Martin Pushes a Freebie

Commissioner Martin is pushing ahead with offering up a free tier radio spectrum. We don’t see how the plan works as tendered but we applaud the effort. They have had to delay the vote but he intends to push ahead –

“The chairman remains committed to advancing a proposal that will provide a broadband lifeline for Americans who currently do not have Internet access on what would be a portion of the band that would provide that service for free,” said an FCC spokesman. Martin has been a target of criticism because the U.S. trails more than a dozen countries in broadband penetration.

The agency spokesman added: “The chairman also believes that more time is needed to examine concerns on the interference issue, but he does not agree with some critics who are pushing for an interference standard that is more cumbersome than the restrictions that were set forth for both the AWS-1 spectrum and the 700 MHz spectrum in those respective auctions. The plan is to include this item on a July open meeting agenda and thereafter set auction rules and commence an auction perhaps as early as December 2008.”

Martin had planned to vote on rules to auction frequencies at 2175-2180 MHz and 2155-2175 MHz — advanced wireless service bands 2 and 3 — at the June 12 open meeting. The spectrum is adjacent to AWS-1 spectrum auctioned by the FCC in 2006. T-Mobile USA Inc., the smallest of the four national wireless carriers, was the top bidder in that auction after purchasing 120 licenses for nearly $4.2 billion. The carrier recently launched AWS I (1.7 GHz/2.1 GHz) operations in New York and plans to rollout service in that band in other markets as well this year.

Now T-Mobile raises some proper concerns on guard bands. We have suggested this before. Like we have said before — open it up Martin! Put some minor restrictions as to power usage and proper spread spectrum rules and maybe even a split of the band logistically. But in return the Commission gains a few advantages — a) We will stop b!@@#$#@ about it b) The legal entanglement of the old guard bands/white space issue will disappear. c) I will force some level of down pressure on competition for other wireless services.

More here.