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FCC To Loosen Wireless Ownership Rules
jgaynor writes: "The FCC on Thursday voted to remove the existing restriction on how many frequencies a single wireless provider can own in any one location. While this is a blow for consumers who want more cell bandwidth and services like data or video - they could end up getting hosed as this might knock some smaller players out of the market and decrease competition, raise prices, etc. Excite has coverage; CBS Marketwatch does too."
removing the entire cap, why didn't they choose a proof-to-purchase method. A little over a year ago when I purchased a few class C's for UU, I almost had to chew my leg off in showing that I needed the class C's that I wanted to buy. I understand this was/is due to limited supply and thereby it didn't bother me. I would much rather prove without a doubt that I need them, then have some other company (or individual) come along and buy them all and try to sell them back to me for three times the amount.
Anyway.. the same could have easily been done with the needed frequencies. "We'll give you more, but first show us that you need them and what you need them for and how you will use them in a fair way to not hurt the little guy" - HSJ
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
this is pretty much what they did with radio, recently, and look what happened...now clearchannel owns an enormous amount of the radio stations, everywhere, which leads pretty quickly to /. getting pissed off that they might decide to censor a bunch of songs... how does the FCC think anything different will happen with cell networks?
This is a self-referential sig
normally I strenuously object to allowing government interference in business-related arenas, but this is no good at all for Joe Consumer.
A decent analogy might be an imaginary world where air is bought and sold on the market. There's a limited supply of the stuff to begin with, and without regulation large players can just buy up all the "air blocks".
Now, I know that technically the analogy is critically flawed because we all need air to survive, and we don't "need" cell phones. However, one could easily argue that (at least for most countries) telecommunications technologies (and by natual wireless technology) plays a critical role in economies both local and national in scope.
There's a limit to the spectrum available for wireless device use. Yes, competing companies can "use" frequencies owned by competing networks, but they have to pay more (and charge the consumer more) for this capability ("roaming" off your home network incurs charges).
This is probably more a bad thing than good. You can't really make the argument that consumers can still fight with their wallets, because doing so would require moving to a geographic region where the dominant players have lesser influence. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm not prepared to move because I dislike my mobile provider. It seems to me this gives the big guys a huge chance to shaft their customers. It's the ultimate "my way or the highway" scenario.
Plus, this may have more far-reaching implications than we realize. Wireless devices (meaning those other than just phones) are beginning to be common these days. How great is the chance that development on these devices could be somewhat stifled if they don't "play along" with the bigger companies that own certain frequency ranges? Sounds like a pretty far-reaching consequence to me.
This will allow higher bandwidth and better services
Not true. Whenever a scarce resource becomes available there is a sort of land grab. Because of the nature and cost of this particular resource, the players grabbing the "land" are the people who are already the key players in the market.
Now, when a new company comes along with their pimp 10Mb protocol they don't have the ability to go through the usual FCC channels to buy bandwidth. One of three things will happen:
1. The squatting companies demands an insane amount of money for the band creating at best an additional cost to be passed on to consumers, or at worse a barrier to entry.
2. The squatting companies will tell the startup to get bent.
3. The squatting companies will allow the startup to use the band, but requires that they use a "standard" protocol such as CDMA (yay for 9600bps!!).
That's why it's not good.
Once one entity controls a large percentage of a certain service/market, it starts cancelling "unprofitable" offerings and raising prices on the rest. Prime examples are the CLEC and independent ISP markets: now that the Baby Bells have driven the independents out of the market, DSL is disappearing and prices are going up.
sPh
He's the FCC chairman, and yes he's Colin Powell's son.
What are Mike's qualifications to run the FCC? Yep, he's Colin Powell's son.
Mike's singular philosophy is gov't intervention is bad. He is intent on breaking down any barriers to big media. He will be rewarded immensely in his post FCC career.
Gov't is a fucking joke. It's run by unqualified people (see entire Bush cabinet) who work for their own interests.
Fuck Bush, Cheney and Powell. Why couldn't those muslims have flown a plane into the White House? Why?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I can't believe the stupidity of this move.
This move encourages providers to buy MORE bandwidth than they actually need, instead of forcing providers to conserve and make efficient use of a limited resource.
Of course, the law can be changed. But once a powerful, multi-billion dollar monopoly emerges, then the lobbying effort will really kick in.
Of course, the excuse is that this will encourage the growth of advanced, innovated telecommunications services. Bullshit. This is a land grab, and the ones who can afford the high priced bandwidth are looking forward to years of gross profits at the expense of the American people.
The 45 MHz limitation is adequate for any rational use, but it does cause competition; it means that of the 170 MHz of cellular+PCS bandwidth, there are at least four providers, usually five or six. The big players would rather have less competition.
The other advantage of the extra bandwidth is that it allows fewer cells to do the job. Remember the reason for the "cellular" name -- you divide the coveage area into cells, which get smaller and smaller as usage goes up, so that frequencies get reused more often. With more spectrum, a given cell can carry more calls at once. This is cheaper than setting up more antennas, needing more towers and base station equipment. So the giants -- Cingular and VZW -- will be able to carry more per cell.
There's no real consumer benefit -- 3G is too costly for consumer use, except for voice. If you're paying 20c/minute for 13 kbps voice today, you're not going to like the price of 384 kbps data -- the price per bit will probably be fairly close to what you're paying now (because they paid that much for spectrum, not to mention the cost of the gear), making the math dismal.
It takes a huge investment in infrastructure to construct this kind of network. Those survivors who are still around these days are the only companies with the viability to continue to expand. I don't fault them for being big, that is silly to criticize them for that. Size matters in this game. Note 1
The bigger point, which has been missed here, is that 'research shows' that people really don't care much about all these whizzy services that we keep hearing that we want. Mobile video and other streaming stuff is not the killer app. People want to get text messages and have the person they called answer the damned phone. Oh, they also want the call to stay up instead of getting dropped during rush hour. Beyond that, it has not been shown that there is a significant demand for much more than what we have now. That, and technology's financial crash has cooled the jets of the 3G mavens. I know for a fact that Verizon is installing 3G equipment, but don't know the details.
Note 1 - I think it is even sillier that there are people on /. who think that if everybody goes out and buys 802.11 junk that the world will be one big happy access point. Such an endeavor requires the kind of commitment that only a large entity can command. I'm not going to put up an access point so that you can use 'my minutes'. Sorry.
Note 2 - Well, I thought that I formatted this message properly, at least it looks OK elsewhere. Naturally, selecting 'HTML Formatted' in the /. preview mode doesn't really show you what the final post will look like. Russian roulette, anyone?
---slashdot: A failed experiment.