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Official 700MHz Bidder List
j.sanchez1 writes "Wired has the scoop on the official bidder list for the 700MHz auction slated for January 24, 2008. Here are PDFs of the lists of accepted applications (96 names) and incomplete applications (170). Along with AT&T and Verizon, Google and Paul Allen's Vulcan Spectrum are in on the bidding."
Multibillion dollar companies owned by... you and I, or anyone with a share.
The problem is not the multibillion dollar companies, the problem is the FCC. The FCC creates the regulations, and laws, and restrictions, and mandates, that force you and I and a million others from tossing in our own $1500 each and competing. We'd need to hire lawyers who probably worked for the FCC and wrote the rules. We'd need to get approvals from a slow and red-tape-ladened administration. We'd need to prove who we are and what our intentions are.
That's the problem. You think it's these huge megacorps that cause these issues? Well, they sure lobby for them. But if the Federal Executive branch actually followed the Rule of Law (i.e., the Constitution), the FCC would be probably a teeny tiny organization that just made sure no one was perverting the airwaves with massive noise outputs from dirty electronics.
WiFi is relative proof that you can go relatively unregulated in spectrum bandwidth and have things work just fine. Yes, yes, some people in the middle of Manhattan complain about WiFi performance, but my experience at my old office in downtown Chicago showed that things worked just fine -- all the time.
We don't need the FCC, we need more individuals getting together, pitching in a few grand, hiring managers, and competing with the old powerful regimes. Unfortunately, it isn't available. We can't do it. We can't compete. The market doesn't work efficiently when there are barriers to entering the market, and the ONLY barrier is government regulation. Raising $1billion is easy; the machete you need to cut through red tape is nearly non-existent.
Ego trips, publicity stunts, and a desire to get one's name in the history books with the big boys. Big Roy's Internet Service and Gerbil Grooming may not have an honest chance at actually winning an auction, but it'll get him into the Google rankings alongside the likes of AT&T for a bit.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Yeah, that's not quite the most compelling argument I've heard about this issue. Certainly not the most informed, either.
For many years, the idea of a truly software-based, frequency-hopping radio was the idea of dreams and science fiction. We have them today. They work well, but are still limited in frequencies they can utilize. Power-sources have been the biggest limiting factor for opening up spectrum for unregulated use, but that too is quickly being overcome by technological discoveries (see the nano-wire battery article from yesterday).
Regulated spectrum may have been important when radio transmissions were inefficient, dirty, and even dangerous. We've overcome those issues, and now have the technology to utilize wireless transmissions that could be best navigated and selected based on distance to the other transceiving device, available power for transceiving, speed and latency requirements, and other traffic detected. Because power is not limitless, the idea that one massive power source would likely overpower everything in the area is only based on the idea that someone would or even could transmit garbage over every frequency at high power levels. Yes, I know there are technological marvels that COULD do this, and that's why I will allow for the idea that the FCC may exist only to penalize users of such dirty-transmission devices. Personally, I feel that the market would correct for these power-wasting freaks, but I'll at least accept a small role for the FCC to prevent dirty-transmissions.
With frequency-hopping, and software-based radios, we'd reach a new era of wireless. We're WASTING gigahertz of spectrum on old media -- TV, radio, even cell phone and cordless phone frequencies that could be better used to combine everything into a WiFi-like system. The days of forced media schedules are slowly ending, with more and more people grabbing TV shows a la carte, via bittorrent or PVR-systems. Instead of flooding the airwaves with the gigahertz of garbage no one is watching, de-regulate that bandwidth and allow more wireless providers to send people what they want, when they want it.
Those who demand faster bandwidth and lower latency may spend the money for the extra power they'll need to acquire the spectrum they need in their area, for their purposes. Yet power is the BIGGEST cost of wireless transmissions, and I can guarantee that anyone who wants to hog a wide swath of spectrum will find themselves with an unbelievable electric bill after one month. Yet even with someone locally occupying a certain amount of frequencies, there is still a huge amount of bandwidth available all over the entire radio spectrum. A move to digital, on demand IP-based transceiving makes more sense. We're moved beyond the need for fixed-frequencies, except for the old media who needs to control, and regulate, competition out of existence.
They know their time has come. The need to keep cell phones on the same basic frequency, TV on the same basic frequency, and radio on the same basic frequency has been replaced, and proven so, by the newer technologies out there (Satellite, XM, WiFi, even 700Mhz cordless phones). Those days are over, but we're too engaged with the old system to realize it.
The best thing the FCC could do is to just deregulate the 700Mhz-900Mhz frequencies entirely, and let the market provide services. Let's see what would happen. I bet amazing things would come into the market quickly. Then start deregulating more frequencies, until the FCC shrinks to a minor enforcer of clean transceiving.
Yes, a cellphone revolution... in advertising....
Google will track wherever you go via GPS. Google can then sell advertising to companies that you walk by. The more people that walk by a business, the more they can charge for advertising. Then, when you walk within 500 feet of that business, they'll send you some text message telling you of said business's latest deals. You clear the message, and in another 300' you get another text message from another business with their lunch specials.
Then, of course, google will have you use your "google logon" with your cellphone, too. So when you go do Internet searches on your PC, it will cater the results to where you go and where you've been. "Hey, I noticed you're looking for anal plugs... there was a good shop with a buy one get one on your route to work".
Of course, google will also use that GPS data to notify businesses in your local area what you're searching for and what you buy from their competitors.
Then Google founders will use all that extra cash to buy an EVEN BIGGER private jet to go play around the world and burn more fuel while hypocritically telling us that we need to reduce our fuel consumption to save the environment.