Wireless Carriers looking for Elbow Room

pillageplunder writes "Businessweek is reporting on the upcoming Wireless Spectrum Auctions. Over the next two years (Starting in Jan 2005) the FCC will auction off enough spectrum that will more than double the amount currently available. Estimates range anywhere from 50 to 70 billion dollars will be raised by these auctions. Short term, it should improve the quality of Cell-phone, long term, it should open up opportunities for so-called 3G services to take off."

Comments

Hams?

[tajmorton]

And what about the hammers? Will they be elbowed out?

Re:Hams?

[r2q2]

I don't believe any of the wireless spectrum is being sold by the FCC that will influence ham radio. Besides the ARRL does have some lobbying power to try to prevent this. They don't mention they are selling off part of the ham radio spectrum. Although most likely any new spectrum for hammers has a small chance of being available to hammers. Most likely they will be elbowed out by the telecom sector.

Why should the FCC Sell?

[stecoop]

This is a pet peeve of mine. Why should the FCC be able to sell spectrum for a region giving basically a monopoly to the bidder. I would much prefer that the FCC leases the spectrum to vendors and the income goes back to the people that rightfully own it (the land owners over the given region - you and me). It isn't the FCC's property to sell and it doesn't force vendors to address issues fast enough.

Re:Why should the FCC Sell?

[Vellmont]

I've never liked the idea that landowners somehow owning the spectrum over their land. Does that mean that people who own massive tracts of dessert would get large amounts of money from the FCC for satelite TV (even though no one is utilizing that spectrum in those empty tracts of land)? I don't have a cogent argument against it, but the whole idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

My problem with the spectrum auction model is it encourages companies to buy up spectrum only for the purpose of keeping it from others companies. If you own the spectrum you should be forced to put it to use within N years by X% of the public in that area, otherwise it reverts back to the FCC.

Re:Why should the FCC Sell?

[the morgawr]

Actually the land owners don't own the spectrum and never had. That's why the FCC was set up.

IANAL but my understanding is:

When someone starts using land they have the rights to everything they need to use it in the manner they want. Tresspass and nusance laws prevent people from interfering with your use of the land. So you can't have someone walk through your yard because it is physically invasive to your property, but you can have someone broadcast radio through the airwaves or fly a plane way overhead because neither of those impeades your use of the property in anyway.

In all likelyhood radio would have developed a similar set of common laws (this was all getting worked out in the courts). Where the first radio station in a region was allowed to use the band they were broadcasting on and could sue anyone emitting harmful interferance. However Congress became concerned that the legal costs would hold the industry back (there were concerns that radio companies could even make money), so they made the FCC.

Re:Why should the FCC Sell?

[cmowire]

Or, even better, give the spectrum back to the people, who rightfully own it.

Like put some spectrum that's solely devoted to a single family of 802.11-like standards set by the IEEE, with no microwaves, cordless phones, etc. to gunk it up.

Or build allocations around spread-spectrum technologies. Remember, several spread-spectrum networks can exist on the same frequency bands, if done properly, and other networks appear only as noise. If networks are prevented from actively fighting with each other, it's an awfully good way to reward carriers for putting up more access points over a metro area and also to reward more efficent encoding schemes.

The problem is that the spectrum policy made rough sense when you had no choice but to step on other transmissions. And it's lately been seen as a hidden way for the government to make money. But it's not very good for business, nor is it good for us.

learn from other countries

[d_strand]

auctioning spectrum is a bad idea. It's better to give it away for free to the companies that promises the best services to it's customers.

Many countries in europe auctioned off 3G-spectrum a few years ago, and the money involved was insane... many of the "winners" weren't able to build any networks from lack of funds after the crazy fees they payed for the spectrum.

Some countries instead held "beauty contests" where the companies that promised best area coverage where given spectrum for free (the promises must be kept with the threat of huge fines of course)

Public Space rather than private

[WindBourne]

It would be far more useful to create more public airwaves rather than private and watch what happens. The 900,2.4G, and 5.2G have created a large number of innovations that have been resulted in a large number of products.

Where'd all of this bandwidth come from?

[Gyorg_Lavode]

Where exactly did all this bandwidth to just give away come from when the Military is having to override garage door openers to effectively use it's bandwidth?

Re:They should be renting it out, not selling it.

[Ironsides]

Maybe so, but with renting you have a lot of other problems. Two ways of renting:

Lease is renewed every X years (like renting an apartment):
The gov decides to up the rent by 100% this year and you can't pay.
You do something and the gov decides to evict you or not renew your lease. (think politics)

Every time you have to re-bid for the same spectrum:
Congrads, you've built an entire infrasture around your frequencies, but you didn't get the same/any frequencies this time and you are up the creek.

Probably some others on a similar note out there but that is the general idea.

3G

[Anonymous Coward]

... so-called 3G services to take off

Isn't this what many people said about the last auction that occurred a couple of years back?

Instead of selling it to private companies, why don't they create more public spectrum? IMHO more has come out of WiFi in an unlicensed spectrum than in most private telco networks. Give more space to WiMAX (802.16) and let people figure out what to do with it. They'll be a lot more creative than the incumbents.

WiFi proved that the commons doesn't have to be a tragedy. Let's continue this experiment in public use. We don't have to necessarilly make all the available spectrum public; there's room for both private and public use / allocation. Commerical enterprise has been given its chance since the beginning of radio / the FCC. Time for different thinking.

Re:That's not funny because it's not correct

[Satan Dumpling]

Counter example: My dad In his 50's, own business, nice big house, etc.
See www.adeptrocketry.com
Electronics nerd, father of two successful computer nerds.
When I called him yesterday he had just put up a new ham antenna....