Greetings. Well, the ink isn't even dry on the FCC's extremely conservative spectrum auction rules and one major telco is already playing the lawsuit game.

As you might recall from this blog entry, the FCC turned down the most significant portion of the Google proposal for auction rules, which would have mandated some key spectrum resale requirements to give new players a fighting chance to get into the wireless arena -- particularly for wireless Internet data -- in a significant way.

Instead, the FCC auction rules included the much more limited requirement that some auctioned spectrum have "device independence" and not subject competitors' data to blocking or purposeful slowing.

While there can be differing opinions on how important the "device independent" part of the rules really is (I personally don't think that it would make a great deal of difference to most consumers in the real world), it's clear that the rejected spectrum resale requirement would have been a very, very big deal indeed, so it was strongly fought by the telcos.

But now we see that even the much more modest device openness, etc. provision that the FCC did accept is just too much for Verizon to swallow.

Verizon wants it all. Not some, not most, not a fair shake -- all.

Though it won't always help, let's hope that the common carrier exemption gets pulled this time by Congress, as the FTC is requesting. The telcos need to be leashed -- the sooner the better for us all.

--Lauren--

Discussion at: PFIR Forums Google Topics