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FCC Undoing Rules That Make It Easier For Small ISPs To Compete With Big Telecom (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Federal Communications Commission is currently considering a rule change that would alter how it doles out licenses for wireless spectrum. These changes would make it easier and more affordable for Big Telecom to scoop up licenses, while making it almost impossible for small, local wireless ISPs to compete. The Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum is the rather earnest name for a chunk of spectrum that the federal government licenses out to businesses. It covers 3550-3700 MHz, which is considered a "midband" spectrum. It can get complicated, but it helps to think of it how radio channels work: There are specific channels that can be used to broadcast, and companies buy the license to broadcast over that particular channel. The FCC will be auctioning off licenses for the CBRS, and many local wireless ISPs -- internet service providers that use wireless signal, rather than cables, to connect customers to the internet -- have been hoping to buy licenses to make it easier to reach their most remote customers.
The CBRS spectrum was designed for Navy radar, and when it was opened up for auction, the traditional model favored Big Telecom cell phone service providers. That's because the spectrum would be auctioned off in pieces that were too big for smaller companies to afford -- and covered more area than they needed to serve their customers. But in 2015, under the Obama administration, the FCC changed the rules for how the CBRS spectrum would be divvied up, allowing companies to bid on the spectrum for a much smaller area of land. Just as these changes were being finalized this past fall, Trump's FCC proposed going back to the old method. This would work out well for Big Telecom, which would want larger swaths of coverage anyway, and would have the added bonus of being able to price out smaller competitors (because the larger areas of coverage will inherently cost more.) As for why the FCC is even considering this? You can blame T-Mobile. "According to the agency's proposal, because T-Mobile and CTIA, a trade group that represents all major cellphone providers, 'ask[ed] the Commission to reexamine several of the [...] licensing rules,'" reports Motherboard. The proposal reads: "Licensing on a census tract-basis -- which could result in over 500,000 [licenses] -- will be challenging for Administrators, the Commission, and licensees to manage, and will create unnecessary interference risks due to the large number of border areas that will need to be managed and maintained."
The CBRS spectrum was designed for Navy radar, and when it was opened up for auction, the traditional model favored Big Telecom cell phone service providers. That's because the spectrum would be auctioned off in pieces that were too big for smaller companies to afford -- and covered more area than they needed to serve their customers. But in 2015, under the Obama administration, the FCC changed the rules for how the CBRS spectrum would be divvied up, allowing companies to bid on the spectrum for a much smaller area of land. Just as these changes were being finalized this past fall, Trump's FCC proposed going back to the old method. This would work out well for Big Telecom, which would want larger swaths of coverage anyway, and would have the added bonus of being able to price out smaller competitors (because the larger areas of coverage will inherently cost more.) As for why the FCC is even considering this? You can blame T-Mobile. "According to the agency's proposal, because T-Mobile and CTIA, a trade group that represents all major cellphone providers, 'ask[ed] the Commission to reexamine several of the [...] licensing rules,'" reports Motherboard. The proposal reads: "Licensing on a census tract-basis -- which could result in over 500,000 [licenses] -- will be challenging for Administrators, the Commission, and licensees to manage, and will create unnecessary interference risks due to the large number of border areas that will need to be managed and maintained."
No driving from city to city and changing to smaller more expensive networks.
No fees to access another small network in the USA simply for enjoying the freedom to move around the USA.
Stay with your existing plan all over the USA as your brand will finally be able to get access to all of the USA.
No more very local monopolies that gathered up all the local spectrum keeping out other brands from all over the USA.
Enjoy your bands support, pricing and quality of service all over the USA. No more unexpected payments demanded from local monopolies to connect in their state, city.
Wireless spectrum was to allow innovative communications services all over the USA. Not to be small local monopolies that demand connection payments as they got granted the ability to be the only network in that part of the USA.
Enjoy the freedom to travel all over the USA with your own trusted telco plan. No more strange costs just for making a call in California or New Jersey because someone local got all the spectrum and kept it so they could get extra payments for people trying to make a call.
Soon your trusted telco brand will be available all over the USA at the same easy to understand rates. Enjoy making calls and using data all over the USA without local monopolies adding their extra data costs.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Falls all under the category of "more is never enough", "you can fool a lot of people this is good for them and succeed", "you owe the one's helping you out to do what is good for them"
Also called late capitalism or bribery solidly implemented corrupting a lot of minds...
It's happening for a while - 10/20/50 years or more and developing....
The title says that licensing new spectrum (with a bias to "Big Telecom") will make it harder for small ISPs to compete.
First, how would "small ISPs" actually use the newly licensed spectrum if they did get authorization? Would they buy the new access points that magically appear to use this spectrum? Are the big equipment producers in WIFI even interested in licensed spectrum? I think these are material questions.
My conclusion is that this is just another spectrum lottery, and the end result is noone is harmed and very few benefit.
A dingo ate my sig...
This has every to do with the head of the FCC being a former manager at Verizon and using the FCC to gain future employment. He had the nerve to argue that the NN regulations hurt small business when in fact they did the exact opposite. He's in this to make his next job a high power executive position at one of the major telecoms. He doesn't care about any small business or any consumer, all he cares about is empowering the large teleco's to wipe out competition and be able to toll the connections of their customers to extort money out of Internet businesses. That's it.
Trump didn't drain the swamp, he pumped an extra million gallons into it giving industry direct control over the government. Hell he proposed fuel requirements for power plants as a way to make all rate payer pay more to support coal which is no longer the cheapest source of power (that's wind, and solar is right behind wind with both cheaper than coal by a significant percentage) these days even with all the subsidies coal gets. Rolling back regulations that advantage small businesses would be the next step in corporate control over government and the head of the FCC that Trump put in position is just the man to do it.
Not too dense to spell dense correctly.
Going by your question, it shouldn't. That's the point. Imagine if land was sold in 10,000 acre plots. Only millionaires and billionaires could own it, and then everyone would have to rent from them to live, and abide by whatever rules they imposed on that land. The smaller ISPs who serve a rural community or fill in a market gap can't use the spectrum at acution here, whether or not T-Mobile uses it, since it will be the only one who has a license to use it (since it's the only one who can afford to use it). By making the plots small, anyone could afford to use it (yes, even the billionaires).
Your asshole neighbour who's dog isn't fenced would be violating their license to occupy and be fined or evicted.
Everyone is subject to the same laws regardless of how much money they have.
Yes. It's equally illegal for the billionaire and the pauper to sleep under a bridge.
That is how a fucking free market works.
I'm a big fan of the free market, and I have to say it seems like you don't know the first thing about how it works.
Second, this has nothing to do with cell phones, so the comment about how someone's phone doesn't cover this band and there will be no phone that do is irrelevant.
Third, it is under consideration, not a done deal. The headline is flamebait -- "FCC Undoing" is wrong. They might.
And fourth, yes, licensing small areas creates a lot more work for everyone involved than licenses for large areas. It's called "coordination", and the work goes up exponentially with the number of parties that need to be coordinated. Someone has to make sure that the licensee for Backwater, IA doesn't interfere with the licensee for South Backwater, IA. That's harder than telling T-Mobile in IA not to interfere with AT&T in the next state over.
All of that doesn't mean I support the change. It's just not that earth shattering to begin with.
T-Mobile asks the FCC to re-examine the proposal because it "will be challenging for Administrators, the Commission, and licensees to manage". In other words, hey guys, do you realize how much fucking work this is going to be for you? Are you sure you don't want to see it our way?
The argument that it will be challenging to manage probably tickles a bureaucrats toes: huge head-count, complicated reporting structure, impossible to audit for efficiency... That is the kind of mission that calls for truckloads of mid-level managers (A-4,B-5,C-3) which means there are empires to build...
A long time ago, my sister worked for the BLM. She had horror stories on how mining leases are handled by the federal government. They hired so many people at the BLM to oversee the leases that many employees were so bored at times that they would literally fight to do work when it came in the door. Processes were deliberately non-automated and nobody was allowed to work on anything that wasn't specifically listed in their job function. Basically all this 110 person division she worked in was accepting and depositing royalty checks from mining companies for only one region of the country. Nobody ever actually audited any of the mining leases unless someone complained. My sister got her CPA and of course she wasn't allowed to work on audits (because it wasn't listed in the job function she was hired into and they already hired too many auditors, many of whom didn't even have business or accounting degrees so they couldn't be promoted, only "step-ed" up). Nobody knew anything about what was going on about any mining leases, let alone any auditing techiques.
I'm thinking the FCC managing spectrum leases would be similar level of "quality service".
FWIW, my sister quit after about a year because she couldn't stand the boredom anymore (the supervisors even deleted solitaire from their windows computers installs because some GSA auditor complained that it "looked bad to the director to see them playing solitaire when he dropped in for visit") and she took a significant PAY CUT to work for a CPA firm which tells you how much they were overpaying people...