700 MHz Auction Begins Tomorrow

necro81 writes "On Thursday, after much speculation and wrangling, the FCC will begin auctioning licenses to the coveted 700 MHz band that will be vacated by analog TV in 2009. The NY Times has a good summary of the players (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Google, et al.), how the auction will work, how Google has already scored an open networks victory, and what it could all mean for consumers. The auction will go on for several months, but you can keep tabs on the bids at this FCC site."

Comments

Spasebo.

[Stanistani]

I plan to buy the frequency band myself, and just endlessly broadcast a black-and-white image of myself, accompanied by Russian martial music.

Big businesses win, we lose!

[dattaway]

Our public land and airwaves for sale to the highest bidder.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Ed Avis]

Our public land and airwaves for sale to the highest bidder.

How else do you propose to allocate it? By handing it out to political cronies? By giving it to whichever special interest group squeals the loudest? By letting wireless spectrum be another kind of pork that representatives can fight over? Or you could just leave it unregulated, and give the spectrum to whoever wins the war to have the most powerful transmitter.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[gandhi_2]

WTF??

Let big business pay for the privilege of using our spectrum. This is a good way to raise revenue without raising taxes. I would argue that we don't charge enough for spectrum. It's our most renewable resource.

This isn't the ANWR drilling we are talking about dude. What do you want, lowest bidder? Seriously, you are king of the world...how would you handle this?

What exactly did you lose?

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[phobos13013]

Ask the Ramones

"We Want The Airwaves"

9 to 5 and 5 to 9
Ain't gonna take it
It's our time
We want the world
and we want it know
We're gonna take it anyhow

We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby
If rock is gonna stay alive

Oh yeah-well all right
Let's rock-tonite
All night

Where's your guts
And will to survive
And don't you wanna
Keep rock n' roll music alive
Mr. Programmer
I got my hammer
and I'm gonna
Smash my
Smash my
Radio

We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby
If rock is gonna stay alive

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just leave it unregulated, and give the spectrum to whoever wins the war to have the most powerful transmitter.

I'd love to see this actually tried for once. With todays technology, power isn't the only way to get past noise.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[dattaway]

This isn't the ANWR drilling we are talking about dude. What do you want, lowest bidder? Seriously, you are king of the world...how would you handle this?

DHSS. Use the same technology in our wireless cards. Make this a truely public spectrum. There's always a technological solution to a government problem. Why sell what we can use for free?

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Eravnrekaree]

It could be given out to, in the case of broadcasters, to strictly locally owners assuring a decentralised media that is not controlled by large corporations. Remember the FCCs ownership rules? They prevented a company from owning more than a handful of radio stations and more than one or two stations in a particular market, assuring a broad diversity of sources of information, news,etc. Now the FCC has pretty much gutted these rules, and a few large corporations now control most radio outlets (clear channel), tv outlets, and now broadcasters will be allowed to own newspapers as well, furthering the consolidation. Allegedly we have free speech, but the means to free expression is increasingly being controlled by a few large corporations who, due to their rapidly expanding power and how they own government and seem to be above the law, the laws are made for them and government is a puppet that they own.

There was a push to get low power FM passed through, which would not have interfered with larger stations and which would have been required to be licenced to only small locally owners, but was opposed by corporations, on a complete lie that it would interfere with their large high power stations, which is a lie since the lpfm licences would require an engineering study to assure they didnt. The corporations just didnt want people freely expressing themselves and are hell bent on controlling all forms of communication.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it still a "false dichotomy" if you have five unrealistic options? Have you discovered the false pentchotomy?

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Eravnrekaree]

The problem with your argument is these auctions basically give control to the wealthiest corporate interests, which do not at all correspond with what is the best interest of the population or which promotes individual self expression and free speech most. It allows these wealthy interests to control channels of information and communication and hinder innovation and free speech. We are best making sure as many independant voices can be heard and making sure as many people can innovate and use the radio waves how they see fit rather than having a few large corporations controlling them. You can do this while also assuring that the radio stations do not transmit over each other and chaos does not result. The purpose of licencing is to prevent chaos, not to give exclusive control to large corporations, which it has become. The airwaves should not even be owned but licenced, the public should own the airwaves and determine how they are utilised, since they are a limited resource. AS for how we choose how they should be utilised, why not let the people choose through an election how they are run, and why not require, for instance, some public access stations to be provided which would give airtime slots to local groups, organisations, individuals etc. Quite frankly having a lottery is a better way of determining who should have access to broadcast resources, then giving it to whoever has the most money. With the wireless networks we could charter a non profit corporation which would construct the physical network, and then sell access at cost to service providers and consumers. This would assure the great innovation and diversity in services and greatest choice and freedom for consumers. You assume the only ones who want to use the airwaves or have the right to are corporations, when instead they should be used for and by the greater population for the best public interest. We should not have a situation where you have to be a millionaire to have a voice, and the more money you have, the more control you have over the news and information that flows through the airwaves. Wealth should not give a person a greater right to free speech.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Buelldozer]

Quoth Gandhi_2 "Let big business pay for the privilege of using our spectrum. This is a good way to raise revenue without raising taxes."

Your logic train has derailed. The more you charge business of any kind, regardless of size, for their raw material the more they charge for their finished product. This is how business works.

So while your sentiment of "Charge those big business bastards out the wazooo!" *sounds* good all it means in reality is that the finished good will be more expensive for you to buy!

Presto! The Government has just created a hidden tax ON YOU and you were cheer leading them all the way!

Doh!

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[jandrese]

It's called the 2.4Ghz ISM band. One can argue that leaving it partially unregulated (there are power caps to avoid the problem described in the grandfather post) has been the biggest boon to personal radio use since the invention of the CB radio. Wireless internet as we know it today is all thanks to the FCC leaving a tiny sliver of spectrum open to whoever wants to use it (within reason).

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Shakrai]

Let big business pay for the privilege of using our spectrum

That's all well and good and you won't find too many people on my side of the fence that disagree with that concept.

What bothers me is that outfits like AT&T and Verizon that already own large swaths of the cellular (850mhz) band are going to be allowed to gobble up large swaths of the 700mhz band. Nobody has asked them to justify why they need this much spectrum. One would think that with the pending shutdown of AMPS that they'd have lots of free spectrum in 850mhz to do whatever they'd like with.

Why the hell are we allowing AT&T and Verizon to further cement their stranglehold on the wireless industry in the United States? If you believe that the airwaves should be used for the public benefit then you should want to see a more competitive market for wireless services emerge. This isn't going to happen as long as we allow two large companies (combined with two smaller ones) to completely dominate an industry. We should be taking steps to bring more companies into this market, not further cementing the position of the existing ones.

What would I do differently? At the very least I would require a justification of the existing use of the spectrum that they have and detailed roll-out plans. I'd also exclude AT&T and Verizon from the 700mhz band in any market where they already have cellular (850mhz) licenses. Let the carriers stuck with the poorer-performing PCS (1900mhz) band have the first shot at this valuable space. I'd also mandate stricter rules on what they can do with these bands, including a full adoption of carterfone rules and the elimination of their practice of locking people up into long term contracts with hefty termination fees.

Did you know that in some markets AT&T owns more then 50% of the available wireless (cellular, PCS and AWS) licenses? If you combine them with Verizon in those markets the two manage to own 75-80% of the available spectrum. What's wrong with that picture? AT&T previously justified by it by saying they needed to run three (AMPS/TDMA/GSM) networks. What's the excuse now?

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Archangel Michael]

Except for one thing. Taxes are rarely voluntary, while purchasing finished products is almost always voluntary (the exceptions are Food, Water and Shelter).

No hidden tax. You consume something you don't need, then it isn't really a tax, is it? Nor is it really "hidden" since it is included in the cost of the item you want.

If you want to complain about "hidden" taxes, how about employer paid payroll taxes. Most people never see the cost of these taxes paid on their behalf.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Ed Avis]

Please feel free to suggest another way of allocating the spectrum that isn't one of the five options. That is what I asked.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[mounthood]

Money is the only way to decide this? Really?

Lets apply your argument to water rights:

How else do you propose to allocate it? By handing it out to political cronies? By giving it to whichever special interest group squeals the loudest? By letting [water] be another kind of pork that representatives can fight over? Or you could just leave it unregulated, and give the [water] to whoever wins the war to have the most powerful [pump].

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[markov_chain]

I guess there are some strings attached to the 700MHz spectrum, like requiring open access. Is there any requirement to allow arbitrary, power-limited transmitters? That would be equivalent to the current 2.4GHz ISM rules.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[The One and Only]

I would like to begin my reply by imploring you to use linguistic features like "paragraphs" to organize your thoughts so that they are easier to read.

The airwaves should not even be owned but licenced

As the article summary notes:

... the FCC will begin auctioning licenses to the coveted 700 MHz band...

As for the rest of your comment, it is as poorly thought out as it is written and organized.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[LWATCDR]

The simple fact is that no small company can afford to build out this spectrum. Google isn't a small company. I can also remember when Microsoft wasn't evil and IBM was.
I don't think Google is all that super good but I know that I am in the minority on Slashdot.
Yea I would love for Sprint to do better BTW. I feel they are the least evil of the Cell companies.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Ed Avis]

One difference is that while water is water and there is no substitute, there are other frequency bands than 700MHz. It's not as if companies are being invited to bid for total control over all electromagnetic spectrum at once. And yes, don't you have water meters and water bills?

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[gfilion]

Make this a truely public spectrum. There's always a technological solution to a government problem. Why sell what we can use for free?

Let me guess: the government wants more money...

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Shakrai]

The simple fact is that no small company can afford to build out this spectrum

On a national level? Maybe not. But why has nobody considered the option of encouraging smaller (i.e: regional) carriers to come about? That's originally how the whole wireless market got going before we allowed the massive consolidation that happened later. There's no reason why somebody couldn't get the funds to win a regional license and deploy a network. Partnerships with similar networks in other markets could provide for nationwide coverage, more or less transparent to the end users.

I don't think Google is all that super good but I know that I am in the minority on Slashdot.

I'm in the same minority. Google is already scary enough. I don't want to see them controlling the pipe as well. I'm glad they used their clout to force open access but I'd be leery of them as a service provider. I think the cable companies have shown us why having the service provider and content creation businesses under one roof is a bad idea. And, hell, that's half of what open access was about -- the carriers fought it because they'd rather lock you into their own sandbox then allow you to choose where you get content from. What makes you think that Google wouldn't have a vested interest in locking you into their sandbox? Just because their sandbox is better then Verizon's or Time Warner's doesn't mean that's a good business practice.

Yea I would love for Sprint to do better BTW. I feel they are the least evil of the Cell companies.

Sprint, which is to say Sprint Nextel, can burn in hell as far as I'm concerned. Back in the day when it was just Nextel I had an account. Constant billing problems. They'd cash my check but not credit the account, or (even better) credit the account without cashing my check. This went on for months. Each month contacted them -- each month was told that they were "upgrading" the billing system and not to worry about it.

Cut to a trip out of town. On a weekend. My cell phone gets shut off. Call them up. They claim I owe them ~$200. I say that's impossible because they cashed the check I sent them. They say they never got it. I ask if they can see all of the account notes from previous issues that were all their fault -- they say yes, but it doesn't matter, I owe $200. I ask them to turn me back on until I can get home and contact my bank to get the check images -- they refuse. I tell them to go fuck themselves and switch.

Three weeks later they contact me and admit it was their fault. I tell them it's too late and I've left. They then tell me that they will be charging me an early termination fee. Yeah, you shut off my service by mistake and then try to collect a termination fee when I leave? Go fuck yourselves!

Granted, that was a long time ago, and "Nextel" as opposed to "Sprint Nextel", but "Sprint Nextel" continues to send me collection notices, years after the fact. Each time I get one I call up the collection agency and tell them that story. They close the account and I don't hear anything for a few months -- at which time I'm contacted by a new collection agency and the process repeats. Sprint Nextel refuses to directly talk to me about it, because the amount is in "collections".

Anyway, I rambled on for a bit there. That was six years ago but it still gets my blood boiling to think about it. So, no, I don't think Sprint is the best carrier. I like some of their offerings and wish them luck with Wi-Max (we need a third pipe...) but I'll be sticking with T-Mobile for my cell service. They use some of the same business practices as the others, but at least they are the little guy. Plus you can get a better bang for the buck with them. I've got 1,000 minutes w/unlimited N&W for $39.99. Can't touch that anywhere else.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Buelldozer]

That's an interesting viewpoint, but only on the face of it.

Let's disregard the voluntary vs non-voluntary argument and look at this from the absolute necessities argument that you're presenting.

Unless you're living off the land in the hills building your shelter from logs and mud either you or the vendor of your three basics WILL use the services of a business. That business will be taxed by the government and pass that cost to you.

Food? Trucking companies, grocery stores, rail carriers, farmers, tractor dealers and manufacturers, irrigation system dealers and manufacturers, THOSE companies dealers and manufacturers.

Water? Treatment plant, water service, treatment supplies, cartage to get those supplies to the treatment facility, raw materials for making the pipe, raw materials for making the treatment supplies.

Shelter? The list here is endless. Building materials, building supplies, trucking companies, cement, rail carriers, logging companies.

Even living a 1930's lifestyle there is no practical way you are going to avoid doing business with a company who is being directly taxed by the government. There is absolutely no way you are going to avoid doing business with a company who does business with someone whose being directly taxed by the government. (2 Degrees of separation)

So unless you're willing to wear an animal skin loincloth and live in a mud hut there is almost zero chance you will not be impacted by the government running up the price of doing business.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[zymano]

well said.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Maximum Prophet]

A technological solution could be to partition it similar to airspace for airplanes. A land based transceiver would query an FCC server saying "I have N bytes I need to get to location XXX YYY, and the FCC server would see if anyone else was using bandwidth in that direction. You'd get a responce back saying either wait N seconds, or send your data on ZZZ MHz, using WWW watts, in direction EEE. After you sent your data, the lanes would be cleared for a response, then someone else could use that bandwidth.

If a mobile transceiver needed to contact the base station, it would listen for clear air, then send a standardized packet so the the base station could request bandwidth. If there was a collision, just use collision backoff algorithms like ethernet.

At the end of the day, the FCC would send everyone a bill for the bandwidth used. The cost would just around what the system costs to administer. They could charge people more during periods of congestion, and steep discounts when the system is quiet.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[cmoss]

How else do you propose to allocate it? By handing it out to political cronies? By giving it to whichever special interest group squeals the loudest? By letting wireless spectrum be another kind of pork that representatives can fight over? Or you could just leave it unregulated, and give the spectrum to whoever wins the war to have the most powerful transmitter.

As recently as the early 90's spectrum was allocated by lottery not auction. Qualified bidders payed a minimum application and the winner was chosen at random(presumably). I worked for a company that was trying to acquire IVDS (interactive video and data services) spectrum during the transition, some markets went to lottery and some went to auction.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Ed Avis]

Hmm, for a valuable resource a lottery system is unlikely to work well. If the market price is $1000 and the minimum application fee is $1, then if there are less than 1000 bidders it makes sense for a speculator to put in an application just in the hope of winning, and reselling the resource at its market price if it wins. And once you reach 1000 bidders, you have in effect reached the market price (pay p/1000 for a 1/1000 chance of getting the resource worth p). It seems saner to me just to let people bid for it upfront.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[LWATCDR]

Well I never had any problem with Sprint but I can understand. What I like about Sprint is that they don't lock out applications on your phone. Verizon is about the worst and AT&T is not far behind. Small company doesn't equal a good company and T-Mobile is anything but a small company. They are huge in the EU. I have heard good things about their customer service but not so good on the coverage.

As to small regional carriers. Even a small regional carrier wouldn't be small. Smaller then say Sprint but still a huge company. Think back to those early days of Cell phones. They where expensive, coverage sucked, and roaming charges where mind numbing.

As to WiMax? I just don't see it being a replacement for Cable, FIOS or even DSL. It will be great for mobile and for areas that don't have other types of Broadband.

What we really need is more competition in Cable and broadband.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[truesaer]

What you're forgetting are opportunity costs. Everything has an opportunity cost. If we use the spectrum for a certain purpose, the opportunity cost is that it can't be used for any of the other possible things that other companies would have done with it. By selling the spectrum at auction the price paid by whoever buys it is representative of this opportunity cost. You should pay these costs for whatever service is put onto the spectrum. It's what ensures that it isn't used for something that doesn't have the highest economic value.

Now, some people have suggested that it should instead be allocated to "the best use" based on free speech or some other criteria. I don't really understand this argument at all. Is anyone really suffering from a lack of free speech because they don't have enough radio spectrum? Of course not. There's the internet, TV, radio, satellite radio, newspaper, the soapbox on the corner, etc. The best use is always going to be one man's opinion, the government is in no way qualified to make that kind of decision. An auction at least allows the best economic use of the spectrum.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Arthur Grumbine]

If I only had mod points...

...I would destroy you all!!

Oh, yeah...and mod your response Informative...

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[Archangel Michael]

Shelter = primarily a one time cost (build)
Food = ongoing
Water = ongoing

Let's discard the Onetime cost (shelter) for the time being ....

Food and Water will have some VAT, which is mostly unavoidable, most of the solutions I've seen have to do with (p)rebates based upon the VATs that might be passed along, thus making the system not as regressive as it might seem.

Additionally, VATs tend to flatten out supply chains because each middleman adds inefficiencies into the system, and those people using the least amount of them will inherently be more efficient.

That being said, there are always going to be trade offs to doing something or not doing something. The current system is broken beyond repair, and needs to be replaced with something else. When I get a 1099 form from the IRS regarding interest earned on Tax overpayment credit there is something really wrong. (if you don't understand, you're not alone, which proves my point further). It is not only convoluted at, it is arrogant that they tax us on something they should never have taken in the first place.

If you think this is better than a flat vat tax on all goods, great! I don't. Sorry.

700Mhz?

[imyy4u1]

So will that frequency once it is used interfere with the Slashdot forum server processors that must be running at 700Mhz? :-D Just...kidding...this...forum...is...lightning...fast...

So why NOT Google?

[AltGrendel]

I know the article says that their main goal was to make sure that whoever does get the license keeps the airwaves open to a "wider range of hardware", but I really don't see any reason why Google couldn't get serious and really try to bid for some air space.

Re:So why NOT Google?

[Shakrai]

but I really don't see any reason why Google couldn't get serious and really try to bid for some air space.

Because Google isn't interested in being the delivery-person, they are interested in creating the product that he is bringing to your house.

In fact, I would be terrified of Google getting into the content-delivery business. Forgot about "do no evil". Take a look at your friendly local cable provider to see what happens when you allow a media company to control the pipe that comes into your house.

Content delivery needs to be separate from content creation. Otherwise the delivery provider has a vested interest in locking you into his product and removing your freedom of choice. Can you imagine if UPS opened up their own online bookstore and tried to use their position as a shipping provider to price Amazon and Barnes & Noble out of the market?

Re:So why NOT Google?

[Lisandro]

but I really don't see any reason why Google couldn't get serious and really try to bid for some air space

I see this posted a lot, and i still don't get it. What could Google possibly use the 700MHz band for? Even as an investment it makes little sense.

Re:So why NOT Google?

[Yez70]

From what I understood, Google only had an interest in 'wholesaling' the spectrum out to other providers - with open-access rules enforced. As for the nationwide spectrum up for bid, they would need to partner with another company or multiple companies to meet the build-out requirements. I don't see them being the actual provider, just the controlling interest in the spectrum being used.

Re:So why NOT Google?

[Lisandro]

That's an interesting point, but if it's an interesting band for telcos to use you can bet they'll try to bid them for themselves.

Re:So why NOT Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you want to make sure google wins: FRN: 0010119691 PW: google

Re:So why NOT Google?

[Tacvek]

From what I understood, Google only had an interest in 'wholesaling' the spectrum out to other providers - with open-access rules enforced. As for the nationwide spectrum up for bid, they would need to partner with another company or multiple companies to meet the build-out requirements. I don't see them being the actual provider, just the controlling interest in the spectrum being used. Exactly. Google would like people to be able to have:

• reasonable cost (that is to say far, far, far better than current wireless data rates, and if at all possible, costing not a cent more than current Cable/DSL offerings)
• high speed internet
• available wirelessly (so available even out in the middle of nowhere, where the only current highspeed internet options are satellite and cellular based, both of which cost way to much).
• with proper consumer-oriented regulation. (The services are not locked to the hardware device, so you could switch providers without buying a new device; a neutral network, the providers may not throttle or forbid any type of traffic; etc.)

Under such a system Google wins (it is in Google's interest for as many people to have affordable high speed internet as possible), and the consumers win. The primary losers would be the telcos. If the only way for this to happen is for Google to purchase some of the spectrum, and refuse to license it to telco companies that will not abide by the consumer-friendly regulations, then it may still be worth it. After all, as long as Google licenses the spectrum at a reasonable cost, this would be the perfect opportunity for smaller companies that could not enter the market because of the overhead of getting license to use a part of the spectrum (which would basically be the big telcos, who obviously have no interest in allowing new competition) would now have the opportunity to enter the wireless broadband market. In either case (phone companies play fair) or (smaller companies join with Google to enter the market) the consumer wins.

Re:So why NOT Google?

[corerunner]

Interesting analogy--I haven't considered this point of view before.

Re:So why NOT Google?

[thebigg]

I don't necessarily think that Google being the developer of a WiMax network, tied to their server distribution, would be such an unimaginable horror.

You asked, "Can you imagine if UPS opened up their own online bookstore and tried to use their position as a shipping provider to price Amazon and Barnes & Noble out of the market?"

And without too much of a stretch, yes, I could:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2004/07/01/374848/index.htm

Cynical prediction

[UbuntuDupe]

A major telco, or a coalition of the major telcos, will go deep into dept to bid an extremely high price that no one can match, then win, then use their effective monopoly to continue the USA's crappy position in telecommunication quality, and thereby charge high enough prices to pay back the debt from their bid.

I want to be wrong, but I want credit if I'm right.

I hope Google can get enough money to outbid. Maybe sell "Gbonds" so they can pay absurdly low yields on borrowed money :-P

Re:Cynical prediction

[acvh]

A major telco, or a coalition of the major telcos, will go deep into dept to bid an extremely high price that no one can match, then win, then use their effective monopoly to continue the USA's crappy position in telecommunication quality, and thereby charge high enough prices to pay back the debt from their bid.

From reading the article, the FCC is opening the bid at $10 billion. The previous record for spectrum licensing is $13.x billion, and SOME analysts expect this to go higher. Still, I don't think the FCC will take Google stock as payment - cash only please.

The uses for this spectrum are many. It remains to be seen if anyone will use it in such a way that it profits them, and benefits us as well.

Re:Cynical prediction

[wizkid]

There's actually a bunch of blocks up for bid here. The most expensive is something like $$$4.7B Thats the one that google wants, and the one they bludgened the FCC to put the open device requirement on. I hope google gets it, because they will do it right. The telcos will try to do everything they can to mess up the open device requirement. If google gets it, we will actually be able to use the phones without half the features turned off or mangled. GO GOOGLE

Re:Cynical prediction

[Firethorn]

A major telco, or a coalition of the major telcos, will go deep into dept to bid an extremely high price that no one can match, then win, then use their effective monopoly to continue the USA's crappy position in telecommunication quality, and thereby charge high enough prices to pay back the debt from their bid.

One of the things I wanted to see was the creation of another unregulated band range like the 2.4 and 5 GHz ranges(with similar 'play nice' rulesets).

While the spectrum sold in the auction would still be valuable, potential product producers unable to buy a chunk of the spectrum would be able to still make a product(just wouldn't be able to count on sole access).

Re:Cynical prediction

[jandrese]

The problem is that Google isn't in a position to roll out radio towers all across the US. If they were to win the spectrum they would probably be forced to re-license it out to Verizon or somebody to get it to the actual consumer.

Re:Cynical prediction

[Fieryphoenix]

Even so, the licensure Google gave would presumably require open device adherance, thus fulfilling the parent's desire for satisfaction.

Re:Cynical prediction

[Bombula]

I'm not hearing any good reasons, either in posts or in this and other articles, why Google shouldn't snap up these bands. Getting the 'money' will NOT be a problem - despite what people seem to think here, they will not have to write a check out of a checking account to pay for this...

As for being able to afford it, Google is bigger than Verizon and nipping on the heels of AT&T. Even if they bid an absurdly high amount in order to win - say $30 billion - when they do win, they will make that up the next day on stock gains, mark my words. All my money is on Google playing down the likelihood of bidding to win, and then wolloping the other bidders at the eleventh hour. Definitely what I would do. How could it possibly not be worth it to own the airwaves?

Re:Cynical prediction

[Mr. Underbridge]

I hope Google can get enough money to outbid. Maybe sell "Gbonds" so they can pay absurdly low yields on borrowed money :-P

As of their last 10-K filing, Google had about $10B in cash on hand. Time Warner has about $1.5B, for a comparison. I think it would take more than a couple of Google's competitors to put together a winning bid. I'd say that's doubtful, considering 1) I'm not sure that would be legal, and 2) their competitors hate each other and can't work together. The only one that would have a chance is AT&T. I don't have time to check their 10-K filing, but my guess is that with all the leveraged buyouts they do, they might have a harder time scraping up the cash as compared to Google.

My feeling is that if Google wants it bad enough, they can probably get it.

Re:Cynical prediction

[wizkid]

They are flush with cash, but yes, they'd end up working with other companies. It would be under true open device terms though. I don't know that they would be re-licensing, there would be joint development agreements, etc. The licenses are worth to much. they wouldn't be dumb enough to give up the license in any way. Joint Development agreements would be the way to go. Google's got enough money to make it work, and this spectrum is the right one for cell/data wireless. Other companies will jump at the chance to get access to these bands. Joint development agreements with guaranteed long term access are the way for Google to go.

Re:Cynical prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yippee! At 4.7B, we only need 2K of said blocks (give or take) to pay off the national debt!

(Or a little more sobering, 4.7B pays off 1/20th of one percent of our debt.)

Re:Cynical prediction

[Brett Glass]

Actually, the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands are hardly "unregulated." They're just unlicensed. The equipment gets approved, but the users of the band don't have to obtain licenses. Also, these bands don't have "play nice" rules. They have rules that say, "All's fair if the equipment has gotten FCC approval." Which still makes it possible to be nasty. We've seen people turn on approved wireless devices where they know they'll interfere with a competitor's service, just to mess them up. And some equipment -- Motorola's Canopy in particular -- is designed to stomp all over other users of the band to try to get them to give up and go away. (In my opinion, Motorola's gear never should have received FCC approval, because it does something similar to what the FCC has explicitly banned: using coordinated frequency hopping transmitters to monopolize unlicensed spectrum. Motorola's equipment coordinates the transmitters, but they don't hop.) The rules for the 3650 MHz band, which requires licensing but makes the license easy to obtain, might have turned out better, but when the FCC revised them it allowed half of the band to be trashed in the same way that Canopy trashes the unlicensed band. The other half may get an effective form of interference avoidance; we don't know yet. If the FCC doesn't mandate a standard spectrum etiquette like 802.11y, that spectrum will be trashed too. Best of all are the rules for the narrow range of frequencies used by DECT cordless phones. These rules allow spectrum to be shared and require the use of a protocol that provides interference avoidance (sometimes called a "spectrum etiquette").

American Gladiators

[Itninja]

That's how this bandwidth right should be determined. None of this auction crap. Just let the corporations and the FCC pick their most athletic (least nerdy?) employees, and pit them against each other on the Eliminator(tm). Of course, the FCC 'gladiators' would need catchy pseudonyms like "Mega Hurts" or "The Regulator". The first corporation to actually finish the course without crying your throwing up, wins.

Re:American Gladiators

[MajinBlayze]

So, It should go to the company that can bid the highest for the best/strongest athlete?

Sounds much better!

Re:American Gladiators

[morari]

Hehe. Mega Hurtz. :)

Re:American Gladiators

[CastrTroy]

I think you've been watching too much JPod.

Re:American Gladiators

[CodeBuster]

That reminds me of those IBM ads where the office nerds in their makeshift office armor (Japanese Kabuto style helmet made out of a binder w/chair shield if I recall) battle the "hacker" barbarians attempting to "get into" the network.

Re:American Gladiators

[Shakrai]

At least it would keep all of the steroid dealers in business now that MLB is cracking down ;)

Re:American Gladiators

[T.E.D.]

None of this auction crap. Just let the corporations and the FCC pick their most athletic (least nerdy?) employees, and pit them against each other on the Eliminator(tm)

No good. Chuck Norris works for Viacom. No one else would even bother to compete.

Re:American Gladiators

[Anonymous Coward]

My money is on that bald guy holding the chair and foaming at the mouth....

Whoever Wins, With Jews You Lose

[Anonymous Coward]

Jews kill Mudslums for fun.

Gaza is like shooting fish in a concentration camp.

When did it go from public to private

[techpawn]

or was this always private and I missed that memo? I remember setting up a TV with the ol' rabbit ears and tin foil and it worked for "free" no problems. If now we're being charged for what we as a people owned isn't that the government taking our property? I mean yeah it's not a physical thing and it's the FCC's job to regulate it, but it's there also a law about government not taking what's yours without compensation?

That would be a hoot and a kick to the economy. We'll sell this then give EVERYONE part of the sale price back as compensation for the reclaimed property.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Anonymous Coward]

It was licensed to be used by TV station that you were not watching for free. The price was in time spent watching ads that provide money to the station

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2009 you will be able to set up your ol' rabbit ears (and your 50$ converter box) and it will just work...still. They are just shifting from analog to digital, which frees up part of the frequency band. No on stole anything from you. You didn't own it in the first place, calm down. ... freakin commies xD

Re:When did it go from public to private

[maxume]

That would be a hoot and a kick to the economy. We'll sell this then give EVERYONE part of the sale price back as compensation for the reclaimed property.

Taxes and regulatory fees always destroy economic activity. Hopefully in the case of taxes, most of that activity is replaced by government services of similar value(or of greater value in some non monetary way), and in the case of regulatory fees, it is a good thing to prevent the activity(because it created amounts of pollution completely out of line with the value of the economic activity, etc). Otherwise, it's like taking water out of the deep end of a pool and dumping it in the shallow end:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18159629

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Laguerre]

The spectrum is ours (public) now. The auction is the process where we sell it to a (private) company.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between broadcasting on a band and listening on the band. We, the people, never had the ability to broadcast on the 700MHz band all willy-nilly.

The gov isn't selling off anything that belongs to people. It was licensed to TV broadcast networks, not residents.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxes and regulatory fees always destroy economic activity.

Platitudes aren't useful. I could just as easily say, that free markets require taxes and regulation. At a minimum, a free market requires security and dispute resolution provided by a third party. That third party always charges a fee. The talking about the extremes is a waste of time. The hard question everyone prefers to ignore is, "What is the right level of regulation?" A hint, the answer is not zero or absolute control.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Firethorn]

Free to receive, costs & requires a permit to tranmsit.

The broadcasters, like with radio and free papers, recovered their costs through the selling of advertising.

Besides, under the new digital television standard, there will actually be the potential for MORE channels of TV to broadcast - even a HDTV signal doesn't take the bandwidth an analoge signal needs.

Meanwhile Uncle Sam is pitching in some of the proceeds of the auction to subsidize the cost of new tuners.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Ucklak]

Where can I get those $50 tax payer subsidized converter boxes?
If I'm paying for part of it, I'd like to own one.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[compro01]

you can apply for the (2) $40 coupons (usable towards the cost (prediced at about $60, so you need to pay about $20 each box) of 1 DTV converter each) here.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this, Einstein.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%2450+tax+payer+subsidized+converter+boxes

Re:When did it go from public to private

[maxume]

What in my post gives the impression that regulation is bad? It is economic fact that taxes and regulation create dead weight loss. It isn't a bad thing to destroy economic activity, but the original poster was operating under the impression that it is possible to use taxes to invigorate the economy, which it isn't, at least in the short term(spending on education over the long term almost certainly does economic good, and so on, but making college cheaper for one year won't, etc).

Re:When did it go from public to private

[skeptic2525]

Each household qualifies for up to two $40 certificates to purchase digital tuners, so broadcast television will still be "free" and work with your existing analog televisions. It's even better than a tax break for consumer electronics manufacturers and big-box retailers.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[glitchvern]

Does anyone know where I can buy a converter box now? My brother doesn't have cable and the analog reception on several of his channels is crap. I was hoping digital would be better, but I can't find anywhere to purchase a converter box. Are they waiting until the analog transmission is turned off before they start selling these things?

Re:When did it go from public to private

[mattack2]

I believe EchoStar's box is MSRP-ed at $39.99, so there will be free (after coupon) ones.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[compro01]

if you follow the link in my post, they have a link on the front page to find retailers in your area.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[infinite8s]

Actually it is owned by us (no communism involved). The spectrum is owned by government and leases it to private companies for limited/unlimited time. We are the government, ergo we own the spectrum and the government (supposedly) acts in our best interest when managing it. It's one of those "public commons" goods.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[glitchvern]

I did. There are none. I used a pretty big mile radius too. I was wondering if anyone is manufacturing them. If they are currently being made in small quantities I thought maybe you could buy them online but not really find them in a store.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[compro01]

yeah, plenty of big names are. production must still be ramping up. they only started issuing the coupons at the start of the month, so i guess people will just have to give it time.

verizon & att

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck those evil ass cunts..

google or t-mobile winning this auctions would be greatest for US consumers of wireless technology and lots of bandwitch and lowering prices to increase competition verizon and att are evil i dont like them they are too expensive and spy on us!

Same thing as rest areas...

[coolmoose25]

The government builds a highway, and then opens a rest area. They sell restaurant/gas/convenience store space to the highest bidder. Then the company that leases the space charges more for a Big Mac or a gallon of gas than in the city. Everybody's a winner - except the consumer.

They should take that spectrum, and award it based on the public good that will come of it. How low a price will you charge for the services you provide for that spectrum... not how much can we, the government, make off of it.

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[UbuntuDupe]

The government builds a highway, and then opens a rest area. They sell restaurant/gas/convenience store space to the highest bidder. Then the company that leases the space charges more for a Big Mac or a gallon of gas than in the city. Everybody's a winner - except the consumer.

Yes and no. The desires of drivers determine the demand curve for restaurants/gas at that area. The fact that the sellers can get higher prices there is just the manifestation of this. Yes, you could try to circumvent this and heroically deliver the lower prices, but it will just mean that the goods are allocated in a more haphazard, corruption-driven manner. The lease will be awarded to the person with the best connections rather than ability to make use of the land; or the stores will be forever packed and "rationed" by long queues, since the prices are artificially low.

What should be done in cases like that is not "fight the demand curve" and make prices lower there, but accept that the equilibrium prices will be higher, auction the leases to the highest bidder, and then use that money (driven higher by the demand curve for goods at that location) to replace other taxes, effectively rebating the value created by the highway, to the general public (who paid for it in the first place).

That is, of course, also what should be done in auctioning airwaves. Chance of politicians genuinely using the money to cut other taxes, rather than seeing it as extra free money: ZERO :-(

(Note my meticulous avoidance of the word "consumer".)

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[The Cisco Kid]

Ya, except for toll roads where there is either no exit, or you have to pay extra toll to exit and then re-enter the road. Tollway plaza = captive customer.

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[Firethorn]

Everybody's a winner - except the consumer.

Actually, everyone's a winner, including the consumer - who has the opportunity to buy a burger somewhere where he wouldn't otherwise have been able to. Even if it is at extra expense.

They should take that spectrum, and award it based on the public good that will come of it.

I'll point out that at least some direct good will come of this - part of the spectrum is assigned for a new emergency communication systems, capable of penetrating walls much better than current systems. The rules are such that emergency departments should be able to get better radios for less than current.

I'd argue that the bidding process means that only companies sure they'll be able to make money by providing a service people will pay for will bid. That way the waves will get used by the companies who are looking towards the highest profit - meaning consumers will willingly pay the most for that product, and consider it a good deal.

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[bigredradio]

I understand the rest area prices. If you have a McDonalds at a rest area, chances are they are miles from anywhere. (Otherwise there would not be a need for a rest area). That means that supplies have to be trucked further, employees have to commute further (which is why they get paid more than in the city), and the flow of customers is limited to peak driving times, yet these are usually 24hr/day restaurants. Just because the prices are higher does not always mean they are "sticking it to the consumer". There are a lot better examples than this for price gouging.

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[coolmoose25]

It's wonderful to talk about supply and demand curves like it was a free and open marketplace, but rest areas are no such thing. For instance, in the Northeast, the Mass Pike has rest areas every 25 miles, from Boston to Worcester... Those are heavily built areas, and there are plenty of places you could eat along the way, EXCEPT you have to get off the highway, pay the toll, eat/gas up, get back on the highway, take a ticket, etc... It is MUCH easier just to pull of at the rest stop. So sure, some of the higher price is driven by the convenience factor... but some of it is also driven by the fact that Gulf owns ALL the gas stations at Mass Pike rest areas. In Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway, Mobil owns ALL the gas stations. They don't even compete from one rest area to the next! The contract is awarded to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder gets ALL the rest areas. The government is then creating a defacto pseudo-monopoly on rest stop gasoline for a particular corridor. This is anti-competitive, and anti-consumer (oh wait, somehow "consumer" is a dirty word - call it "anti-citizen" instead)... It is supposed to look out for "we the people" but in this case, does what is good for itself, namely raise more money in the auction because of the monopoly factor, it awards one contract instead of many (as would happen if rest stops were auctioned indivicually) because that raises their revenue and makes their contract administration burden lighter (one contractor instead of many). And since you acknowledge that the government will waste that extra money instead of reducing my tax burden (heck - on the Mass Pike, they could reduce my TOLL!!!) it is of no use to allow the practice, and instead, voters should demand a contract award based on greatest value to society instead of greatest value to the monopoly creator - aka - the government.

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[UbuntuDupe]

So, in other words, go with the "perpetually crowded rest stops" option. And, abolish the Return key on keyboards.

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[Altus]

In New Jersey many of the highways are toll roads and the rest stops are not allowed to charge more than the gas stations in the local area off the highway. I don't remember the toll structure there but in Mass it doesn't really cost more to get off the highway and back on... though the time it takes makes rest stops worth it even if they do cost more (and I have never confirmed that they do or do not).

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[coolmoose25]

You keep assuming that DEMAND is the thing driving the price. It is not - Have you ever been on the Mass Pike? Have you ever been on the Merritt? There are no lines. The prices are so high, due to the monopoly power of the government and the gas stations, that the only cars you see there are from far out of state... They don't know that gas is 30-40 cents (Sometimes 60-70 cents) per gallon more expensive than a gas station at the next exit. I've filled up ONCE IN MY LIFE at one of these stations - it was during a blizzard and was my only option. (I drove past stations on my way to the pike that were closed due to the storm) Other than that, people plan ahead and don't pay exorbitant prices for the gas. They trap the ones that don't know any better. Caveat Emptor? I guess you can look at it that way... but let me ask you one question - why do ALL the stations on the Mass Pike and the Merritt have to be the same brand? Answer me that... then you can talk about "perpetually crowded rest stops"... until you address that issue, you cannot talk about supply and demand as if it will create the correct equilibrium price... If you have significant barriers to entry (in this case, literal barriers in the form of toll plazas) and a one supplier per corridor model, you will inevitably drive the equillibrium price to a monopolistic one - one that maximizes profit for the supplier. If you have taken even one basic economics course, you know what I'm saying is true - monopoly power shifts the supply curve to a lower quantity sold at a higher price...

Re:Same thing as rest areas...

[mgblst]

Just a questions from the real world.

Who decides what is public good? How can anyone even start to consider the meaning of such a term, let alone its application to tv? Is gay programming public good? What about religious education? What about evolution? Wow.

Good Luck With That

[asphaltjesus]

Don't pin your hopes for lower-cost, widely available internet access on this auction.

In the current political/business climate in the U.S. the chances that nothing good for the consumer will come from this auction are excellent.

It's not just about the auction itself. Imagine for a moment a telco doesn't win the spectrum. The telcos still have the experience and access to the senate and congress to write regulations that increase the cost of doing business with the spectrum. Recent history is filled with examples.

-VOIP regulations, patent litigation parties
-Limited consumer access to bandwidth.
-Limited throughput.
-NSA shenanigans. The get out of jail free cards have already been issued.

Anti-News

[Nom du Keyboard]

This has got to be anti-news by now. There have been how many articles leading up to this.

Real news will be hearing who wins, or continues the next round.

Auctions are a bad idea

[Eravnrekaree]

Auctions of bandwidth are a terrible idea, and shows how biased towards big money interests the government has become, rather than what is in the best public interest. Radio spectrum, considering it is a limited resource, should be given out based on what is the best public interests, and what most promotes free speech, free expression and diversity, not to who has the most money. The auctions basically play perfectly into the hands of telecommunications monopolies who have the resources to win them, and thus control telecommunications infrastructure, with an impact on the ability of the public to freely express itself. I would rather see the FCC require a completely open network and much more choice and competition, especially in the case where the construction of the network would be best coordinated or is capital intensive, the developer of the network perhaps should be a chartered non profit corporation which then sells access at cost to anyone who wants to utilise the network. This would provide a interconnected completely compatable nationwide, seamless network which can be accessed anywhere, and would asusre anyone could use it to innovate with new interesting and novel services. One company would not be able to limit and control what can be done with it. This would assure a diversity of choice and allow many different small service providers who do not have massive resources to get involved with providing services, promoting innovation and a rich and diverse assortment of services.

If the government was not so corrupt and beholden to large corporate interests who want to monopolise and control all assetts and resources for its own gain, basically creating a monopoly which serves a few private interests rather than the public interest and promotes diversity and innovation, we would probably have more choice, diversity and competition. Sometimes monopolies are necessary, for instance in electric utilities, since it is so capital intensive, but in this case they should be regulated and chartered by the government to work in the best public interest rather than in the best interest of corporate profits. What is interesting about the wireless plan, although a publicly owned non profit corporation would build the physical network, it would allow a vast range of competition and services to be offered over it, enabling a diverse marketplace.

Re:Auctions are a bad idea

[captbob2002]

I've often thought that leasing the spectrum was a better idea that the auction. Not that the gov't. couldn't yank back what was auctioned if it wanted to.

I still remember the quaint idea of TV stations operating for the public good and needing to have their licenses reviewed from time to time.

Silly me.

Re:Auctions are a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

We take public interest to be defined as economic activity, and observe that those willing to pay most for the airwaves have the most activity to do and therefore the most public interest. We ARE using public interest to dispense these airwaves. Do not try to snidely sidestep this fact which you surely know. Instead, question the premise that public good can be measured this way.

Re:Auctions are a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The infrastructure constructions costs pretty much limits the potential players to very well-heeled companies. That restricts competition right there. Supposedly the FCC already regulates use of broadcast frequencies "in the public interest", and a government "corporation" would either be run politically, or be run by its staff following their own agenda.

There are no good choices here.

Never Before

[Paranatural]

Has an auction by the FCC been so closely watched by the general public, I believe.

Of course, by 'General Public' I mean 'A lot of geeks', but I can still see this as one of the most important auctions of our lifetimes.

Tomorrow?

[c0p0n]

Started days ago...

Auction 73

[lart2150]

for those who are looking for the auction it's number 73 on the fcc website.

Re:Auction 73

[markov_chain]

Here is also a more direct link: Auction 73

Re:Auction 73

[Anonymous Coward]

Watched a play recently... it was a broadway setup about the FCC selling out their old PC's called "The Merry Story of FCC and their Old PC's"

Two friends walk in:
Friend 1: Who is auctioning out their PC's again?
Friend 2: The FCC
Friend 1: Didn't knew the FCC were having a executive auction of their PC's ...
Friend 2: Yeah, but they're only crappy 700 Mhz:s ...
Friend 1: Aah, too bad...
Friend 2: But i've heard they come with wireless broadband..
Friend 1: Sweet.. then maybe i'll go check it out..
Friend 2: Buy me one 2..

And then it just happened...

Fine. /Regards (the unregistered) Achtila

My wife's anniversary is coming up

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to get her a gold band with a few sub-carat diamonds , but now I'm thinkin' "ya know... what woman doesn't want a 700Mhz band?"
And because I REALLY love her, I'm thinking of upgrading to maybe the 701 or even 702 Mhz band... yeah yeah, it'll be a couple months salary, but what the hell...she's worth it.

Re:My wife's anniversary is coming up

[Anonymous Coward]

Just your wife's anniversary??? Or yours too?

Public to private? almost 60 years ago.

[Vellmont]

I remember setting up a TV with the ol' rabbit ears and tin foil and it worked for "free" no problems.

It was still private. 60 or so years ago when television first appeared, the spectrum was licensed to various TV stations (though with some restrictions on that license of course). It "belonged" to them in the same sense as the spectrum will "belong" to whoever wins the auctions. The fact that broadcast TV is "free as in beer" to you doesn't mean it was "public" in the sense that you're talking about.

but it's there also a law about government not taking what's yours without compensation?

Hmm.. that's kind of a strange distinction. "The Government" is supposed to be "the people" in a democracy. I'm not sure what you're really driving at here.. who's the "you" in this sentence, and why isn't "the you" represented by "the government"?

Where does the money go?

[whisper_jeff]

(I'm Canadian, so this doesn't affect me beyond the influence factor, but I'm curious none-the-less.)

Where does the money go? The FCC will raise the money, but where does that substantial bankroll go? Does it just roll into the federal budget to be dished out as the government sees fit with the rest of the money or is it earmarked for a specific use (debt repayment, for example)?

(And, heck, with the Canadian government about to do a similar auction, if anyone has the answer in regards to Canada, feel free to share it as well.)

Re:Where does the money go?

[Ironsides]

The money will go into the general fund. A.K.A. the same place income taxes go to.

Re:Where does the money go?

[Detritus]

It goes into the General Fund, just like all taxes, duties, fines, etc. Only Congress has the power to appropriate money from the General Fund. Federal agencies and departments don't get to keep any of the money that they receive from external sources. It all goes into the General Fund.

Re:Where does the money go?

[MacColossus]

It would be nice if they used it to bail out Social Security since Congress raided it and made it insolvent in the first place. Second option would be national debt. I realize it wouldn't put a dent into it. It would however eliminate some compound interest.

Re:Where does the money go?

[rebelcan]

Well, it kind of does. Industry Canada for the most part just mirrors the decisions of the FCC. So whoever wins the license for a certain band in the US will probably be awarded the same band up here in Canada ( although I'm not sure if they'll have to pay for it again -- my guess is that they probably would, why would our government miss a chance to cash in on this? ).

And, heck, with the Canadian government about to do a similar auction Do you have a link to this auction that the Canadian govt. is holding? ( not trying to be snippy, just curious )

Re:Where does the money go?

[compro01]

hardly. just the interest payments on the US debt come to about 300 billion annually at this point.

Re:Where does the money go?

[Hatta]

Ok, and where do my income taxes go?

Re:Where does the money go?

[whisper_jeff]

I'm sure there are many other articles out there, but here is a pretty thorough article on the upcoming Canadian auction.

Re:Where does the money go?

[Ironsides]

Same place, the General Fund.

Public land != radio spectrum

[mstahl]

The radio spectrum is NOT public. Even the citizen's band has transmitting power limits (4w for AM and 12w for SSB)[reference], and amateur radio bands are the same way.

Think of it this way. Public forests being sold so that oil can be drilled wrecks those forests, right? The oil isn't there anymore afterwards and all the pollution from the oil drilling and construction processes damages the land so that it is no longer as valuable. Unused spectrum meanwhile is completely empty until someone is permitted to transmit on it. Then it is occupied. After the permission to transmit expires or the spectrum segment is no longer used, it's still there and just as good. It's available to be used again.

Above all, what would you do with it and, in all fairness, how do you know your purpose is more noble or better for the common good than what the big businesses have come up with?

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[dattaway]

Above all, what would you do with it and, in all fairness, how do you know your purpose is more noble or better for the common good than what the big businesses have come up with?

Never heard of the shortwave band? DHSS? 802.11? Technology always has an answer. Government regulations always have questions.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[mstahl]

Yeah. All of those are regulated by the FCC here and their counterparts in other countries. Technology's answers still have to fit into the spectrum along with all the other answers. You think 802.11 can just work on any frequency, willy-nilly, any time it wants? No. It has to stay in that same band because otherwise there'd just be pandaemonium on the airwaves. The way we have it, tightly regulated like this, you can operate all your devices with a reasonable expectation that you will encounter no interference doing so.

And yes, I have heard of many shortwave bands. My call letters are KF4SOO. Licensed amateur radio operator for over ten years.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[dattaway]

You think 802.11 can just work on any frequency, willy-nilly, any time it wants?

Why not? Tell me, experienced Ham Operator, why can't we do it? Why can't we have a public spectrum? Are you afraid everyone is going to abuse the spectrum by turning up the power with "free" electricity or something? Share your experience, your wisdom please.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[mstahl]

Sure it can operate at a wide variety of frequencies but that doesn't mean that it should. If you're transmitting at low enough power (say less than 100mw or so) do whatever the hell you want. If you're transmitting powerfully enough for your device, whatever it is, to interfere with other peoples' around you, then you're doing what we call "causing a ruckus".

The reason why we can't have a public spectrum has already been pointed out a couple of times in this discussion (I think by other people who responded to your first post). Say you wanted a wireless network, so you set up an 802.11 router, but you jack up the power to several watts. Meanwhile I, in a similar fashion, set up a wireless network on my side of town (forget for the moment that there are multiple 802.11 channels and 802.11 is fairly robust at error-correction). I may or may not have my own reasons for wanting my own network and not wanting to be a part of yours. Your network would interfere with mine and if I did not have the ability to overpower yours even locally, I'd lose a kind of transmitting power arms race that I think would become quite common if we had a completely public spectrum.

There's other fun stuff that could happen, too. Like I could just drive around town with a high power spark-gap transmitter and just shower the spectrum with noise. Everybody's radios, TVs, cellphones, cordless phones, and possibly even their stereo equipment would be inundated with those little pop-pop-popping noises those things make. Wouldn't that be great??

Think about it. The FCC's regulations also protect you and me from the big businesses. If there were no regulations and Google decided to build a massive transmitter for some reason, and this interfered with all of our wireless devices. The FCC prevents things like that from happening too.

I also used to be a DJ on a public radio station in college, and I generally regard the FCC as kind of a bitch of an organization, but at least they're there to keep the peace and keep order on the airwaves. It's one of those circumstances where even the most well-meaning anarchy really just could never work unless we all joined hands. I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon.

So that's my wisdom. Got any of your own? Or just sarcasm?

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[dattaway]

So that's my wisdom. Got any of your own? Or just sarcasm?

Good so far. But why do we little people get such a tiny sliver for ISM to play with? Why not a bigger park to play in? Seems kind of crowded to me.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[markov_chain]

Why assume that "public" necessarily means anyone should be allowed to transmit at arbitrary power? The 2.4GHz band licensing is already a decent compromise. Furthermore, there might be some technical solutions to using empty spectrum using cognitive radio, especially at short ranges such as within a home.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[mstahl]

Agreed. Perhaps it was my own misinterpretation of dattaway's post but that seemed to be what he was implying. That somehow because we can't use whatever frequencies we want for whatever we want we've somehow "lost" to big corporations. I don't think this is true because as I brought up and then you did just now, you really can do pretty much whatever you want as long as those RF waves don't stray too far. The main concern with spectrum is that there has to be room for everybody, but that's easier than it may seem at first if everybody's transmitting power is limited too, since the spectrum here in Chicago's probably not nearly as wide-open as it is in the middle of Nevada.

2.4GHz was a good compromise but it's getting really crowded over there. I had complaints from my neighbours in the last apartment that I lived in that my wireless router was interfering with their new cordless phone. Aside from turning down the power of one device or another, weighing the usefulness of my wireless router against the usefulness of their cordless phone, there really wasn't a whole lot that could be done. In a totally "free" system I could've somehow hacked all my devices to work on a different frequency, but I'd inevitably interfere with something else. And eventually there's the prospect that you'd interfere with something really critical like the radio communications of firemen or EMTs. That would be what we call a very bad thing.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[evilviper]

Never heard of the shortwave band?

Clearly, he hasn't. That "amateur radio band" he mentioned in his second sentence is something else... But certainly not shortwave...

DHSS? 802.11?

802.11 works reasonably well because it's is on a nearly line-of-sight frequency, and required to stay very low power. Requiring users of the 700MHz spectrum to only broadcast at low power would eliminate any benefits it has over the existing unregulated frequencies.

Technology always has an answer. Government regulations always have questions.

That's crap. Government regulation of the airwaves gives us cell phones, broadcast TV, radio, etc. Would you care to explain what's wrong with those?

Government regulations are what keep your neighbor's microwave, wireless speakers, 802.11 router, etc. from crapping all over the spectrum, and making it completely useless for you. It's also what keeps the phone companies from setting up an 802.11 jammer on every street corner... Not to mention that it's government regulation that is kicking companies off the 700MHz frequencies they were previously using, and making it available for other uses. It's government regulation that has been pushing for old equipment that inefficiently utilizes spectrum to be replaced.

There needs to be rationing of the spectrum of some sort. Claiming anarchy will make everything fine and dandy is idiotic.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[Jott42]

The problem with cognitive radio is to determine if a part of the spectrum is really empty. If you do this by listening before broadcasting, you will need to have a reciver and antenna that are as good as the best one that you may interfere with. And that is a big problem: in a totally open spectrum scenario, the best antenna is a 70 meter dish listening to tranmsissions from mars, and the reciever is big, powerhungry and liquid-cooled. A less extreme example is the GPS-signals, which are really hard to find if you do not know what you are looking for. A simple, cheap and low-power reciever, such as the one you want in a laptop, will have no chance of detecting these transmission. Which gives that we need some kind of frequency allocation, and some kind of regulation.
(Cognitive radio is still an interesting concept, but the hidden node problem seems to be very hard to solve...)

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[zymano]

Auctioning spectrum of a scarce resource only creates monopolies that do not help but instead hinder the average public user. Could you imagine our seas,mountains,water supplies or air being privately owned. LOL.

The spectrum owners DO NOT CARE if there service is even reliable or works because they own a part of the monopoly and the public has no alternatives. Look at cellphone companies telling users that their software wont be allowed on their service. It's all about them selling selling selling their own corporate addons.

We are in balls and chains until more people,politicians and intellectuals speak up.

Re:Public land != radio spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you aren't still operating with that call sign, as your license expired as of June 18, 2007. http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey=578165

Re:Public to private? almost 60 years ago.

[techpawn]

I may be thinking of Eminent domain (United States)

The most common uses of property taken by eminent domain are public utilities, highways, and railroads. Some states require that the government body offer to purchase the property before resorting to the use of eminent domain.

But, I highly doubt that that would work in this case because it's not physical property and as so many have pointed out, we never owned it to begin with

It's always been private

[mstahl]

I think you're confusing transmitting and receiving. You can receive on whatever frequencies you care to. Swap out a few parts to an old ham radio receiver and it will totally pick up 700MHz band and you can listen to your heart's content.

Transmitting is a different story though. Even public radio stations have to pay (albeit less than commercial radio stations) in order to broadcast and they are assigned a unique frequency on which to do so.

The answer to U.S. recession???

[Anonymous Coward]

All they need is to get the auction up to about $150 billion to cover the cost of injecting money into the economy to alter the seemingly unavoidable fate of recession in America.

Google

[EdwardPalonek]

Since Google will get into Cell Phones, I don't understand why the Internet on cell phones is so expensive...

Re:Google

[steeleye_brad]

Who does cellular internet access cost so much? Because people will pay that much!

And what the hell does Google getting into the cell phone industry have to do with access fees? Google is getting into the cell phone software business, not the carrier business.

Re:Google

[steeleye_brad]

Oops...WHY does cellular internet access cost so much...WHY not WHO. I preview the reply, double-check everything, and still screw up. I'm blaming it on my ISP!

I'll be the winner

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got auctionsniper all ready to go....

Re:I'll be the winner

[stokessd]

Paypal will send you a Christmas card for that payment...

Pretty Funny when Slashdotters are clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the way Slashdotters go nuts everytime the press reports some tech story and gets the 'facts' wrong.

Here is a topic where 95% of you have no clue as to what this is all about- from a technical or business or history standpoint.

Thank god you are not reporters!

Re:Pretty Funny when Slashdotters are clueless

[compro01]

Thank god you are not reporters!

I think you just described about 90% of today's reporters.

You bring up a great point

[markov_chain]

We should start charging big business for the 700-400nm band, think of all those billboards and displays out there!

Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 range?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I use several wireless microphones that operate in the UHF 66 to 69 range, high 700 Mhz to low 800s. Is that part of the spectrum that's going to be "vacated" next year? Any other audio guys who know more about the impact, what gear I should be buying to replace the old stuff?

Re:Public to private? almost 60 years ago.

[mikeee]

"The Government" is supposed to be "the people" in a democracy. I'm not sure what you're really driving at here.. who's the "you" in this sentence, and why isn't "the you" represented by "the government"?

"The Government" does not always (usually) operate by consensus, thus the need to protect (especially minorities) against uncompensated takings. More to the point, government often can be accurately modeled as a bunch of lying crooks.

Great question

[markov_chain]

I thought it would be a good vehicle for low-bandwidth applications such as text searches and ad delivery, both of which are Google's forte. 700MHz is ideal for that, since the bands are small (20MHz) and they reach really far.

Re:Great question

[Lisandro]

Fine, but deploying a wireless communication network in a brand new band takes money. A LOT of money, since you aren't building over previous infrastructures (Google is worth arround 700 millon dollars, versus the several billons for established telcos).

And deploying is not the only issue - you have to provide each recipient with a receiver. Since 700MHz was commonly used for TV, there's no current devices intended for those purposes in that band. Teletext is the closest you can get, but it works over an analog TV signal, and its functionality is obsolete; you're better off using the Internet.

Again, the technology is here and it's available. It's just not economicaly feasible, and all for what? Delivering ads?

Re:Great question

[Lisandro]

Sorry, i missed on my numbers by far :) Google is worth arround 18 billon. Then again, AT&T had three times that on revenues last year.

Re:Great question

[markov_chain]

I agree it's a long shot :) Here are some counterpoints.

1) Deployment- could be cheaper than cellular due to 700MHz propagation. Maybe reuse the existing towers. Get a WiMax vendor to cut some equipment for it.

2) Devices- upcoming handhelds will start to have DTV tuners and WiMax anyway, so perhaps adding a receiver wouldn't be too costly. No cost to Google.

3) Teletext- it's one way, that's a non-starter. There isn't a two-way technology except for the celullar data, which are user-hostile in that they require contracts and subscriptions, and don't allow application experimentation due to vendor locks on the devices.

4) Application- delivering ads is just how Google makes money without requiring nasty subscriptions and contracts. Users would benefit from a rich ecosystem of open, low-bandwidth, wide-availability applications. Things like location-based search, directions, email, translation, etc. etc. Plenty more would come up thanks to the openness of the devices and the band.

Re:Great question

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a lot of money. If you've been reading the various commentaries on the subject, you'd notice the estimates. The license is expected to cost more than the rollout of a network to use the spectrum. By a lot. Rollout is estimated at less than $2 billion, especially since Google has already bought so much dark fiber. The license Google (and everybody else) wants starts at $4.6 billion and could easily go for twice that. Rollout is the cheap part.

It's not only economically feasible, it's a gold mine, and everybody knows it, including Google. Any winner of this spectrum has to go through the same process Google would, with only minor wrinkles. None of the transceivers on the towers right now talk in the 700 MHz spectrum. The existing ones can't simply be retuned to do it; we're talking about radio antennas here. The shape of an antenna tuned for 700 MHz is substantially different from the shape of an antenna tuned in the GHz range the current cellular networks use. Whoever wins is going to be spending money on guys who climb towers for a living, and while that's not cheap, it's hardly prohibitive.

Supplying recipients with receivers is trivial. All the existing cellular companies not only do it, they DEMAND you buy one from them. If Google wins, they obviously don't intend to demand that you buy your receiver from them. They intend to foster a whole device ecosystem. Consumers can buy their own receivers (cell phones) from several choices. The GPhone (which already exists in prototype and is the reason Google made Anderoid) will be one of several available. If people will pay crazy prices for an iPhone, I don't see why they'll be reluctant to buy a GPhone that can do more for less money.

Re:Great question

[Lisandro]

None of the transceivers on the towers right now talk in the 700 MHz spectrum. The existing ones can't simply be retuned to do it; we're talking about radio antennas here. Exactly. Even if you reuse TV antenae/transmission stations, it's still a shitload of money - again, for what purpose? If people will pay crazy prices for an iPhone, I don't see why they'll be reluctant to buy a GPhone that can do more for less money. Because an iPhone is, after all, a cellphone. A fancy one, but still a cellphone, which adheres to stablished standarts. What makes it useable is the countless cell towers and networks deployed all over the world. 700Mhz would be a lousy carrier for phone signals (ever tried to set up a TV antenna inside your home?), with huge infrastructure costs and available only on the US!

Re:Great question

[markov_chain]

Like above, I'm thinking low-bandwidth subscriptionless data modem that could be built into laptops, handhelds, phones (using existing cell infrastructure). There are plenty of applications that could run on that.

Re:Great question

[FunkSoulBrother]

try 180 billion

Re:Great question

[darthflo]

And you missed again. Going by their respective market capitals, GOOG is worth some $170b, slightly less than (AT&)T at $222b. GOOG may not be the biggest player in the game, but they sure as hell are bigger than a whole lot of others: Verizon (VZ): $110b. Sprint (S): $24b. Qwest (Q): $10b. Level (3): $4.5b. Even Cisco (CSCO, $145b) and, believe it or not, IBM (IBM, $146b) are "smaller" than Google.

Re:Public to private? almost 60 years ago.

[Surt]

"The Government" is supposed to be "the people" in a democracy.

That would be ideal, but since all of the government was elected by a minority of the people which doesn't include me, it can't really claim to be 'the people'. If you want real democracy you have to at least have a majority requirement before you allow it to enact any laws. Otherwise the presumption should be that the people don't want any more government, and everything should be left status quo until they do.

Google has cash a plenty

[brunes69]

Still, I don't think the FCC will take Google stock as payment - cash only please.

Why would Google need to pay with stock? Google is a money making machine. Google has almost 14 billion in cash and short term investments on its balance sheet right now. They could likely raise two or three times that in a heartbeat if they wanted to mount a large bid.

And just for reference - Verizon only has 11.5 billion in cash on hand. Basically, they would have to team up with one of their nationwide competitors to outbid Google in a bidding war - something they likely would not want to do.

Re:Google has cash a plenty

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, I don't think the FCC will take Google stock as payment - cash only please.

Why would Google need to pay with stock? Google is a money making machine. Google has almost 14 billion in cash and short term investments on its balance sheet right now. They could likely raise two or three times that in a heartbeat if they wanted to mount a large bid.

And just for reference - Verizon only has 11.5 billion in cash on hand. Basically, they would have to team up with one of their nationwide competitors to outbid Google in a bidding war - something they likely would not want to do.

Last I saw Google had 20 billion in cash.

Verizon can't team up with one of their nationwide competitors. Collusion in the bidding is illegal by FCC rule and they may actually attempt to enforce that in this auction. Here's hoping, anyway.

Re:Google has cash a plenty

[UbuntuDupe]

Verizon only has 11.5 billion in cash on hand

11.5 billion dollars, or 11.5 billion cents? Or is there a difference?

Re:Google has cash a plenty

[brunes69]

I was just going by whats reported on Google Finance. They might very well have 20 billion now.

However, Google is ready...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that Google isn't in a position to roll out radio towers all across the US. If they were to win the spectrum they would probably be forced to re-license it out to Verizon or somebody to get it to the actual consumer. ...ready to hire an army of contract tower-installers and contract RF/wireless data engineers (not 802.11 crap, I mean *real* wireless data engineers like me) to build out a network much faster than you think. And yes, they have plenty of money to steal employees from the national cellphone giants. But these jobs will not be permanent Google internal positions like you hear about on the web. They'll be strictly contract-term only, and meanwhile construction is going on, they will be building up a separate internal team to run the infrastructure after the first major install phases are complete.

I got the inside scoop, and am setting my self up for a fat contract project management gig for this. Hope it happens.

Re:However, Google is ready...

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the major carriers deploy cellular networks that way, by hiring tower climbers. My coworker used to be a tower climber, before he took his current job. They all work for companies as contractors, doing work as it's available.

The major carriers don't even own the majority of the towers they have equipment on; they lease them. Google can lease space on the same towers.

Food for thought, hmm?

Auction canada?

[switchfeet]

Hi there, Was wonding if anyone new if this auction includes the upper half of the continent and if not will there be another auction for them crazy Canadians?

Re:Auction canada?

[big_paul76]

There's going to be a similar one in Canada this year.

The difference is, 40% of the spectrum will be open to bidding only by new players in the market, i.e., Rogers/Bell/Telus et al will not be able to even _bid_ on that part of it.

Not perfect, but at least it keeps the current ISPs/Telcos from combining to out-bid the others.
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/11/28/auction.html

Re:Auction canada?

[switchfeet]

I hope part of that 40% is the part that will be used for data/cell use. And what's the FCC equivilent in Canada?

Spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone explain what is the fuss about this 700mhz deal?
Isn't spectrum .. well .. unlimited?

Re:Spectrum

[truesaer]

Isn't spectrum .. well .. unlimited?

No, it is not. At least not when it comes to useful spectrum.

NTSC

[bigdavex]

Suppose I buy some spectrum and want to use it for an analog TV network. Is that against the rules?

Democracy my arse!

[Glove d'OJ]

"The Government" is supposed to be "the people" in a democracy.

Who ever said that the US was a democracy? Frankly, the concept of it being one scares the hell out of me.

Republic, people. The US is a republic, not a democracy.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

Ok everybody just simmah right on down

[mstahl]

Um. No. Pay attention to one of my previous posts. Wireless spectrum is not scarce. At all. What is the problem here?

First of all, part of the deal here is that whatever they do with this spectrum has to be usable by the general public. The whole point is to have that spectrum used for new technology that the general public will have access to. Think of something like when the cell phone bands got sold off, and now we have cell phones. You can bitch all you want about cell phone reliability but the fact of the matter is that anyone with sufficient financial resources can set up a cell tower and just do it. It's not a monopoly in any sense of the word. Anyone's allowed in if they play by the rules, which just means you can't interfere with anyone else's use of the airwaves. So if you live out in the country, just get the proper licenses worked out, set up a tower and rock it. It's not like AT&T is going to break down your door and ask you to quit. It's just that if you look at the infrastructure around you and say that you're going to set up your own cell network with blackjack and hookers, there is a fantastically large cost to entry. Better to use the existing infrastructure and rent it from the big boys, as companies like US Cellular do here in Chicago. Or, hey! You can set up a tower and rent it to the big guys if that suits you. Again, it's not like this isn't publicly available tech, it's just that building these things and maintaining them is very expensive. Want a short-range solution? Use CB or something like that, and you're untouchable as long as you don't transmit too loudly. Better yet set up a ham radio repeater with a telephone connection. The ionisphere, literally, is the limit. Seriously.

What I really don't get about this little flamewar we've got going (it's a pretty civil flamewar so far, but you know), is how you can possibly look at this situation and feel shackled by it. Look at it this way. Before: completely empty 700MHz spectrum with no services whatsoever using it. After: something (we don't know what yet) occupying those frequencies that is necessarily mandated to be publicly available, and it might just be really cool. Why can't everybody just sit back and let themselves get excited about this?

Also . . . why don't you just buy your own damn spectrum? If you've got at least $10Bn lying around nobody's gonna stop you from doing that either. Maybe all the slashdotters will put up a few bucks each? (would have to be more than $10,000 each to reach that sum but whatever.) And then what? We'll do . . . nothing with it. Awesome.

Re:Ok everybody just simmah right on down

[zymano]

build a public network. This has been explained in a previous post.

Re:Ok everybody just simmah right on down

[mstahl]

...with blackjack? And hookers? Dude forget about the network!

Re:Public to private? almost 60 years ago.

[Fastolfe]

If you want real democracy you have to at least have a majority requirement before you allow it to enact any laws. Otherwise the presumption should be that the people don't want any more government, and everything should be left status quo until they do.

I find it interesting that nobody would ever think of campaigning on a platform of "status quo". Nobody is elected unless they promise "change". Everyone gets elected to "do something". Nobody ever considers the possibility that many things are actually OK the way they are, at least for a while. I strongly suspect this pressure to "get stuff done" is why our federal government has gotten stronger and stronger over the years. Government seems to have a tendency to expand its role and its powers to limits allowed by the government's founding framework (and then some).

In my opinion, much of what government does could be replaced with automation. Imagine data/evidence-driven public policy!

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[Quadraginta]

I wouldn't worry about it, unless you're planning on hooking up an RF amplifier to your mikes and broadcasting into the next county (which would be illegal for separate reasons anyway). Your widgets are probably broadcasting such a weak signal that it can't be picked up more than 100 feet away. So who's going to care if the frequency space you're using is now officially licensed to someone else? Nobody, unless you're so unlucky as to have a licensed user set up shop within 100 feet of your studio.

get your own radio license, then

[Quadraginta]

If you want to set up a wireless network, or make radio calls across the country of any type, using your own equipment, for as low a price as your imagination and skill will allow, and completely free of anything but common-sense rules of courtesy, just go study a few weeks and get your own personal radio license. You don't have to whine because MegaCorp won't provide you with a plug-n-play radio communication system that retarded monkeys could use at a price you think is low enough. Do it yourself if you don't like their rules, or price. Think of it as "open source radio." It's been around for a hundred years already.

Running Man

[nickruiz]

I'm thinking the Running Man (1987) would be exciting.

The year is 2008. Corporations don't bid the highest for a wireless spectrum. They bid for their lives. Of course, they'd still have to compete with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

how it's gonna work in Canada...

[big_paul76]

Up here in Canuckistan, there's a similar action coming up, I think next year (but please correct me if somebody knows different).

Still an auction, but the way it's going to work is, there's going to be ~2/3 of the spectrum that will only be available to new players in the market. So Rogers/Bell/Telus et. al. (AT &T/Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile for American readers) won't even be able to _bid_ on that range of the spectrum.

Still not perfect, but at least it keeps the current ISPs/Cell phone providers from combining to out-bid everybody else out of the game.

Look north for a strategy...

[big_paul76]

Up here in Canada, we're having a similar auction this year. 40% of the spectrum to be auctioned will be open to bidding only by new players into the wireless market. I don't know why nobody could figure this out in the USA. If the (quite reasonable) goal is to open up competition, then set a block of the spectrum aside that none of the existing Telcos/ISPs can bid on. http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/11/28/auction.html

Plenty of FREE airwaves out there...(USA centric)

[Babu 'God' Hoover]

All you have to do is pass a wimpy test and get your ham license. No more Morse code.
Here's what you will get to play with upon passing your exams.
Here is a nice, slightly dated(2003) frequency allocation chart showing who's got what and where.

So I guess this is REALLY why analog is going away

[seeker_1us]

I kept wondering why the FCC demanded analog TV be shut down next year. It all boils down to money.

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[JesseMcDonald]

You're assuming the systems are symmetric. It's more likely that the official licensees will have a far stronger transmitters than the ones in wireless microphones. The microphones won't interfere significantly with the licensees, but any licensee operating in that part of the spectrum will probably drown out wireless microphones over a fairly large area. Moreover, transmitters based on the "white space" detection that's been discussed recently would probably fail to detect such low-power signals and transmit right over them.

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Thanks for the thought, but I'm not worried about stomping other signals, I'm worried about my several-thousand-$ wireless rigs all becoming useless when gPhone sets up a tower across the street. I have 10 channels of wireless going into the mix board now (2x AKG, 8x Sony WRT system)and I'll replace 'em if and when I have to, but HDTV already chased me from VHF into the UHF spectrum. If DTV chases me out of UHF, I just want to know where I've got to go next. I don't mean to flame, I obviously was ambiguous in my post, and want to clarify.

I'm looking forward to it.

[PinchDuck]

I have a couple of old 700mhz laptops I want to get rid of. How do I get them into this auction?

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[Quadraginta]

Well...how does your receiver distinguish between your 10 channels? Or between someone else's microphone of the same model across the street? There's probably some mechanism, no? So your receiver isn't going to pick up someone else's signal and think it's your own, yes? I'm guessing your problem is some kind of front-end overload in your receiver.

Off the top of my head, the cheapest solution is a filter to block their frequencies and pass your own, assuming they aren't exactly the same. If they are exactly the same, then maybe a high-gain directional antenna on the receiver pointed at the microphones. Either is a lot cheaper than thousands of dollars, but you need a radio engineer to make it work.

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[fgodfrey]

Quadraginta: I suspect he's worried about getting interference *on* his microphones, not his microphones causing someone else to have interference.

This depends entirely on how strong the licensed user is and what the licensed use turns out to be. If it were to be, say, an Wifi style device where you can get something transmitting in that band for $20 at Best Buy, there are going to be problems with wireless mics. In theory, I believe that you will lose the right to transmit with the mics on those frequencies, but that's unlikely to be an issue. I suspect that eventually, you'll start getting interference.

Shure has stopped selling anything in the bands that are being auctioned off. I was lucky enough to not wind up with any of my mics solely above 700 MHz (the Shure UB band is partly above, partly below) so I don't get screwed, but this auction is going to obsolete 10's of thousands of dollars of gear that's otherwise perfectly usable. You can already see it with a ton of Shure gear in the UA band showing up on eBay.

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[fgodfrey]

The receiver and transmitter both have to be tuned to the same channel. Most wireless mic vendors provide lists of valid frequency combinations. As to "how do I not pick up the guy across the street", the answer is "you and the guy across the street make sure you're not on the same frequency." Any time I go into a theater, especially one where there are multiple theaters in a complex, I provide a list of the wireless frequencies I intend to use. The theater provides a list of the ones they already use. Then we negotiate until there are no conflicts....

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[Quadraginta]

Yeah, I got that. I would check out first whether something as cheap as a combination of filters and/or directional antennas might work. Seems a lot cheaper than completely retooling.

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[Quadraginta]

Oh dear. Well, maybe consider directional antennas. A high-gain Yagi should only be about 8 inches across at 700 MHz. Hopefully you could make it high enough gain so it only picks up your signals, but with sufficient beamwidth so you only have to point it in the general direction of your stage. Don't know if it would work, but it's a cheap first try at a solution.

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[fgodfrey]

Yeah, it's not ideal, but there really isn't an ideal solution. Cordless phones sync the base station and the transmitter. You resync when the transmitter gets shut off or the battery dies. That's perfect for a home situation, but in a theater situation, if the battery dies, I need to have a stagehand change it and get the mic online again *FAST* and the receiver may well be several hundred feet away from the mic at the time.

In practice, it's rare to have problems of conflict between two shows. The only time you'd be in serious trouble is if you had two Broadway sized shows next to each other (each of which may well use 30 channels, and likely the *same* channels as the show next door). Then you may have problems finding enough valid frequencies. The most frequencies I've ever used at the same time is for my current show where I have 20 channels.

viva la UHF

[jtgd]

So if I buy the spectrum, and can do with it as I wish, can I broadcast analog UHF TV signals?

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[Quadraginta]

Amazing. Who knew? And here I thought everybody on stage was just good at projecting his voice. Thanks for the interesting view into another world.

FCC 700 MHz Auction tools

[dmoshal]

watch the auction live:

http://www.optimalmarkets.com/fcc.html

Google should bid minimum

[Jyuujin]

I honestly think that Google should just bid the 4.6 billion on the spectrum and force it into open license. I would feel even better if they won the bid. I'm not sure what others viewpoint on this is, but if Google really does release the Android OS for cell phones and allows free access to the network by offsetting the costs with ads the same way it does with normal web browsing I would be happy. Free internet access any where I go as long as I have a cell phone? Sounds great to me. Any one who thinks displaying ads on phones would be too much of an inconvenience, I'm sure there will be adblock apps created just for this :p

When did the FCC become an auction house?

[NateTech]

They're supposed to be regulators, not a revenue generator for government.