How does ‘fast, free and family-friendly broadband’ sound to you? If you work for Verizon or AT&T the answer is probably ‘horrible!’ If you’re a consumer, you’d probably say ‘great!’ What does the FCC say? The short answer, as reported in the Register last Saturday, is ‘no chance.’ The agency denied a request by startup company M2Z for a license to a currently vacant section of the US wireless spectrum (the 2.1 GHz or AWS-3 band).
With this band, the company hopes to build two separate broadband networks: a free service offering 384kbps download speeds, and a for-pay service that cranks things up to 3Mbps for “between $20 and $30 a month.”
In years past, the big telcos used this band for back-end microwave connections, but they’ve been told to leave. According to [M2Z CEO] Muleta, the FCC has spent the last seven years watching this wireless real estate go to waste.
The FCC ignored M2Z’s filing for four months until they were compelled by a petition to review the request. They finally rejected it. M2Z is now considering responding in court, though the lawyer the Register spoke with held a pretty dim view of the company’s chances of success should they pursue the matter. “M2Z is facing the legal equivalent of a nearly-vertical mountain face.” However difficult the coming fight, M2Z can still count on the support of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder calls affordable broadband access an “important civil rights issue” in a recent company press release.
In a related article the Register’s Andrew Orlowski points out that the slice of the spectrum M2Z was after,
is the global portion of spectrum in Europe and Asia used by UMTS: the W-CDMA flavour of 3G. This is what allows you to turn off your Vodafone phone at Heathrow - turn it back on after you touchdown at Tokyo International, and continue your suspended IP session. It’s very handy.
Good point. What does Orlowski recommend the FCC do with this bandwidth? “Auction it off to the highest cellular network bidder.”
All of this discussion of the wireless spectrum calls to mind Google’s announcement in July that it plans to enter a federal auction to buy another band of the airwaves. (Now some are speculating that Apple may bid as well.) Google plans to create an open access framework which would allow customers to purchase cell phones, service and software separately. However likely it is that “open access’ will become a reality, the actions of both Google and M2Z serve to show exactly how dysfunctional the US cell phone market is from the perspective of the consumer, and exactly how out of sync we are with global standards.
(Image of cell phone tower by frozenchipmunk, CC 2.0)
