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Google Nervous About Verizon's Open Access
Ian Lamont writes "Google is so worried about Verizon Wireless's commitment to open access using the 700Mhz spectrum that it has asked the FCC to get a pledge from Verizon that the carrier will honor the FCC's open-access conditions before the FCC sells it the band. Verizon won the auction for the nationwide C block of the 700MHz spectrum, but Google points to Verizon's alleged attempts to abandon the conditions, including a filing with the FCC which said the commission 'could not force the C block winner to allow all applications on the network.' Could this be another expanding front in the Net Neutrality battle, or is it time for the carriers to accept the fact that Net Neutrality is essentially a done deal, and carriers need to prepare for the next battle — developing software and services to run on open networks?" The IP Democracy blog has Google's filing (PDF) and the following comment from Verizon: "Google's filing has no legal standing."
Just get the FCC to state that if that block of spectrum is not open, Verizon loses the license, no money back.
The FCC doesn't know jack anymore.
Initially they were saying they wouldn't get the expected $4.7 billion in the auction. Instead, it got up to that amount on local regional licenses alone. The C block had two options, a regional option or a carrier could buy rights to the whole nation, whichever was bid higher would be the result.
If the FCC cared about the interests of the consumers, they would have opened up the C-block auction to non-incumbents only. This would have forced carriers to expand to areas they don't already cover, and increase competition.
Cross your fingers for whitespace devices.
I probably wouldn't have out bid the property if that bothered me that much. Not... buy it, then complain, and try to weasel out.
Um, are you aware that the "open" provisions that were stipulated were only the "open devices" and "open applications" provisions, not the "open services" and "open access" that would have really created some competition?
Those provisions hardly give Google a free ride. To look at it another way, Verizon knew the restrictions on the auction, and it bid anyway. If the spectrum wasn't worth that amount of money with the restrictions, they shouldn't have bid for it.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
A cat fight for the C block? Didn't I see this movie on Cinemax not too long ago?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
I don't think it was a sucker punch really. They bumped the bid up there because that's what they wanted, but if they ended up getting "stuck" with it, they may have been a little upset, but I can guarantee you they would've come up with something to take advantage of it.
Google needs to learn a few things about corporations psychology (applicable for any corporation).
Larry Page needs to read a few pages from the book Corporation.
1. Corporations are pathological liars. If they think they can get away with lying, they will continue to do so (like kids), until they are punished for it.
2. Ethics and promises are applicable to grown-ups. Corporations are psychologically children (under 5 years). Hence ethics have no meaning to them. And so are promises. Suppose you promise a kid a huge bag of M&M to rat out what his mom & dad did last night, he would definitely do, since he can't understand the nuances. So are corporates.
3. If they think they can lie to get something, they will do so, and once they get it, they will avoid doing what they promised. (Remember asking your kid to wash your car? [This does not apply to Australia where washing your car is a crime]).
4. Corporations follow the basic of a child gameplay: What's mine is mine, and what's yours is also mine.
5. Arguing with a child does not work. So does arguing with a corporation. Take for instance the recent open discussion about Net Neutrality and Throttling in which no corporations participated. After all which kid would like to attend a PTA in which he's being criticized?
Rules of the game:
1. Establish clear rules and punishments for good and bad behavior. By laws. Punish severely and reward generously. Quickly. A quick punishment establishes to a child that he cannot repeat the same behavior. if you are going to punish your kid tomorrow for what he did last week, there is no correlation. It confuses the hell out of a kid and the corporation.
2. Never allow the kid (or corporation) to establish rules. That will lead to more wrongs.
3. There are no grace periods or times. One strike and you are out.
FCC here must clearly warn verizon that it is a contract. If they go back on it, their license is revoked with retrospective effect from 1990.
Nothing scares a kid more than a dark room. For a corporation losing a license is like a dark room.
Just delicense them and watch them shiver.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Google's highest bid was less than 100M away from the winning bid, an amount that represented a mere 2.1% increase.
What makes 4.6B unreasonable and 4.7B reasonable? No one forced Verizon to bid 4.7B.