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Google et al. Want 700 MHz Auction Opened Up
The 700 MHz spectrum could give birth to the much-anticipated third pipe, but phone and cable lobbyists are currently pressuring the FCC to sell companies like AT&T and Verizon our airwaves — in a flawed auction process — so they can hoard this valuable spectrum and stifle competitive alternatives to their networks. Google and other would-be providers are not taking it lying down. They want the FCC to mandate that whoever wins the auction be required to sell access to those airwaves, at wholesale prices, to anyone wanting to provide broadband Internet service. They also want anonymous auctions to prevent the giant incumbents from manipulating the results against small players (as they have done in the past).
What is this third pipe? What are the other two?
Google has enough money to compete in these auctions. Why wouldn't they simply outbid the competitors and sell the space themselves?
that money can buy.
No matter who wins this fight, we all lose.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
To wallpaper Congress with Benjamins, because that's what it's going to take to put this over, and we really need it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The users should rent it from the government that is enforcing their property rights over this natural resource.
This is a principle called "economic rent".
Milton Friedman has declared such taxation the "least distorting" kind of tax.
The way to set the rental agreement is to determine the liquidation value of the "land", and then charge a rent on it equal to the interest rate on short term US treasury instruments.
As with any rental agreement there would be other terms but the basic idea is that such resources enjoy liquidation value changes that are primarily a result of the economic environment -- meaning economic externalities drive the liquidation value -- and allocation of externalities is a social function.
Seastead this.
Why not just leave the spectrum completely open to the public like 900MHz and 2.4GHz? Although, require that the spectrum must use intelligent radio devices that comply to a single standard (through IEEE for example).
Why wouldn't [Google] simply outbid the competitors and sell the space themselves?
The "competitors" can collude and form a much larger bidder than anyone else. They drive the price up where real competition advances but leave prices low for themselves elsewhere. If bidding is anonymous, it will be harder for people to collude and everyone will have to pay what they think the airwaves are worth.
There are still problems with the proposals. The first is that the incumbents won't treat their competitors fairly, even if forced by law to share. They will screw them over and pay whatever fees the government levies but then pass the costs back to you and me. The second problem is that the incumbents can overbid because they know there will be no real competition and they can charge whatever they like in the long run. These are not shortcomings of a free market, they are failures in regulations for a scarce resource which some say is not scarce afterall. It's ultimately a failure to share equitably.
How much do you really want to pay for your airwaves? I want mine free. The FCC should change it's mission to the above mentioned report and enforcing peaceful co-existence. The only problems with spectrum would be accidental disruption, which can be fixed, and willful disruption, which should be punished.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There is really only one broadband provider in the US and it's intentionally crippled by M$ and the MAFIAA.
O_O
Honestly if you can prove to me that this sentence is making even some limited amount of sense, I'll give ya a hundred bucks immediately.
People have given up on DSL?
It's been way more reliable for me than my neighbors' cable internet. Sure, their highest burst download speeds are better than my paltry 3 meg connection, but I have that 3 meg connection with very little variation day and night. Their cable connection slows down noticeably after school and in the evenings--when most of us are using the net. Our DSL does not slow in any detectable way.
Cable still has a stronghold here (semi-rural Kansas) due to the number of people out of reach of the DSL service area, but still within cable service.
I just don't see DSL as dead, or even threatened. Not around here, anyway.
This is like the 25th Google story on Slashdot this week.
Give it a break guys.
Or move them to their own shill section like the Intel stories.
No matter who wins this fight, we all lose.
No, it's possible to lower the cost of wireless by fixing the bidding process. If ATT and friends know there will be real competition, they will be less able to run the prices up. It won't be impossible but it will be harder.
A real sharing of spectrum is possible but politically unlikely. Really, we should claim the air for ourselves and no further regulation is required other than policing intentional disruption.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
- establish a service rule for broadband services operating in the 700 MHz band that protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider.
- allow third-party access to spectrum owned by other companies. This "open access" plan to include wholesale access to networks would enable more competitors to offer services
- institute anonymous bidding in auctions to lessen the possibility of bid signalling and bid rigging that studies found to have taken place in prior auctions.
Also, what about open spectrum? Does it work well in practice? Would that be a better solution? (though I know it's a moot point for the upcoming auction.)Moderators. Parent needs some attention.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Don't you guys have MANs? They're pretty popular here in Beijing, and provide pretty good performance too, certainly good value (99rmb/month). The ones I've used have been 10BaseT ethernet connections.
Max.
It's politically unlikely because of all the corruption and bribery going on by big business.
Pity, that the truth is modded down as a troll, or flamebait, redundant, whatever. It's still the truth.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
People have given up on DSL?
Yes, the people who can't get it have basically faced the reality that the telcos will simply not upgrade the networks near them to support it. Maybe they're in rural places, maybe they're tucked into some corner of a city just out of reach of all the COs around them, but many of the telcos are refusing to spend any more money to improve their network.
The whole premise behind the FCC was that if spectrum was unregulated you would have a tragedy of the commons were everybody would pollute it so much that it would become unusable. However in practice that has turned out to be a complete and absolute lie. In the unregulated spectrum's, the more the spectrum got "polluted", the more people created technologies that could intelligently allocate, detect, shift, and route around. So now all spectrum regulation does is lock in obsolete technologies and wasteful inefficient use of the frequencies in place.
Oh yeah - those are the companies that handed over all the information concerning their subscriber's phone calls to the Bush administration without so much as a warrant to legitimize the request.
"The 700 MHz spectrum could give birth to the much-anticipated third pipe, but phone and cable lobbyists are currently pressuring the FCC to sell companies like AT&T and Verizon our airwaves -- in a flawed auction process -- so they can hoard this valuable spectrum and stifle competitive alternatives to their networks. Google and other would-be providers are not taking it lying down. They want the FCC to mandate that whoever wins the auction be required to sell access to those airwaves, at wholesale prices, to anyone wanting to provide broadband Internet service. They also want anonymous auctions to prevent the giant incumbents from manipulating the results against small players (as they have done in the past)."
Gee, that's what I like about slashdot. Fair and balanced, unlike those biased news media the public depends upon.
This and other spectrum are coming from normal broadcast allocations, so we can be forced to buy all new TV and radios, using locked in, proprietary patented codecs that reduce quality and enforce DRM, while giving us lower audio and visual quality. The only question here is who has ALREADY papered congress with bucks to cause us to overload our landfills and make the other countries who make consumer gear (virtually none is made here anymore) rich. The FCC is a bit player doing what congress has ordered them to do. This is total evil. Am I supposed to throw away my collection of vintage audio gear because there will be no analog signals for the radios to pick up anymore? Did anyone consider the financial costs to us all? We're talking serious wasted money yere, and further pirating of our culture by the **AA guys. Yes, they are the pirates. Try to get a recording that's out of print from them, then ask them for permission to make a copy of a friends. I think you know the answer you'll get. One guy who worked here did a computer jukebox (with nice taste and key/timing matching at the segs) and tried to find a way for the AA to let people put their own music on it. Answer? Not at any price unless it's limited to the playlist of things currently in print that we want to sell. Pirates as a word has been going in the wrong direction for far too long. I want my 1953 Berlin philharmonic playing Motzart. Just try that legally.
The FCC has intentionally let the market collapse to a false competition between a local cable company and a local phone company. Very few phone companies have come through with their promisses so Cable is really the only option most people may have. Cable everywhere has blocked ports and intentionally low upload speeds. The US 16th in the network world and falling fast.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There's also a huge problem that the entertainment industry is having with all of this auctioning of RF. Wireless mics operate on these bands. It's already hard enough to organize hundreds of wireless mics on the spectrum by not running into existing tv channels, other mics, creating intermod and etc... And now with even LESS spectrum don't expect the superbowl, grammys, presidential rallies, fundraisers, churches, plays, concerts and other functions to have wireless mics. We need a spot for comsumer devices, a spot for common commercial use and a spot for industrial use but keep the reigns open besides that.
Yeah, I've been trying to get my wife to go for that for a while, but she's afraid of getting Santorum all over the place.
The users should rent it from the government that is enforcing their property rights over this natural resource.
Others have argued there is no scarcity of the resource you are talking about, so no regulation is required. Taxing unlimited resources is socially harmful. In this case, the only purpose of the tax is to "protect" incumbents and their revenue stream. The cost to the rest of us for that revenue stream is the majority of your monthly telco bill, and a proportion of all the goods and services you purchase. The cost of that protection is monopolies which maximize your cost and minimize your service. This is why the US is falling behind the rest of the world in network service.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And who do you want instead? Hillary? If you thought Bush was eroding civil liberties, it would be different but the same under Hillary. "Think of the children" instead of "Think of the terrorists." The end result would be different, to be sure -- a smaller erosion of freedoms, with a direct impact on many more people. The Democratic candidates are not in favor of personal liberties in the slightest (neither are most of the republicans).
Ron Paul is a libertarian, and more than slightly loony; that said, he's not the bat-shit loco of the Libertarian party. At least with him in the White House, it wouldn't be business as usual.
Overheard at the meeting of The InterNet Cabal (TINC).
Ok, here's the plan:
Comcast, make sure all your bids end in "1" followed by 0's.
ATT, you bid ending in "2" plus 0's.
Time-Warner, you get "3."
If you see a bid ending in 4-9, it's not one of us.
Bwuhahahahaha.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, Ron Paul is the kind of "libertarian" who has no problems funding programs he likes, such as those that aim to barricade America against immigration. He's the sort of "libertarian" who hates free trade and who would restrict a woman's right to choose. The sort of "libertarian" who voted to ban gay adoptions in DC.
Honestly, do you Ron Paul me-tooers bother reading up on anyone you support before jumping on the bandwagon?
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
I don't agree with all of his policies, actually. I do, however, think that he's honest and consistent, and therefore predictable. He claims his right-to-life stance is based on a states rights stance, and that the federal government should stay out of it. In this instance I disagree with him (rather strongly), but I like the general small-federal-government stance. However, I'm not terribly worried about this -- he would have very little power to actually do anything about it. He's also against the income tax, but I'm not worried he'd repeal it -- not for lack of trying, but for lack of effective power to do so. But that comes from a desire to cut the size of the federal government, which I firmly agree with and think he would have the power to do.
He's also the sort of libertarian who actually votes to keep government small, voted against the Patriot Act, is against subsidizing large corporations... plenty of things I support. I'm not in favor of him because I think he'd be perfect, but rather because I think he'd shake things up more than a little bit, and mostly in ways I'd appreciate.
I understand, thanks for explaining your support. Shaking things up in government is something we can probably all agree on.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
[Ron Paul is] the sort of "libertarian" who hates free trade and who would restrict a woman's right to choose.
I'll leave the "hates free trade" comment to someone else, but I will take a crack at the "woman's right to choose".
It is a libertarian principle that people should not enforce their will on others through coercion (this is a lot of why Libertarians hate government as much as they do - it is, in fact a system of organized coercion, taking what people have - essentially at gunpoint - to provide services for the "common good").
An extension of this principle is why murder is bad, and as such why society has an interest in preventing it - it is, fundamentally, the ultimate extension of coercion. By murdering someone, you have permanently ended all freedom, all will, all "right to choose" of the individual you murder. Personally, I feel that if I saw someone being unjustly attacked (little old lady getting mugged, for example), I would have an ethical right (and obligation) to intercede if possible, to the maximum amount I could safely do so. I recognize this as a fundamental truth, and consider police intervention in such crime an extension of this principle.
When trying to apply this principle to abortion, people draw different results. It is, in fact, a point of much contention in the Libertarian party.
Ethically speaking, however, we do a disservice by pretending it has anything at all to do with mothers rights. Bear with me, as that statement needs explaining:
Nobody (as far as I have encountered) says that they are in favor of killing children. I have never heard anyone argue such, and would question the mental state of anyone who did. As such, the real question has as little to do with "mothers rights" as "attacker's rights" has to do with murders. Either the unborn fetus is a person worthy of legal protection, or it's an unborn mass of cells that isn't. If it's a person, it's (probably) murder. If it's not a person, then how is it any different from disposing of any other foreign human cells inside your body?
As for me, I was born significantly premature. It would have been perfectly legal, and possible, to have me aborted the day I was born. I've seen pictures which explained some ways abortions were performed, and it sickened me greatly. There are no people more helpless than unborn children, and it's undeniable that an abortion ends the life of someone who potentially would have lived a long, full, productive life. I also worked for an adoption web site, and I know of a good number of families who paid a lot of money to advertise to try to reach birth mothers, hoping to adopt. Mothers have a lot of options for family placement, and the option of severing all ties if desired. I have a hard time seeing most abortion as anything more than a senseless waste of life. Women who sleep around run the risk of pregnancy. It's a natural, biological consequence of sleeping around. The pain ends in 9 months, and you don't have to keep the child. It could be worse - AIDS lasts a lifetime.
I feel that abortion should be treated as the premeditated killing of another human being, or perhaps the "potential" premeditated killing of another human being. Figure out what percentage of non-aborted fetuses die before birth, and base it off that. "There's a 95% chance you killed another person, so here's 95% of a murder conviction."
As for rape, I can certainly see a case for abortion. It's a form of self defense. It's justifiable homicide, but homicide nonetheless.
I recently heard the suggestion that one should evaluate candidate's positions not on what they say they will do, or are likely to try to do, but on what they actually *could* do if elected. Examined in this light, Paul looks a lot more appealing. And I definitely want someone with more respect for the constitution.
Eh? Why did you draw a reel to reel recorder?
Did anyone else read the title and think Google were buying a load of old P3's?
No, just me? Aw, zing.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
I know it's Slashdot, where big companies are always wrong (unless it's Google), but could we please tone down the bias in the article summary? Wow.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I signed up for DSL, they said from my location I could get a 'whopping' 1 Mbit connection with 256k up for $39/mo- after getting hooked up and paying some $60 for the modem, I found the connection was bombing about every 5 minutes due to excessive errors. They dropped my rate to 512k down, 256k up and kept my fee the same, how thoughtful. After my IP phone ate all my bandwidth for work-related calls and brought my work-related SSH connections to a crawl such that I couldn't do both (eg, couldn't do my job) I switched to cable. I'm not outside the city limits, and in fact I'm on a large residential street right next door to a school. Aside from a bunch of 'planned' maintenance that they can never tell me about and a summer of highly intermittant connectivity (SNRs would decrease during the heat of day and drop for hours at a time and come back in the evening) that took 12 trips to resolve with their usual 1-2 weeks between each visit where they'd come and the connection would of course be working when they came and about 12 minutes after they left would shut down... anyway, ever since it has been incredibly reliable and they've even increased my speed for $3 / month. I used to get about 600kbytes/s down and 30kbytes/s up, now closer to 1MB/s down and 60kb/s up. Although I'm reasonably happy with it, the 'planned' outages always get me since I often work through the night. I asked a year ago how to find out about them and they had an email list they were working on setting up... I gave them my address, never heard a peep.. asked the other day and they're working on a website that will list these... i'll believe it when I see it. If I could get reliable / fast dsl for the same price as my cable internet (~$45/mo + tax/fees, own my own modem) I'd switch back because it was rock solid once they knocked me down to a crawl.
So what you're saying is most people in your area have cable rather than DSL, and they experience more of a slowdown during peak traffic hours than the underused DSL network? Wow, I would have never expected that. Maybe if everybody switched to DSL, everyone would have a faster connection.
Where I live in North Carolina, people flew like droves to DSL due to it being cheaper than Time Warner's cable offering, but after a few months, the service kept dropping, sometimes for days. Every time anyone called in to complain, they would be told that if they had to come into your house (which they almost always tried to do) you would be charged $45 unless you agreed to pay for DSL Insurance.
Whether it was true or not, all my neighbors started thinking scam and switched to Time Warner's cable internet.
Firstly this just demonstrates that the public airwaves are not 'public' at all. They merely belong to the corporations who are the biggest campaign contributors. I love how people who use airwaves without FCC approval are pirates and criminals - but if give to the right politicians and fix the auction then you are legit. Its amazing that if you bilk the customer because either you can get away with ignoring anti trust laws because your Verizon or AT&T then it's ok. Steal a CD and you go to jail.
Secondly this story is another example of the lack of competition in cell phone service and wireless data service. There is enough spectrum for at least 8 national companies. Yet there really are only 3 or 4 depending on how you count them. This I bet is why service is still absurdly expensive. Thirdly, I dream of the re-division of the airwaves. Its a quite a mess. Of course the changeover period may be difficult - but it would be doable. Finally I don't see why CBS, FOX, ABC and NBC should get them for free when so much of what they do is hardly serving the public. They get to refuse ads they don't like. They dont have to justify what they put on the air much. Why not give them for free for 20 years to others and see if they do better?
It seems like the Goog is actually being more active in adopting smart new technologies and delivering them to the common geek than any other company out there. They build them and they buy them. They give them to us, without strings. Oh, and their search engine rocks.
What you don't read about here is Google entering into obscure secret deals to leverage their IP and jointly market their extortionate plans. Slashdot likes Google. Get over it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Im also in Kansas and have DSL, as my understanding was the cable in this town is lousy. The DSL, through SBC/AT&T has been reliable, though getting it in the first place was a serious hassle.
;)
I have the option of wireless internet, as I work for a WISP who just put up an ap about 6 blocks from my place. They offered me service but....meh, that stuff has lousy bandwidth in the 900mhz range
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
yes, they would, idiot. that's the nature of DSL.
*Uh...No...They want it for themselves...They don't mean opened to the public. They want to own it. And rent it out at prices only AT&T can afford.*
Hey!
What?
From 1998 through 2002 I had a nice very stable (4 hours of downtime TOTAL in 4 years) DSL connection in Cedar Rapids, IA through a local ISP - about half the downtime was their fault (router went bad once, another time their big pipe went down) other half was qwest outtages (storm once, servicing another time).
Between then and now I had a mixture of college-provided lan, then cable internet (mediacom) which was decent - but i just moved this last few days to a new appartment - came with internet delivered via HPNA, shared bandwidth between multiple buildings (not told of this in advance), filtered (not told of this in advanced), qos-degraded for non http/imap/smtp/pop traffic (not told of this in advance) weee. So anyway.. nasty emails to the new landlords - and a new 1.5mbit Qwest DSL connection ordered [with my own DSL modem/bridge so i can get one that is JUST A BRIDGE since I already have a 10/100 switch/wireless-g ap/NAT router and qwest only lets you rent dsl modem/routers (one w/ wireless, one w/o)].
so... dsl definantly not dead.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
You sound like the people I used to work for...academic admin's
You can't compare the national spectrum needs to the 2.4 Ghz market. All it takes is some idiot down the street with a device/antenna that uses the whole 2.4 Ghz spectrum to ruin your connection (wireless CATV adapter, etc.). Just because it works in your house...doesn't mean it will work on a large scale.
I worked on a college campus and nobody could understand that you couldn't just "throw" up a bunch of AP's from Best Buy and have it work with no problems (enterprise controller needed). I'm not saying the FCC is a well oiled machine, but the spectrum must be treated like land. Here is you piece of the pie...if you don't like it...too bad.
Likewise! I've had both cable and DSL off and on since around 2000, and much prefer DSL. It tends to be a lot cheaper and more reliable. None of the DSL connections I've had have ever appeared to just "not work" for more than a minute or two, and that only very rarely (maybe once a month or less). While cable connections seem to flake out for hours at a time, and more frequently.
Plus DSL is a lot cheaper everywhere I've lived. At my parents' home in Michigan, they can get 512 kB DSL for $15/month, and 2 MB for $25, but basic cable access would be like $30/month.
My bicyles
"and who would restrict a woman's right to choose"
Actually, he simply says the federal government has absolutely no authority to cover that, and that it should be up to the states to choose.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
See this post down below to see that the other two bands are phone and cable.
OUTGROW liberty? You're kidding me, right?
I grew up an average liberal, I discovered socialism. And yes, I outgrew it. I'm not libertarian, at some point I've endorsed right-wing issues, but generally I'm not slightly left-leaning.
What's there to outgrow with liberty? Liberty is what you begin to understand once you see all the bullshit in mainstream politics, whyever you would consider that mainstream grown-up or anything. It's sandbox games all over.
is considered the future of spectrum licensing and both the IEEE and FCC agree on this. It was discovered some time ago that spectrum usage varies in both space and time and is often wasted. Even in a metropolitan area many bands are unused up to 85% of the time. With the advent of software define radio (such as the popular GNU Radio) it is now possible for a wireless device to "sense" bands of little spectrum activity and adjust internal parameters (i.e. modulation type, channel coding, Nyquist pulse shape, etc.) and adaptively maximize bandwidth utilization, at least in theory. The engineering is difficult and considered to be the holy grail of communications by many.
e grated.pdf
What this means, in a nutshell, is that in the future it will be possible to completely open up the spectrum and charge commercial users in a pay-by-usage model, like the internet. Once the problems with cognitive radio were solved, this would require a simple licensing scheme (think unique FCC identifier in the packet header) and new layer 2-1 protocols.
If you're interested, more info can be found at:
(IEEE info center) www.ieeep1900.org/crinfo
(FCC workshop) www.fcc.gov/oet/cognitiveradio/
For a more technical discussion, refer to Mitola's PhD thesis:
www.it.kth.se/~jmitola/Mitola_Dissertation8_Int
It could be made into a public licensed radio band for public use with a specific grid networking transmission standard providing a grid (mesh netowrk) at high speed, but restrict all users to a fractional maximum legal capped bit rate for all users of say 1 megabits sec. While the radio equipment would provide grid mesh wireless at high data rates, the nature of the usage would be a cooperative bandwidth sharing system providing fractional bandwidth.
Of course a public (free RF band area) cooperative grid bandwidth as a public use scheme probably will not find corporate support nor government support (privatize - ie private organizations are to own all public commons)...
If Google really wants equanimity and not just a powerful empire of its own, it would champion a public system of equanimity (ie a legally imposed QOS limited public mesh network)
SimBuddha
I do support on DSL circuits and cable for literally thousands of businesses with vendors all over the board and IMHO DSL is by far less reliable than cable. In addition DSL repairs can take days when most cable companies get someone out same day or next, at least with business services. Ever had to schedule a vendor meet with the DSL provider and the ILEC? You never have those types of issues with cable.
~S
I read somewhere that radio stations simply used the courts to solve issues before the FCC, there were many small cases going on unknown to the public, but it was generally working. However, the FCC seemed an easy case to sell to the public to get a lot of extra income, or even, manipulation of the content on the air waves. I guess these are also arguments why the internet should be completely unregulated.
Your argument is assuming there are no property rights. If there is a small station and someone opens up a big station and drowns out the other station then they are violating the smaller stations property rights because they were not there first. The FCC has been even worse than the big station in this case and has got away with the biggest theft and taken all the property rights in the spectrum away.
Another View of the FCC and Spectrum Scarcity http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/ 11/1728259
The thing that I find a lot different between the AT&T DSL I currently use and the Cox Cable Internet I tried for a grand total of 5 days before I ditched it: latency and jitter. The unwashed masses look and see they can get 12 Mbps from Cox's "Premium" Internet service, but then when I got it the average latency to major sites was 60-150 ms with jitter of 30-70ms on top of that. Add in random 10% packet loss periods during heavy usage periods in my neighborhood and I was getting clobbered. My Vonage service would drop out completely or I'd miss parts of the conversation. With my DSL the average latency is 35-55ms with less than 5ms jitter and my Vonage service is rock solid. So, mark me down as another one who doesn't buy into Cable's high bandwidth crapfest, I'll stick with my 6 Mbps/768Kbps ADSL over the 12 Mbps/1 Mbps Cox Cable offering.
Cool, you can get DSL by itself. By me, you have to pay for local phone service too. You add that on and you're paying the same as cable.
One question I keep on asking myself is, why do we have lobbyist? Shouldn't it be illegal to have special groups (i.e. corporations) push special agendas? Shouldn't it also be illegal for law makers to vote on specific issues after they have received donations from various lobbyist.
Wouldn't the large corp.s collude in the background, and then that single anonymous bidder would have enough money to win the bid? I've read several articles on the Indianapolis ready-mix concrete market. Every concrete supplier had meetings in a "party barn" to discuss price fixing. These are supposed to be competing suppliers, but they learned that if they work together, the make more money. Collusion at its best.
If I were Verizon, I would want to make absolutely certain that I had a piece of this new spectrum, and to do that, I would collude with someone like AT&T, and combine our money in a joint venture called ExampleCom, Inc. ExampleCom would then have more than enough money to submit a single bid anonymously to win the entire spectrum up for auction. Then, ExampleCom would make lots of money deciding exactly which frequencies get the most bang for the buck, and well, sell the shitty bands to Verizon and AT&T's small competitors, keeping the cream of the crop for their principal investors.
How would anonymous bidding stifle collusion? It seems as though it makes it easier.
Spending Resources on Defense leaves Less to defend.
I really wish we could go back to our DSL connection... But we moved a mere 6 miles in the wrong direction, and the cable company has no DSL out here. They're rolling out fiber in the city itself, but out here we have nothing but cable internet.
They tell me that the cable's top speed is higher than what our DSL had to offer before - 3 Mbps instead of 1.5 Mbps - but I have yet to see it. The connection is spotty as hell. It falls over for no good reason at least once a month, while we had DSL for over two years with no interruption in service at all.
I've also run into trouble with blocked ports. I have, on more than one occasion, attempted to connect to a home PC for various purposes...RDP, VNC, FTP, WWW...I'll generally get one or two good connections, and then the ports are blocked. I've had to repeatedly change ports...and the new ones will get blocked after a couple connections as well. I realize it's a 'home' account, not 'business', but I still think I ought to be able to occasionally connect into my home PC to grab a file I forgot.
I hope our results are atypical... I hope cable is more reliable elsewhere... But from my own experiences I can't imagine trying to run a business on a cable line. I can't imagine having to rely on the cable company for connectivity. And I genuinely regret moving out of DSL range.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
How about a spammer tidbit.
i worked for Comcast, I had their highest speed possible being an employee. DSL feels far faster for one reason.. Latency. Comcast's cable modem network has nasty latency problems.. with a 5Meg up 1 meg down package VoIP sucked and had tons of problems. I quit and changed over to DSL (Cable really is incredibly overpriced) and all my Voip problems disappeared. My latency went completely away and even though I have the cheapest DSL service I get better internet and Voip. the only thing that suffers is bittorrent and large downloads... but that is what the OC3 at work is for.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Consider yourself lucky to have that choice. A friend of mine living somewhat out in the boonies has the choice between satellite internet, or dial-up. The money is saying dial-up.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Posting from the bathroom on your laptop causes interesting spelling problems.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Honestly, the only time consumers should be concerned about bandwidth is for massive downloads or VoIP. I've had VoIP for 3 years and it has more than adequately replaced my land line at half the cost. Massive downloads are better done via torrents, which download off hours anyway. Based on my cell phone experience, I can't imagine wireless for home service is an upgrade from any of this!!
As technology improves, you can do more with less, but no amount of technology is going to make a limited resource like spectrum, infinite.
No amount of wishful thinking is going to save the incumbent telcos. As hundreds of people easily share a single radio frequency in public places every day, spectrum is practically infinite. If allocated properly, there's enough for every person to broadcast video. The old spectrum allocation is wasteful and every day it lasts robs the public. A radical overhall is in order and those fighting it are evilvipers such as yourself.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We want the airwaves baby.
That's right. That's right.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
This doesnt sound good. Ever used a 900mhz phone? They're hardly ever used anymore because the sound quality sucks. I can't imagine using 700mhz for broadband. Perhaps for small load applications like sensors talking to a master system in a plant or something, but not for wifi.
So, another swath of usable bandwidth, line of sight, no skip or ducting issues is given, er, sold to companies who have been trying to regain monopoly status....hobble wifi, kill Skype, etc....
Compare mobile phones in europe to here....a better deal there.
After the usual collusive bidding process, we will be charged through the nose for whatever service comes of it, and it will be only one way...the "internet" abberation has to be stifled.
The best analogy is the railroads in the Midwest before the highway system was built. Local Granges were quite incensed at what they properly saw as a huge middleman markup to get the goods to the city, much more than any actual costs plus a fair profit. The same deal applies here. If we can't kill the internet or DRM it to death, we can at least regulate the content by cost.
History repeats itself.
The guy with the most watts is certainly a likely winner. There are other classes of possible winner who might even beat out the man with the monster transmitter.. For example, the service with the greatest tolerance for interference. I don't know what has happened recently with RF-lighting technology in the 2.4GHz segment, but it seems likely to me that this is a user who is essentially immune from any (realistic) sort of interference. Without regulation, what, other than cost/usability issues in the technology, could prevent it from driving most everyone else from the band?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
As for rape, I can certainly see a case for abortion. It's a form of self defense. It's justifiable homicide, but homicide nonetheless.
You're a crazy motherfucker.
The 3G auction in the UK went well. http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/klemperer/biggestse pt.pdf [pdf] has the details. It was important (apparently) that there were more licenses available than incumbent "big-players".
It is mentioned in "The Undercover Economist".
That is a cop-out argument and (IMO) shows you don't really understand the other point of view. For one thing, if you accept that the unborn child is a person, then the mother who aborts is the one forcing her beliefs on the unborn child. And someone out there might think you don't qualify as a human because you have the wrong genes or belief system and that therefore it wouldn't be a crime to kill you. Saying, "All belief systems are equally valid so just leave me alone" won't magically solve any of the world's problems.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
And I'll have to call YOURS a cop-out argument, and shows that YOU don't understand the other point of view. The whole point is when, exactly, does that fetus become considered a separate life, and when is it considered still a part of the mother. If the fetus is NOT a separate life, then the mother can do whatever she damn well pleases to herself.
And THAT is where people's point of view differs. While some would argue that "life begins at conception", some would not view that as a separate life that early.
So, really, what makes YOUR definition of when a "fetus" becomes an "unborn child" any more "right" than anyone else's? And what gives you the right to push that onto others?