As you may or may not know, the FCC is currently on the lookout for firms not telling customers that the device being sold to them is an analog only set an d will not work after Feb, ‘09. So the FCC snags — Sears, WalMart, Best Buy, et. al. for not doing so. Another words big fines for not sticking a .20c label on a box. Details here.

Now of all these firms, WalMart has the least excuse. They have the most modern logistics system on the planet. They can tell you what bag of rice you bought on Sept 6, 2007. So it is not a stretch that they would be capable of cranking out a list of analog sets in inventory and slapping the label on it. Shame. Personally I think some heads are going to roll over this.

Google claims to have bid aggressively in the recent 700 MHz auction and is now on record stating they will lobby to have open rules eset for the redo on the D block that did not have a successful bid.

“In ten of the bidding rounds we actually raised our own bid — even though no one was bidding against us — to ensure aggressive bidding on the C Block,” Google said. Active bidding ensured the rules designed to make these networks more open to independent Web services will be implemented, it said.

The Silicon Valley company also said it will weigh in on new rules the FCC may set as it re-auctions airwaves that are to be shared between public safety agencies and commercial service providers — the “D Block” in the auctions. (Yahoo)

The original D block rules were crafted to support the business model of a company formed by a few ex FCC cronies that in the end never manage to raise enough capital to play in the auction. There are a number of unanswered questions that should baeasked about how that progressed.

With Google back in play, we’re always hopeful that a new competitor will enter the market and build our Third Pipe. With the dominance of the telcos, ther are very few players with the capital to compete against such deep pockets. That is at least in the way the FCC currently runs auctions.

More power to those who already have too much. If anything, Verizon should have been required to release some of the spectrum they hold license to in order to bid, but no such requirement was made.

One company now holds the fate of American mobile broadband in their hands, and they have a horrible track record when it comes to providing a equally good experience for all. Look for a bunch of pressure to backpedal on the FCC requirements beginning now….. the sprirt of the rules will only live on in the creative writing of V’s marketing department! The rules will change as language is twisted and bureaucrats are lobbied.

This will position V to better compete with the larger AT&T, and will probably help thier stock price. Congrats to the V’s shareholders. At least someone will benefit.

As for the consumer two competitors does not make a market place, it makes a duopoly. We were already trying to get past the fixed line duopoly. Welcome to the wireless one.

Just my opinion, and I pray I’m wrong.

It’s official: Verizon Wireless has won licenses for nationwide coverage in the C-Block in the 700MHz spectrum auction conducted by the Federal Communications Commission.

This means that Verizon, not Google, will control the spectrum that is required by the FCC to adhere to special open-access rules. (Cnet)

The feds have raised almost $20 billion from the re-purposing of a few analog TV channels. Who won? We’ll know when the FCC announces, in an estimated 10 days.

We’re most concerned with the C block, which has open access provisions in its rules. The suspected bidders were Google and Verizon Communications. Most analysts are predicting Verizon the winner. I my assessment, this is the worst of possible outcomes for the end user. If Google won, we’ll see something of a rapid, wild west style explosion of totally open wireless access. If Verizon is the winner look to a slow and steady deployment of something resembling their fixed line service, with only some of the available bandwidth being used for open access. With V as the operator we could get goegraphic more coverage than we have today, but not much new competition.  We will still be searching for our Third Pipe.

As we enter a new century in a more open and connected world, we may be watching a tremendous opportunity to create greater prosperity that at any time before slip away. Sure, a ton of money will be collected, presumable to be spent for the public good. The spectrum will be licensed to enterprises with pockets deep enough to implement useful services on it, and it will be partially open. The great tragedy is that not even one small sliver was allocated for unlicensed use by those who actually own it, the public at large.

There is growing evidence that individuals and small groups of people are doing very big things with simple unlicensed Wifi devices. Allowing no more power than the tiny Wifi transceivers currently use, operating on the 700MHz band would exponentially improve their reach. Even better, imagine a low power Wimax. By not further enabling these individuals with open UHF spectrum, we are stifling innovation and perhaps killing a new American miracle.

More on The big spectrum auction may be a great American tragedy

The FCC’s worries over slow and low bidding are over as the collective players have now ponied up nearly $20 Billion for the slices of thin air int he 700MHz spectrum.

After 32 rounds, the FCC has raised more than $18.8 billion in its 700-MHz auction, well surpassing its own early estimates of attracting between $10-15 billion in offers.

That’s undoubtedly good news for the agency. Since the auction began on Jan. 24, both the FCC and wireless experts have expressed ongoing concerns about meeting those estimates. Once the auction was underway, those worries were compounded by a shaky economic forecast and the possibility of a looming recession.

Interestingly, the fiercest bidding continues to be for a handful of regional licenses, implying that most bidders are incumbent carriers, not new entrants to the wireless space, and that their biggest priority is simply to fill in various gaps in their own coverage.

As of Tuesday, no further offers have appeared for the nationwide C Block license package or the D Block combination commercial-public safety spectrum. The last anonymous bid for the C Block, for $4.71 billion, remains the highest to date and most industry experts believe there are only three companies currently in the running: Google, Verizon and AT&T.
(from Wired)

Perhaps the rules should have required incumbent carriers to forfeit spectrum equal to that they would acquire to make the field more even? Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that the outcome of the auction will best serve the public interest, and it’s certain that none of the money will be spent with a single shred of wisdom.

First I want to lay down a customer’s observation/complaint against Verizon. So here is the lede –

The person didn’t believe me, said the situation I was describing was “impossible,” and that my bill was paid. She even confirmed the credit card on file with me, and it was the correct one. Her advice: “Just ignore it, they will stop coming eventually.”

Well they absolutely did not stop. For twice a month in November, December, and January I got these stupid notices and calls from my credit card company. With every notice and every call, I would contact Verizon Online and waste another hour of my life, only to be told again and again that the situation was “impossible” and that I was crazy. This time I demand to speak to a manger who tells me she will do “some research” and call me back. Yeah, I’ll be waiting for that phone call until hell freezes over.

Finally, about a week ago, I get an email from Verizon telling me that my internet will be shut off because I haven’t paid my bill. I place the 7th call to Verizon online and ask to speak to a manager immediately. The customer service agent blatantly ignores me. Instead of transferring me like I requested, she forces to me to tell her the long drawn out story, and then proceeds to inform me that I am wrong and nuts. She insists that my internet is active, my bills are paid, and nothing is amiss. When I ask her about the email she says “It must be spam.”

Low and behold I get home to find that my internet is cut off. Sur-fucking-prise! I call back, ask to speak to a manager, and am again ignored. I try to tell them there has to be another account somewhere, because it doesn’t make any sense otherwise. I told the woman about the cut off notice, I told her that I was getting a screen on the computer that said I had been disconnected because I hadn’t paid my bill, and she STILL tried to connect me to “tech support,” telling me that I had a “modem problem.” How much of an idiot can you possibly be? Meanwhile, my fiancé printed out the screen that was appearing, including the account number, and we discover on our own that the account number on the screen is the the same account number they have been giving me. Why pray tell could that be? BECAUSE THERE ARE TWO ACCOUNTS AS I HAD SAID FOR THREE MONTHS!

When I give the woman the account number, it pops up magically. Apparently, when I updated my credit card information someone opened another account in my name that was collecting debt. To “make up” for the last three months of hell, they said they would credit my account with $200, but (here’s the kicker!) I am still responsible for paying off the debt on the second account that I didn’t open, which was $150. So really, Verizon is giving me 50 bucks, because they are taking $150 out of the $200 they are “giving” me.

Such bullshit. I hate these people.

And now, to top it all off, our internet has stopped working. My fiancé is calling them today to see what the problem is, but he suspects that they cut off the WRONG account.

I would like to thank Consumerist for the hattip. For the consumer of that tale I would suggest taking them to small claims court. This is a STFU from the word go ala Verizon. The customer did not authorize the construction of a new account. And it is apparent that your billing system is so hosed now Verizon as to be unreliable.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Maybe what should have happened the current 700mhz auction is that no incumbent providers, phone or cable would be permitted to bid. No Verizon, no Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, etc. Yes I am aware that this would have hurt the overall bidding price. But juxtapose that against just maybe with new blood in the game, smaller, more nimble companies that were more customer focused we would see less of letters like the young lady above.

I am convinced that beyond a certain size corporations do not function well for the consumer which is their reason for being. That fall off the cliff size depends on the industry the company is in. I do know this, at somewhere around 500-700 employees a shift occurs that dictates that policy overtake customer focused exception management. The customer base becomes so large that internal rules are the only way to handle the situation. Not a bad thing. But by the time that a company is at 30000 employees the prevention of errors like the above collapses. Yet the companies customer base size just carries itself forward on sheer initeria. Only new competition refocuses a company out of those doldrums.

But alas we won’t see it as the rules for the 700mhz are set and the game is afoot.

With AT&T’s purchase of 700 MHz spectrum from Aloha receiving FCC approval, Verizon may find themselves bandwidth challenged in the wireless future. We had reported earlier that there was odd activity it the regional chunks of the national “C” block of spectrum. Today the Register is reporting that the sum of the bids for the parts is now larger the the 1 bid for the whole:

On Thursday, in round 17 of the auction, someone bid $4.7bn for the whole package. But yesterday, in rounds 27 through 30, someone started bidding large for the regional licenses. Eventually, the sum of the regional bids topped the bid for the whole package. If the auction ended today, the regionals bids would take the cake.

“If the sum of the children is greater than the parent, then the children win,” explains Moshal.

Still with us?

Chances are, it was Google that made the overarching $4.7bn bid - and it was Verizon that started tossing around regional bids, trying to win the C Block in a whole new way.

What happens if someone like Verizon only wins some of the regional licenses? Obviously, they can’t use the others. But they could fill in the holes with spectrum from other slices of the 700-MHz band: the A, B, and E Blocks. These blocks - which sit at a different frequency - are also split up into regional licenses, but they can’t be purchased as complete 50-state packages.

(The D Block is a different matter. It can only be won as a nationwide whole, and whoever wins it is required to build a wireless network specifically for public safety).

So, Verizon could piece together a nationwide network by mixing and matching slices of spectrum from the A, B, C, and E Blocks. It just has to make sure that the sum of the bids for the regional C Block licenses top the bid for the entire C Block package.

“If you wanted to cover the whole country with a network,” says Moshal, “you could also win some of the pieces of the C Block and make up the rest by bidding on other blocks.”

Judging from current bidding patterns, it seem like Verizon - or someone else - is hoping to do this very thing.

Is Darth V trying to outbid Google in stealth mode? If so, I hope Google’s reading. While the regulations on the C block call for open access, I prefer Google’s definition of what is open over Verizon’s. Darth V has a long history of challenging, gaming, incrementally re-writing and just plain ignoring regulations. In the end how open the C block is will dictate how open all wireless networks will be.

The FCC has granted final approval for the transfer of Aloha Properties Holdings spectrum assets to AT&T Mobility. Pretty darn good thing considering that AT&T is in there in the FCC auctions right now!

Link to FCC approval.

With an end to bidding activity when the reserve was reached many are predicting the auction is over for the 700MHz “C” block. Not unlike the rest of the tech blogosphere, we at Third Pipe are also guilty in postulating and rehashing potential outcomes without much real data. One interesting read uncovered is from Eric Schonfeld at Tech Crunch. He theorizes that there may be a surprise player or two besides Google and Verizon in the sweepstakes. A small and unintended quirk in the action rules allows regional bidders to submit new bids for the national block:

Companies can also bid on parts of the C-block on a regional basis (Northeast, Southeast, Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley, Central, West). Although there have been bids on these regional blocks, none of them have shown up as “provisionally winning bids” because the $4.7 billion for the whole country is still more than the sum of the regional bids. But a company can stay eligible by placing new bids for one of the regions, and then make a bid for the national block at the end.

And that may be exactly what is happening. If you look at bids for the Mississippi Valley region over the last few rounds, for instance, there was a bid for $884 million in Round 24, $1.2 billion in Round 25, and $1.4 billion in Round 26. That is a big company (or companies) with a lot of cash making those bids. One theory is that this big company is just biding its time until it makes a bid for the national block. The longer it waits, the less competition it is might encounter because other bidders will be more likely to have used up their waivers or stopped bidding altogether. Unless, of course, the other big potential bidders are pursuing the same strategy. So this ain’t necessarily over yet.

So many have so much to say with little or no data, and then there’s the obvious we miss that could change everything. My gut tells me we are still in for a few surprises from the 700MHz auction