so constrained. Using the company’s reply as a jumping off point, let me discuss a few of the problems with the staff report. Continue reading →
For Forbes this morning, I reflect on the publication late last week of the FCC’s “Open Internet” or net neutrality rules and their impact on spectrum auctions past and future. Hint: not good.
An important study last year by Prof. Faulhaber and Prof. Farber, former chief economist and chief technologist, respectively, for the FCC, found that the last-minute imposition of net neutrality limits on the 700 MHz “C” block in the FCC’s 2008 auction reduced the winning bid by 60%–a few billion dollars for the Treasury.
Yet the FCC maintained in the December Report and Order approving similar rules for all broadband providers that the cost impact of these “prophylactic” rules would be minimal, because, after all, they simply endorse practices most providers already follow. (And the need for the new rules, then, came from where?)
For CNET this morning, I have a long article reviewing the sad recent history of how local governments determine the quality of mobile services.
As it turns out, the correlation is deeply negative. In places with the highest level of user complaints (San Francisco, Washington, D.C.), it turns out that endless delays or outright denials for applications to add towers and other sites as well as new and upgraded equipment is also high. Who’d have thought?
Despite a late 2009 ruling by the FCC that put a modest “shot clock” on local governments to approve or deny applications, data from CTIA and PCIA included in recent comments on the FCC’s Broadband Acceleration NOI suggests the clock has had little to no effect. This is in part because the few courts that have been asked to enforce it have demurred or refused.
Much of the dithering by local zoning boards is unprincipled and pointless, a sign not so much of legitimate concerns over safety and aesthetics but of incompetence, corruption, and the insidious influence of outside “consultants” whose fees are often levied against the applicant, adding insult to injury. Continue reading →
Milton Mueller responded to my post Wednesday on the DOJ’s decision to halt the AT&T/T-Mobile merger by asserting that there was no evidence the merger would lead to “anything innovative and progressive” and claiming “[t]he spectrum argument fell apart months ago, as factual inquiries revealed that AT&T had more spectrum than Verizon and the mistakenly posted lawyer’s letter revealed that it would be much less expensive to expand its capacity than to acquire T-Mobile.” With respect to Milton, I think he’s been suckered by the “big is bad” crowd at Public Knowledge and Free Press. But he’s hardly alone and these claims — claims that may well have under-girded the DOJ’s decision to step in to some extent — merit thorough refutation.
To begin with, LTE is “progress” and “innovation” over 3G and other quasi-4G technologies. AT&T is attempting to make an enormous (and risky) investment in deploying LTE technology reliably and to almost everyone in the US–something T-Mobile certainly couldn’t do on its own and something AT&T would have been able to do only partially and over a longer time horizon and, presumably, at greater expense. Such investments are exactly the things that spur innovation across the ecosystem in the first place. No doubt AT&T’s success here would help drive the next big thing–just as quashing it will make the next big thing merely the next medium-sized thing.
The “Spectrum Argument”
The spectrum argument that Milton claims “fell apart months ago” is the real story here, the real driver of this merger, and the reason why the DOJ’s action yesterday is, indeed, a blow to progress. That argument, unfortunately, still stands firm. Even more, the irony is that to a significant extent the spectrum shortfall is a product of the government’s own making–through mismanagement of spectrum by the FCC, political dithering by Congress, and local government intransigence on tower siting and co-location–and the notion of the government now intervening here to “fix” one of the most significant private efforts to make progress despite these government impediments is really troubling.
Anyway, here’s what we know about spectrum: There isn’t enough of it in large enough blocks and in bands suitable for broadband deployment using available technology to fully satisfy current–let alone future–demand.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
