Tag: Spectrum Reform

Brooklyn Borough Hall Hearing Room
209 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

The Commission will hear from expert panelists regarding public safety interoperable communications and the 700 MHz D Block proceeding. The hearing is open to the public, and seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

As folks may have heard, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition filed a complaint against wireless microphone manufacturers and a Petition for Rulemaking last week. As I explain on my Wetmachine blog here, the filing has the dual purpose of cleaning up a potentially nasty mess in the broadcast UHF bands before the public safety and new commercial services start operating on Channels 52-69, and finally have an honest conversation about wireless microphones in the context of the FCC’s ongoing proceeding to open the white spaces to productive use. (FCC Docket No.

I’m the sucker who just over a year ago got up at 5AM to sit in a line until 6PM to buy an iPhone. There are a lot of people like me, I met many of them in line that long day. It was actually a lot of fun, but had I known that if I had just shown up at the Apple Store at 7PM that night, I could have walked out with the same iPhone, since there was plenty of supply, I think I would have done the latter. Since June 29, 2007, I have been incredibly in love with this new computing platform called the iPhone, and I’ve written about it a bit before.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been in South Korea, attending the OECD’s Ministerial on the Future of the Internet Economy. Rather than try to give a blow-by-blow account, I’ve tried to package some of my thoughts in a series of posts. Here’s one:

Disclaimer: I’m an Apple fanatic. I love its hardware, I love its software. I’ve evangelized the Mac platform to my friends, family and coworkers and I’m directly responsible for “switching” at least a dozen of them since becoming a believer myself in 2002. So, after you read this post, don’t try to claim I’m an Apple hater, because nothing could be further from the truth.

So, yesterday the iPhone 2.0 software and iPhone 3G were announced at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, and both will hit the streets sometime in early July. Both software and hardware get some significant upgrades: faster connectivity, more services to connect to, 3rd party applications, true geolocation with A-GPS, etc. These upgrades come at a significantly lower upfront cost to consumers: $199 and $299 for the different memory capacities, 8GB and 16GB respectively.

New Hardware Business Models

The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

“The Verizon Wireless purchase of Alltel raises serious questions for consumers that will have to be addressed through antitrust analysis, and through public-interest conditions by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

It’s a shame the Federal government is trying to take the round-about route in establishing a new network for first responders. Then the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wouldn’t be forced into the tortuous square peg-round hole exercise it’s going through now to figure out how to get private industry to pay for an emergency-quality broadband network to be only sporadically used for emergencies.

Some of the FCC Commissioners seem to feel that way also. As Commissioner Robert McDowell said last week when the FCC asked for a new round of ideas to try to fix the failed D-block auction, public safety isn’t using half of the 97 MHz it has now due to a lack of funds and lack of coordination. The current squabbling on the D-Block auction is over only 10 MHz, albeit a desirable 10 MHz in the 700 MHz band that will be used by TV broadcasters until next February.

What’s New:

• Action Alert: Save Orphan Works!
• Two Bills Lead Net Neutrality Push
• The New Clearwire: How Open Will America’s First WiMAX Network Be?
• Blizzard Entertainment: The Company Who Cried Copyright Infringement
• Nominations Now Open For the 2008 IP3 Awards

The new Clearwire could be game-changing, but the rules of the game may not be quite as Clearwire presents them. I have been wondering since last July whether something significant would happen in the Google/Sprint world. The deal announcement earlier this weekseems to be that key development. (Here’s the press release and here are slides describing the transaction.)

In response to my post a couple of days ago about the possibility that VZ might not plan to comply with the 700 MHz “open platform” rules, someone wrote:

would you have the FCC mandate that every mobile device must be capable of running every operating system? If Verizon sells me a BlackBerry, should the device allow me to install Android, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, or Symbian OS? Obviously, Google believes the answer is yes (they will make the most money if they can install their OS on every device). Is it good for consumers if the FCC starts managing software specifications for computers and mobile devices?