We watched in horror as the FCC presided over the monopoly telcos grabbing most of the 700 MHz spectrum much like a couple of mafia dons dividing turf. The FCC did nothing to limit spectrum holdings by a single party. Add to the mix a clueless Congress that is unwilling or incapable of directing the agency, and you have a completely disfuntional wireless broadband market that promises to be underpowered and overpriced. At least a group of rural carriers is standing up and crying foul.

An advocacy group representing smaller, rural wireless carriers is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reinstate limits on the amount of spectrum a carrier can own — a move that it believes could stop the nation’s largest wireless companies from grabbing an unfair share.

The Rural Telecommunications Group (RTG) said its members’ networks could be in jeopardy if what it sees as a “duopoloy” in spectrum ownership comes into play, following recent spectrum acquisitions by wireless market leaders AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone Group (NYSE: VOD).

“As more consolidations are taking place, more spectrum is ending up with the big players,” Carri Bennet, RTG’s general counsel, told InternetNews.com. “The rural carriers need access to spectrum.”

The group wants a cap of 110 MHz on the amount of spectrum a carrier can hold below the 2.3 GHz band within a county.(Internet News)

The Governator and State Legislature in Cali must be giving up on the unfulfilled promises repeatedly made by AT&T and the cable guys. The left coast will soon be providing taxpayer funding to bring broadband to the nearly 1.5 that can’t get service. Government tends to not do things very efficiently, but it’s a fair bet thet’ll get it done sooner that a duopoly. I’m betting the duopoly lawyers will use the courts to delay deployment as long as possible.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced he has signed Senate Bill 1191 by Sen. Elaine Alquist authorizing community service districts to provide broadband services to their residents.

“We live in an age where technology drives everything we do and to remain competitive and connected in the future we must expand broadband access today,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger. “This legislation will help connect California’s cities to each other and to the world by growing our digital highway.” (Government Technology)

I’m still amazed how many very intelligent people believe we have an unregulated access market in America. The reality is, we have a lightly regulated, government sanctioned duopoly. This duopoly was created and is maintained by the best politicians that the duopoly’s money can buy.

A group that includes many notable innovators and founders of the internet (sans internet creator Al Gore) is calling for a coherent national broadband policy. This is good.Such a policy will probably require an act of Congress. This is bad. That means the same politicians who have propped up the duopoly will craft the new policy. If you think that’s a good idea, look at the poor level of rural telecom and electric service that we continue to subsidize decades after construction was completed. These same rural areas are at the top of the coalition’s list to serve.

They announced InternetforEveryone.org during the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City Tuesday. The group said it would bring together Internet users, content creators, and innovators to make universal, affordable, high-speed access a national priority. 

Some of them, including Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, Columbia professor and author, Timothy Wu, Google VP and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, and FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, already are on board and attended the launch. The group — announced by Free Press and supported by many of that organization’s members — said that high-speed Internet is a necessity, not a luxury, for education, the economy, free speech, and America’s ability to lead.

Their goal is “to see that every American gets connected to a fast, affordable, and open Internet.” They called it a “basic right” that should be afforded to all Americans. (Information Week)

Should a minimum service level be established as policy? You bet. The FCC should do as much of this as their charter allows. If left to entirely to Congress we’ll likely end up with a Stalinist style central planning bureau with plenty of new taxes that will feed the duopoly monster.

I make no claim to have all of the best solutions, but here are a few.

1) A minimum level of service should be established at a reasonable price. This should require no new subsidies if any subsidy if correctly crafted. Rural Telcos already have access to federal funds for broadband. If you take advantage of a monopoly franchise, you agree to serve all. This means rural telcos will have a lower return on investment for some customers, but they will still essentially have a monopoly. It goes with the territory. You buy the ranch, you get the wolves who live there and it’s your problem to solve.

1) A contest between two players is not a competitive arena, it’s a fixed game. Incumbent carriers should be required to offer local loop sharing and wholesale access to any address that is not served by  at least 5 competing primary access providers (not resellers). With the need for fiber overbuild along with two flavors of wireless, that should be doable even without BPL. Until then, we need to get competition going in the current infrastructure. Telecoms in France, Japan, UK, and Korea are making platy of money wholesaling as well as retailing, so there’s no reason why it won’t work here too. As a last resort, municipalities should be able to build their own fiber loops without duopoly interference.

3) Permanently ban any tax on internet access. This is government putting a little skin in the game of keeping prices low, and will discourage sweetheart subsidies for duopolies.

4) Impose a limit to how much spectrum a single entity can lease, and make new leases for a shorter term with more potential for turnover to new players. Remember that spectrum belongs to the public and the carriers are tenants, not landlords.

5) Create more unlicensed spectrum for broadband use. The current white spaces proposal is an example of one possibility. The NAB does not have exclusive rights to keep unused frequencies empty. See point #4.

6) Encourage new competition and investment with tax abatement and requirements for access to right of ways. A third pipe would be great for competition. Five pipes would be better.

And what about Al Gore?  We’ve heard rumors that he’s hard at work to protect the human race from another threat. You can learn more here.

After being defanged for some time in the legal quagmire of being punished for operating illegally, the evil Q is making a comeback.

The boated, inefficient, yet predatory regional monopoly the began life as a well meaning fiber backbone company and lost its way by merging with an RBOC now wants more from the USF pot for the few remaining rural areas it has not already sold off. Few businesses have the luxury of demanding help from the taxpayer instead of solving their own problems, but such is the case with the telcos.

Qwest Communications International Inc. is asking a federal agency to obey a 2005 court order for reforms that Qwest hopes will give it more access to a pot of money subsidizing rural phone and broadband service.

The Denver-based telecommunications company petitioned the Federal Communications Commission on May 5 to follow a 3-year-old 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling ordering reforms in a program reimbursing telephone companies billions of dollars for serving rural areas. The agency hasn’t formally responded. (Denver Business Journal)

A the risk of repeating myself: The USF needs to end. It’s mission was accomplished some time ago and it has done very little to improve the availability of world class broadband access to lower density population areas. The reason of course is that it is now treated as the private taxpayer money pot for incumbent telco monopolies who have no motivation to improve service. It’s time to end the USF and introduce open market competition to the marketplace. Unbundling the local loop would be a darn good place to start since the taxpayer footed the bill to build it in the first place.

A small family owned telco plans to invest more than $3100 per customer to deliver fiber broadband service. Are they crazy? I think not. Rural areas tend to have higher take rates for services like satellite tv and internet - often at inflated prices. When deployed the customer base should grow spurred by new economic growth.

On Monday, executives of Ellettsville-based Smithville said they will invest $90 million over three years to build a fiber-optic network across 17 counties, including Hendricks County. The network will be faster than most offerings from cable and phone companies and will reach 29,000 customers, mostly in southwestern Indiana. (Indystar)