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Bidding At FCC TV Spectrum Auction May Be Restricted For Large Carriers
An anonymous reader writes "Rumors have surfaced that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will restrict bidding at their TV spectrum auction in 2015 to effectively favor smaller carriers. Specifically, when 'auction bidding hits an as-of-yet unknown threshold in a given market, the FCC would set aside up to 30MHz of spectrum in that market. Companies that hold at least one-third of the low-band spectrum in that market then wouldn't be allowed to bid on the 30MHz of spectrum that has been set aside.' Therefore, 'in all band plans less than 70MHz, restricted bidders—specifically AT&T and Verizon (and in a small number of markets, potentially US Cellular or CSpire)—would be limited to bidding for only three blocks.' The rumors may be true since AT&T on Wednesday threatened to not participate in the auction at all as a protest against what it sees as unfair treatment."
Maybe this will finally be the incentive we need to force carriers to use the same spectrum.
I'm sure this will end well. Somehow I'm sure that the only loser will be the U.S. taxpayer.
"AT&T on Wednesday threatened to not participate in the auction at all"
Good, that leaves more spectrum for the companies that actually need it, instead of wannabe monopolists that have spectrum to spare.
Just fight it out with paintball guns or a poker match. Or run through the Wipeout tracks. Or Super Smash brothers. Or Dance Dance Revolution best of 3 dance-off. All this behind the scenes, cloak and dagger, pretend-fair bullshit is getting old. If there's a cap or randomization, some dreamy idiot with some dumb invention wins and doesn't make good use of it. If it's unlimited, the customers end up paying AT&T or whatever for 10 years the 1 trillion dollars or whatever the hell they bid. It's all just passed straight to the customer. If the government runs it, it's a shitstorm.
All of it. Exclusive access. Corps don't need more spectrum.
What I want to know is why is this spectrum for sale?
Why isnt it for lease? Why arent the carriers paying something per year for the use of the spectrum?
emt 377 emt 4
I have been unlucky enough to view some articles via beta lately... I still have to switch to classic if I want to read comments... so all I have to really say is that I still say fuck beta.
"AT&T on Wednesday threatened to not participate in the auction at all"
Ok then, thanks for the advanced notice, more for everyone else.
And where does that leave the âoeclassicâ Slashdot page
[sic]
Yep. Actually that page was initially full of those fancy "Ã(TM)" type scrambled characters. Apparently they didn't catch all them... But yeah, Slashdot's lack of Unicode support is embarrassing.
AT&T on Wednesday threatened to not participate in the auction at all as a protest against what it sees as unfair treatment
Isn't that delightfully refreshing?
You go FCC!
Why are they still developing it? What are the goals of the new design? Who is target market for the new design? There should be a slashdot poll asking which format users prefer:
a) beta
b) classic
c) both
With this we can discover if the naysayers are a minority or not.
It seems pointless to continue developing something so inferior (but slightly prettier) to the original. Just create a nicer looking skin for classic and be done with it.
The previous spectrum auction made sense.. Cut of channels 52-69 and sell them off. Broadcasters were required to have two channels during the DTV transition, so if one of them was on a terminated frequency, they'd just have to use the other on a permanent basis.
But this one is psychotic... Everybody, everywhere, has to put their entire operation up for bids. The FCC gets to evaluate on a massive scale how to build a contiguous and nation-wide band out of the cheapest broadcasters on offer, with the real possibility they will end up with a patchwork of frequencies in different areas used for cell phone traffic, but still TV (and radio) in others.
This is the most complex mess I've ever seen, and worse, it reeks of devaluing, and largely throwing away nearly a century of public infrastructure, in exchange for some short-term cash, from companies who are simply doing a piss-poor job of spectrum-reuse because old TV frequencies are going for *cheap*. Honestly, this is blatant big-money lobbying against public interest, almost as bad as LightSquared, trying to leagalize their misuse of frequencies that would knock out GPS, and later trying to trade their frequencies for military channels that have never been on offer for any companies to use.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why is the gubberment picking on a small underdog like AT&T? What did AT&T ever do? They're just a poor monopolistic company who are struggling to survive on the hundreds they overcharge customers who have no viable alternative.
Maybe they should weight the amount that needs to be paid for spectrum according to the marketshare of the bidder... and specifically state spectrum needs to be re-purchased at auction if a current holder of spectrum is acquired.
Firstly, natural resources should at worst only be leased with no subletting and no shell purchasing - Hong Kong approach the right idea, where all land belongs to the government (and they're not exactly communist).
But this is worst case. Usual case should be sharing but regulation, as with the air we breathe. The lack of R&D and deployment of effective spread spectrum technology is what's causing the artificial need to allocate bands in the first place. If companies want more bandwidth, require them to share it and to open any protocols they use. That'll get their asses in gear.
I can't but help think that there needs to be some way to share or combine spectrum between carriers. It seems grossly inefficient to have a geographic footprint served by multiple carriers over a wide spectrum but have phones that can only talk on part of it due to arbitrary division by the carriers.
It also seems like it creates such ridiculous barriers to entry that competition is inherently limited because the requirements to being a carrier are so large -- you need radio spectrum and broad coverage.
I think there should be some kind of scheme where handsets work on all possible spectrum and carriers are forced to allow connections from all devices. When a subscriber from carrier A gets on tower run by carrier B, carrier B needs to handle their connection and backhaul at some defined cost. A system of backend accounting to balance the cross-carrier connection charges could take into account the usage of each other's infrastructure, with charges reduced depending on the carrier's infrastructure investment at the specific cell site (ie, if carrier A has a backhaul presence but not RF presence at a site, their usage costs would be proportionally less.
It would be in the carriers best interest to have their own towers to offset backend costs. The benefit to consumers would be better coverage, since any one cell tower could offer maximum spectrum coverage resulting in fewer overall towers needed.
AT&T is mad because it can't have all the cookies. Fuck AT&T!
"Winners should pick winners in markets."
-Winners in markets
The administration's buddies buy into IPOs of small carriers. Said small carriers get a favorable slant of the playing field from the Administration. Small carriers get to buy spectrum.
Big carriers need the spectrum, so offer to M&A the small carriers at a large share premium. Holders of IPO stock get insanely wealthy on the takeover.
The bigs just squeezed the little guys, all legally, until they started to fail. Then they bought them and got the frequencies.
davecb@spamcop.net
AC gets it. No more complicated than what is written above.
Don't do this to us, you will make us have to buy these smaller carriers, and that will make us sad pandas
by creating a daughter company the big players can pretend to be small.
In the end the spectrum will go to the big player when the daughter company gets disolved
as i keep telling people, not many radios between 1,240 - 1,300 MHz. That's 60 MHz! You want 30 MHz of space? Look at 420 - 450 Mhz. Empty except for outdated Morse code stuff that beeps every five minutes or so. What year is this? 1860?
Part of any future spectrum auctions should require that the company getting the new spectrum develop technology that allows the use of their new service with minimal guard bands and minimal interference to adjacent users.
If this means Verizon, AT&T, et al have to develop newer better filter technology for the other users' equipment, so be it. Though I understand the necessity of guard bands right now, I hate seeing 1-7mhz chunks of supposedly valuable spectrum basically unused to mitigtate interference.
Whatever unfair terms they see, they have no choice but to participate. Of course, if the FCC buckles then not participating is a winning strategy all of a sudden.