FCC rule may lead to broadband expansion
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WASHINGTON -- New rules approved this week by the Federal Communications Commission are aimed at making high-speed Internet available to more Americans.
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Time Warner Cable will try selling consumers broadband service based on how much bandwidth they use, a move that could turn the home broadband pricing model in the U.S. on its head.
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Here's a way to settle the debate over the use of the much-coveted 700 Mhz spectrum band: Why not build a single open network that supports multiple services on it, both commercial and for public safety? It can be done, but it would require some changes in thinking by the FCC and Internet operators, among others.
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Watch out, cable. Reddy Kilowatt can now invade your turf as the FCC on Thursday approved regulations that allow power companies to provide broadband services.
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The federal government is challenging an appeals court ruling that, officials fear, would stifle the expansion of cable broadband services by burdening the providers with new regulations.
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InfoWorld - Time Warner Cable will try selling consumers broadband service based on how much bandwidth they use, a move that could turn the home broadband pricing model in the U.S. on its head.
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(Washington, DC-NBC) Dec. 15, 2004 - The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to give away broadband space for wireless Internet service on board airliners, and it&#39;s opening up for public comment on cell phone use.
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The Federal Communications Commission is pushing ahead to pass a rule today that would allow more consolidation of local media ownership in the nation's largest cities, despite the fresh threat of a legislative rebuke and continued protests from advocacy groups.
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The Federal Communications Commission has made changes to its regulations that will allow power companies to provide broadband services over electric lines.
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As part of its goal to promote access to broadband services for all Americans and to encourage new facilities based broadband platforms, the Federal Communications Commission today adopted changes to Part 15 of its rules to encourage the development of
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The F.C.C. adopted rules that will enable utility companies to offer an alternative to broadband services now provided by cable and phone companies.
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A prospective buyer says the early municipal Wi-Fi service could have thousands more subscribers.
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By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun  Jun. 1--BANDWIDTH, Everybody Wants It -- more of it -- now.   There are television shows to watch online, huge files to download and a host of companies looking to expand their businesses.
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One of the major questions as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission kicks off a multibillion-dollar spectrum auction Thursday is whether the auction will produce a winning bidder that will challenge telecom and cable-based broadband providers with a national wireless broadband network.Other questions will also be answered in coming weeks as the auctions, for 62MHz of long-range, high-speed spectrum, unfold. Will Google or another bidder buy enough spectrum to launch a &quot;third pipe&quot; broadband network? Will any bidders step forward and pledge to build a nationwide broadband and voice network for emergency response agencies?The bids to watch in the 700MHz auctions are for the C block, a 22MHz band of spectrum broken up into 12 regional licenses, and the D block, 10MHz of auctioned spectrum paired with another 10MHz set aside for a combined national commercial/emergency response agency network. Startup Frontline Wireless, one of the primary backers of the public-private model for an emergency responder network, announced in December that&#160;it had ceased operations.&quot;The pull-out of Frontline leaves the whole D Block auction up in the air,&quot; analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates said in an e-mail. &quot;There is no way to know if a last-minute group will come on board. While the goal of establishing a universal network for public safety/security is a laudable goal, it is not the most lucrative area from a pure business perspective, so it is not clear how much demand there might be or who might step up to the plate to make this work.&quot;The FCC may have made a mistake in adopting the plan by Frontline, a company with former FCC chairman Reed Hundt as its vice chairman, said Carlyn Taylor, a senior managing director in business consultancy FTI&#39;s corporate finance practice.&quot;I&#39;m not sure how well [Frontline&#39;s plan] hung together from a financial standpoint,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;I&#39;m not sure anybody else is going to try to do what Frontline says they were going to do. There doesn&#39;t seem to be anybody else with a similar approach.&quot;If any other company bids on the D block, it will be much less than the FCC would have received without the national public safety network build-out rules, Taylor said.But the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST), the nonprofit group of emergency response agency representatives that&#160;controls the public safety portion of the spectrum, said earlier this month it continues to support the FCC plan for the D block. The FCC should &quot;do all that it can&quot; to advance the public-private partnership meant to bring about the nationwide public safety broadband network, said Harlin McEwen, the PSST&#39;s chairman, in a statement. &quot;While it would not be appropriate for the PSST to comment on any potential bidder&#8217;s strategy, we want to restate our enthusiasm for and commitment to what the FCC has done.&quot;In the C block, the FCC required that&#160;winning bidders operate under open-access rules, meaning the winning bidder must allow any legal devices to connect to the network and allow customers to access any legal Web content of their choosing. Google, which pushed for the open-access rules, has&#160;pledged to bid at least $4.6 billion for the C block, and the FCC later set that figure as the minimum price it will accept.FCC rules prohibit potential bidders such as Google from commenting on their spectrum plans in the run-up to the auction. Bidding is anonymous, but the FCC will release some information about the auctions at its auction Web page.But several wireless industry observers have suggested that Google may not want to win the C block spectrum. Google, by getting the FCC to adopt the open-access rules and by pushing Verizon Wireless and AT&amp;T to&#160;open up their current wireless networks to outside devices and applications, has already accomplished much of what it has wanted, Taylor said.&quot;I think it&#39;s fairly widely believed that [Google] doesn&#39;t really want to be the actual carrier,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;That doesn&#39;t mean they still wouldn&#39;t buy spectrum and then work with somebody else who&#39;s a carrier.&quot;A subcontracting arrangement with a wireless carrier would make sense for Google, she said.Blair Levin, a telecom analyst with Stifel, Nicolaus &amp; Co., also doubts Google will be a major player in the C block bidding. With the U.S. stock markets tanking in recent weeks, Google may not want to spend $10 billion to build a national network, he said, referring to the estimated cost.Before the FCC set the auction rules in July, Google had also inquired about the legality of selling spectrum on a wholesale basis. The FCC ruled that such a plan would be legal.In addition to the current wireless giants AT&amp;T and Verizon Wireless, other companies to watch are the cable television providers, satellite TV providers and handset maker Qualcomm, Taylor said. Qualcomm and cable provider Cox were among the 214 bidders approved by the FCC this month.Look for wireless carriers such as AT&amp;T and Verizon to bid defensively, she said. &quot;If the traditional mobile carriers really are the final winners of most of the spectrum, then nothing interesting happens,&quot; she said. &quot;They don&#39;t want to see some major new entrant coming in.&quot;Falling stock prices on Wall Street may discourage some competing bidders, with the auction coming at &quot;precisely a bad time&quot; for investment in a new nationwide network, Taylor said. But these auctions may be the last chance for a third nationwide broadband network, she added.The 700MHz spectrum band carries wireless broadband signals three to four times farther than some higher spectrum bands, making it perfect for long-range broadband networks. &quot;If you&#39;re going to build a green-field network from scratch, you want to build it at low megahertz like this,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;If anybody was seriously considering launching a fully new competitor ... from scratch, this is the chance. There isn&#39;t going to be another one, probably.&quot;
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(InfoWorld) - Two members of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission called for the federal government to create a wide-ranging national broadband strategy to help small businesses compete on a global level. Too many U.S. small businesses have no access to broadband, and many others can't afford it, said Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, Democratic members of the FCC. The cost of consumer-level broadband per megabit in the United States is about seven times the cost in Japan, Adelstein told the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. Small businesses "typically pay too much for a service that is too slow," Copps said. "It's not just a matter of national pride we're talking about -- it's a business issue." A survey in 2005 found that small businesses paid an average of $720 per month for a T1 line, added Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a media reform advocacy group. In Chicago, customers pay $80 to $90 a month for 1MbpsÂ of broadband, but in smaller Urbana, Ill., the cost is about $300, Scott said. In Greenup, Ill., a city with about 1,500 residents south of Chicago, the monthly cost of a 1Mbps connection is $1,300, Scott said. Small businesses in small towns and rural areas lack the same technological edge that many overseas competitors have, Scott said. "The head start we're giving our global competition is taking it just a bit too far," he said. Senators John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, complained that President George Bush set a policy goal in 2004 for all U.S. residents to have broadband available by this year, but didn't back it up with policies. "We had the goal but not the tactics," Snowe said. A national broadband policy should include better data about where broadband service is lacking, said the FCC's Adelstein. The FCC still says a postal zip code has broadband if one customer there does, he said. Congress should provide more money for broadband build-out in rural areas, and the Republican majority at the FCC should stop a deregulatory approach that has led to few broadband competitors, he said. Adelstein also called for a national summit on broadband that would bring together customers, providers, members of Congress and the Bush administration, and others to address broadband availability. "We should make broadband the dial tone of the 21st century," he said. Not everyone at the hearing complained about the state of broadband in the United States. There's little evidence of a broadband problem in the United States, said Scott Wallsten, director of communications policy studies at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank. "Telephone, cable, and wireless companies are investing billions in new high-speed infrastructure, and consumers and businesses are adopting broadband at remarkable rates," Wallsten said. Verizon CommunicationsÂ alone is planning to spend $23 billion on its fiber-optic network by 2010, he said. People calling for government solutions "fail to provide solid analysis showing that their proposals would actually benefit consumers or small businesses," Wallsten added. Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, laid the problems back at the feet of Copps and Adelstein. The FCC has the power to encourage more broadband competition through anÂ upcoming auction of radio spectrum, he said. Several companies want to provide nationwide wireless broadband if the January auction is set up right, he said. "It seems like to me you have the tools at the FCC," he said.
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With Internet-phone upstarts taking business away from traditional companies, the government is looking to step in soon to set up rules for the growing telecom service. -washingtonpost.com
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Will the F.C.C. open new doors to spectrum access?