A Case Against Further Government Spectrum Auctions

dkatana points out an article arguing that the governments should stop further auctions of 4G spectrum because it reduces infrastructure investment from carriers and makes net neutrality more difficult to regulate. Quoting: The FCC recently raised more than $34 billion for six blocks of airwaves, totaling 65 megahertz of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is good news for the treasury coffers, but government auctions threaten the ability of the FCC and similar agencies to manage the spectrum, impose net neutrality rules, and allow new businesses to compete.

Carriers and internet companies who won the auction might believe the spectrum is theirs to do as they please, blocking access or charging huge fees to others. Issues such as speed throttling and preferential access come to mind. If governments insist in auctions of the newly available frequencies, it could hurt the industry and potentially destroy any possibility of negotiating universal access and net neutrality.

Comments

Circular logic

[beakerMeep]

This is the same silly logic FCC chief Wheeler used to in his blog post back when he advocated the T-Mobile + AT&T merger. It basically sums up as this:

"It we just give them some stuff then they will be ok with us regulating them"

How about the FCC just do it's fucking job? Regulation should not require give and take with the industry, that's exactly how regulation can go wrong.

Devil's Advocate response--sort of

[storkus]

I'm not a fan of the carriers for the obvious reasons, but I have to play Devil's Advocate here and remind you all of how much money it costs to deploy equipment in all that spectrum. This is the reason why coverage is great in cities and poor in the countryside. Look how much spectrum T-Mobile and Sprint have over a huge geographical area and yet deploy over only a tiny percentage of it; supposedly T-Mobile will deploy more in rural areas where they can get 700 MHz spectrum, but I'll believe that when I see it. Likewise, in lesser (ranked 101+ or so?) metro areas, their network is a mess of technologies with 2, 3, and 4G all in the same city, and only barely-working 2G in some areas, including one (Kingman, Arizona) where T-Mobile is severely oversubscribed yet they won't put a dime into improvement.

So here's an idea I've had for years: pay less money for spectrum in exchange for current-technology coverage over your ENTIRE license area rather than just the big cities. I can't count how many people would love decent internet access and can't get it because the spectrum is all owned by companies who refuse to actually install equipment there: this practice should be illegal.

Sure, the leasing idea is probably the better one, but the roll-out cost of keeping up with the technology is far in excess of that. Also note that this argument isn't just about the cell/mobile bands but also all the other bands, especially as the phone companies continue to gobble up everyone else's spectrum--even us ham radio operators, where I expect the 9cm band (and possibly the 23cm band) will disappear within the next decade or two.

Oh, also, have any of you read how hard it will be coordinating with government stations on the AWS-3 band? There are numerous places where the band will likely never be able to be used by a carrier even though they're licensed for it.

Finally, remember that any price increase will ALWAYS be passed on to the customer--even phantom charges when they can get away with it ("Government Regulatory Recovery" charges, anyone?).