Something’s wrong when the FCC can run a near sham auction and award most of the wireless spectrum to two incumbent monopolies only to have their BPL regulations overturned by a handful of hobbyists. Then again in the auction, billions were collected, and the judge that’s holding BPL up is probably an ARRL member. Reality is there is nothing fair, impartial, or openly competitive about the way things are being run by our government.

When setting rules for BPL operators nearly two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission said it was trying to encourage deployment of a “third pipe” to compete with cable and DSL services, while establishing limits aimed at protecting public safety, maritime, radio-astronomy, aeronautical navigation, and amateur radio operators from harmful interference. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), which represents amateur and ham radio operators, however, promptly sued the agency, contending that the FCC’s approach was insufficient to ward off interference with its radios and inconsistent with its previous rules.

On Friday, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia on Friday issued a ruling (PDF) that took issue with the way the FCC arrived at its rules. (Cnet)

Unlike the van to the left, V’s wireless unit hasn’t flamed out yet. To the contrary it grew quite a bit according to the company’s internally generated data. We think they picked up / retained a good many customers with the flat rate plan that they were the first to roll out. But, it’s hard to imagine 1.5 million new customers signing up to pay $100/month. Since the market has peaked, you have to assume most of the V newbies came from Sprint. Better get that Wimax working soon Sprinters, while you still have a company to bet on it!

The company reported that first quarter net adds were 1.5 million, bringing its total subscriber base to 67.2 million. That’s down from 2 million net adds in fourth quarter 2007. Revenues totaled $11.7 billion, up 13.2 percent year over year. Here’s a breakdown of the other key metrics:

ARPU: Retail ARPU was $51.40, up 1.3 percent year over year. However, this is slightly down from fourth quarter 2007 when the operator had an ARPU of $51.49.

Data: Data ARPU was $11.94, up from $11.06 in fourth quarter 2007. Data now represents 23 percent of total service revenue up from 17.5 percent a year ago. Data revenues were $2.3 billion. The company had 48.1 million retain data customers in March, accounting for 74 percent of the retail customer base.

Churn: Total churn is 1.19 percent, down from 1.2 percent total churn in fourth quarter 2007. Retail post-paid churn is 0.93 percent, down from 0.94 percent in fourth quarter. (Fierce Wireless)

A nex report by Xiti indicates that Firefox browser has gained market share in most areas of the globe except for the US which had a small drop in March. Biggest gains are int eh New Europe countries like Poland. The most stalwart use being in Australia.

According to Xiti, Internet Explorer has lost 2.5 percentage points during the past six months. Opera and Safari have also seen slight gains during that time period to 3.3 and 2.3 percent, respectively. Xiti does not provide statistics for iPhone browser marketshare and the report does not specify whether or not iPhone browsing is counted as part of the Safari statistics.

Xiti’s global statistics indicate that Oceania—comprised of Australia and New Zealand—has the highest Firefox market share of any continent, with 31.2 percent. The continent with the lowest marketshare is Asia, at 17.2 percent. In many parts of Asia, Firefox has trouble competing with Maxthon, a browser created in China that uses Internet Explorer’s rendering engine.

With Safari, Opera, and Firefox continuing to expand; IE’s dominance is slowly shrinking.

Xiti report here.
HT: Ars Technica

It seems that NPR only supports diversity in programming if it is diversity by their definition and broadcast on their licensed frequencies. For now FM spectrum has become scarce, and NPR wants to grow. When FM transitions into digital, it will be possible to offer more programming in less spectrum, but NPR wants to grow now.  Easiest for NPR to target with their search for new frequencies are a few low power FM stations that also offer diverse community oriented programming.

NPR is quite plain about the matter in its FCC filings: it stands opposed to the Low Power exceptions, even though it might help keep FM offerings diverse. NPR charges that the FCC is putting feel-good policies ahead of the laws of physics.

“The laws of physics have not changed, and a system of full power broadcast stations serves many more listeners with less interference compared to low power broadcasting,” NPR told the FCC this month. “While LPFM stations may advance the interests of localism and diversity, the Commission cannot assume that LPFM is inherently better than full power service.” (Ars Technica)

No commercial broadcaster would be successful in bumping the low power operators off to open new turf for themselves. Only elitists feeding at the public trough are arrogant enough to try. There is no way that NPR’s east or west cost centric banter can serve local communities better than programming that originates - in the local communities. Bad show NPR!

In the race to find affordable, highly usable broadband, it’s we Americans, not the French who are like the bumbling inspector from the Pink Panther movies. France is now requiring fiber prewire in new multi family units. We’ve never been in favor of heavy handed government regs, but it’s clear that the French regard FTTP as much of a utility as water or electricity. The American Clouseau is still unclear on broadband penetration stats and is searching. Never mind classifying FTTP broadband as an essential public utility he’s too inept to understand how important it is.

While we applaud like lobotomized lab chimps at the fact a handful of people can now get 50Mbps/5Mbps from Comcast for $150 in 2008, the government of France took our now-scrapped concept of local loop unbundling and line sharing and developed a highly competitive broadband market. In that market, competition has driven some providers to offer 100Mbps/50Mbps fiber service, VoIP and IPTV for $40 a month.

As of this week, France is now taking the added step of requiring that all new apartment builds be pre-installed with fiber optics. “The government’s goal is to give very fast broadband a push in the back,” says government spokesman Luc Chatel, who in the States would be run out of town for such clearly inflammatory and evil commentary. The law will only apply to apartment buildings larger than twenty-five units. (Broadband Reports)

RCR is reporting that the ‘D’ block that did not sell in the 700mhz auction will most likely be reauctioned AGAIN before the end of the year. We have taken the position to pass on this private-public partnership. Or shall we say, alter the nature of the private participation side of the equation. Our answer here.

The ‘D’ block is for the public benefit as it is defined by the FCC rules. Auctioning the block off is like executing state block grants with a private party taking their cut. Make it simple, have a public corp own the block, build the infrastructure and run the network. Get on with it.

Linky.

Lets roll the clock back 20 years. Its 1988. Cell phone has only been in existence a year or so. But plain ole POTS as still rocking and Avante Garde was ISDN. We know how that all worked out. But that is not the question, so relax. The question is do you trust your providers billing?

Let’s take this guy. He got this bill –

Heart attack city if I had received it. Sprint’s error. In fact a whole bunch of error across multiple bills. But back to history. In the POTS days, getting a bad bill was a rarity. Not perfect of course, but usually so rare that when a big mistake came it hit the local paper as an ‘event’. The regional manager of the telco gets in contact with the customer and usually has it resolved post haste. Bad publicity you know, clean it up was the motto. Fact it was a matter of pride that the Telcos could be so accurate.

Now? In many cases there appears to be a running level of about 5% of the bills being error. I really have to wonder why. In many cases the billing should be easier. Give a listen. In the POTS world there are three entities involved — originator, transporter, receiver. All three get their piece of the call. Now lets take a cell call. Very similar settlement process only it can occur internetwork between two different providers in the same LATA by the simple fact that the customer moved cell to cell. Finally lets take Uverse or FIOS. Other than pay per views the entire pricing is known before hand.

I can’t imagine that a all encompassing bill is that difficult to assemble. The POTS component is the same technology. The broadband bill is pretty much fixed pricing. Nor should the wireless side be that hard. Or at least it would appear that way. So what’s the problem? Bad billing is almost so common as to be a non event in the press.

Kudos to Consumerist. Full billing story here.

We’re seeign more and more signs that Yahoo really does have a clue about computing in the cloud. On thursday, CTO Ari Balogh annouce they are opening more API’s.

“We are taking open to a whole other place,” Balogh said. “We are rewiring Yahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assets of Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience social throughout and provide hooks to developers.” He noted that Yahoo has 10 billion latent connections across its properties, such as mail, messenger and fantasy sports. (Cnet)

This is the right way for Yahoo to grow, and maybe introduce a little more competiton in the search marketplace. By enabling developers to make use of Yahoo paltforms, Yahoo trafiic wil grow exponentially. Everyone wins, except maybe Microsoft.

For those that don’t know Microsoft they do not follow a calendar year. Hence Jan-Mar is their 3Q. Regardless it is dismal for Uncle Bill. Profit is off 11% same period last year. Which begs the question is the downturn a reflection of dismal Vista or stupid Yahoo?

Regardless Microsoft is feeling the squeeze. Gross revenues were up a little over a Billion but net margin was down. Delivery of product is becoming harder to do. Couple that with the fact that they can no longer call the shots on standards like they used to in the late 80’s.

More on the financials here.

Want your shot at building a nearly national wireless network to compete with the diuopoply? You could get your chance if you have the necessary cash.

NextWave Wireless announced Thursday that it has asked two investment banking firms to explore the possibility of selling its extensive spectrum holdings that cover most of the United States.”We no longer view our spectrum holdings as critical to reaching our product sales objectives and believe that now is the perfect time for us to sell these valuable assets,” said Allen Salmasi, CEO and president of NextWave, in a statement. “Since the completion of the recent 700 MHz auction, we have received multiple offers for our U.S. spectrum assets.”

Salmasi said the sale of the spectrum would enable NextWave to improve its financial situation and concentrate on developing its wireless products, including WiMax and radio frequency integrated circuit chipsets, WiMax and LTE base station platforms, and mobile TV systems that the company is working on with mobile phone service providers to bring into commercial deployment. (Information Week)

Any takers? I wonder if T-Mobile is interested. If you have the cash, but don’t want to run a network, email us! We’ll be glad to help!