Wireless Carriers In Huge Washington Lobby Fight Over Spectrum Auction

First time accepted submitter techpolicy (3586897) writes "The big four wireless carriers are spending millions of dollars to hire professors, fund Washington think tanks and to meet with the Federal Communications Commission to try to convince the agency to write rules for an upcoming auction of spectrum that favor them, according to an article posted by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. The frequencies are needed to bolster or build out their nationwide networks — and this kind of low-band spectrum won't be up for sale for a very long time. The biggest fight is over a rule that would limit how much AT&T and Verizon can get of these valuable frequencies. How it plays out will determine who has control over your smartphone."

Comments

Guaranteed...

[WallaceAndGromit]

"How it plays out will determine who has control over your smartphone."

Guaranteed it won't be me.

Shorten the Purchase Horizon

[retroworks]

They don't have to auction it forever, exhausting future generations rights. It should not be worse than selling Grimms to Disney. Shorten the rights, let our kids have a say.

Re:Shorten the Purchase Horizon

[Anonymous Coward]

They should only RENT the spectrum. Problem solved. Behave badly? Your lease is forfeit. No extra rulemaking needed. The frequencies belong to the taxpayers. Why give them to corporations in perpetuity?

Re:Shorten the Purchase Horizon

[guises]

It's never forever, these agreements always have time limits on them. Usually ten years with the option for renewal. Here's the factsheet for the big auction from 2008, if you recall that one.

Make em share

[Nethemas the Great]

Force them to come up with protocols that enable sharing of spectrum and be done with the BS turf wars.

Preview of paid research c/o Canadian Telcos

[beckett]

Canadian telcos have also been busy buying university research.

Canada has only 3 large telco companies, and they all work together. they do wonderful free market things like raise their prices simultanously last week..

Jeffery Church from University of Alberta seems to have taken a pro-incumbent stance in his research. he has been presenting this research at conferences indicating canada's incumbents are playing fair. read the paper here. he's also been busily writing pro-incumbent columns for the National Post.

Dwayne Winseck from Carleton University has been calling bullshit on this bought research, and you can hear his criticism of the paper and the comm industry on his CanadaLand podcast interview.

re-auction them every 5 years

[stenvar]

I think companies should simply forced to face an auction for all their wireless frequencies every five years. That includes radio, TV, cell phone, etc.

In addition, a large chunk should be reserved for unlicensed use. I think WiFi has shown that that kind of use works very well, and more spectrum for that would be nice.

Re:re-auction them every 5 years

[BradleyUffner]

Wouldn't that cause all kind of chaos with existing hardware? Physical antennas can only receive specific frequency ranges. Changing frequencies every 5 years would force you to buy all new hardware.

Re:re-auction them every 5 years

[alen]

NYC i have 40 wifi networks in range of me. it's so bad that my xbox and apple TV are connected by cat5 cable to my router. otherwise its constant disconnections and long buffering times for netflix during the peak time

Re:re-auction them every 5 years

[stenvar]

If you actually did that it would put a huge cost burden on the customers. The carriers would have to set aside a large portion of their earnings every year to ensure that they would have enough just to keep the spectrum that they have let alone expand

I think that cost would be factored into the bids, which would simply be much lower. If you rent something for 5 years you pay a lot less than if you rent something for an expected 100 years.

Not to mention that if they lost an auction they would also loose most if not everything that they invested in their network

Again, that would be factored into the bids. Keep in mind that people who buy new spectrum also face a huge investment in order to recoup what they paid.

In the end, I think 5 year bidding would work pretty well: prices would stay about the same or get cheaper (due to increased competition), and equipment would likely become more interoperable.

None of the objections you raise seem to stand up to scrutiny. But I'd be interested in a more solid economic analysis of short term vs long term spectrum auctions.

Re:dumb idea

[Hamsterdan]

Antennas are optimized for a frequency range. You can't change their size via software.