Wireless Carriers In Huge Washington Lobby Fight Over Spectrum Auction 51
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."
Guaranteed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Guaranteed it won't be me.
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"How it plays out will determine who has control over your smartphone."
I consider my smartphone to be essentially an extension of my penis. Does that mean that this will determine who has control of my penis?
GOTO 01
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I consider my smartphone to be essentially an extension of my penis. Does that mean that this will determine who has control of my penis?
The FCC needs to get out of our bedrooms! The government has no business coming between a man's penis and the wireless carrier that services his porn habits.
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Re: Guaranteed... (Score:1)
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Shorten the Purchase Horizon (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
Selling implies they paid something.
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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?
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Short-term lease, and give royalties to everyone (Score:2)
Like Alaska does with oil and gas royalties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Otherwise it ends up being mostly another giveaway of monopoly to the wealthy who pay a small fraction of the true value ...
Make em share (Score:5, Interesting)
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Preview of paid research c/o Canadian Telcos (Score:5, Informative)
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. [www.cbc.ca].
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 [financialpost.com].
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 [podbay.fm].
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Antennas are optimized for a frequency range. You can't change their size via software.
Damn America if you will, (Score:2)
Political corruption always exists. The overall effect it will have on people and their private lives is directly linked to government interference in the markets.
If the big players (ATT & Verizon) are allowed to increase their stranglehold on market share, we the people will be the end result losers.
re-auction them every 5 years (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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
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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.
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the frequencies would be the same. it would just be a way to get some companies to pay more taxes and just switch which frequencies they use
good idea
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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.
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That would be very sensible and not at all capitalist. It'll never happen in USA!
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Actually, that is exactly the kind of mechanism capitalism and free markets demand.
The problem is that both major parties are significantly anti-capitalist and anti-free market, the Democrats virulently so, but even the Republicans. Just look at the farm bill vote to see examples of blatant political corruption and anti-market activity. Nobody who voted for that bill should get away with pretending to favor free markets, libert
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Blame Ronald Reagan (Score:2)
I know this sounds like a fantasy to many younger Slashdot readers, but it really did happen. Besides "capitalism" there were other obsolete ideas like "privacy", "justice", "voting rights", "free press" and "free travel". I'd encourage you to look this up,
Never sell something valuable (Score:2)
Selling things is stupid when you can rent it. The smart move would be to lease it out to companies that want to act as service providers. It gives more control to us, gives "our kids a say", and makes money until it is obsolete.