My good friend and WISPA co-founder John Scrivner recently shared an email on his frustration with the FCC and their predilection for spectrum auctions.
Now that they are talking about spectrum auctions for some of the TV Whitespace spectrum that will be vacated by TV Broadcasters, I kind of feel like Charlie Brown and the Football….
Gaining access to white spaces spectrum was one of the primary motivators for the formation of WISPA several years ago. Entrepeneurial WISP operators need spectrum to deliver broadband, and WISPA has been working hard to build up a critical mass of WISPs, lobby the FCC and push our message that there needs to be unlicensed and lightly licensed access to the TV Whitespaces spectrum. So hearing that the primary focus of the FCC will be on incentive auctions, I kind of feel like Charlie Brown after the football has been pulled away.
Personally, I always wanted to see Charlie Brown put his foot right into Lucy’s behind at least once. Maybe he could have given her a Shatner Drop Kick.
Here is the text of John’s email. Enjoy!
“I see our FCC is once again working the Spectrum Shell Game to the full advantage of the major cellcos. In an article titled, “FCC Moves to Improve Spectrum Availability and Use By Taking from Broadcasters” written by Jonathan Charnitski and Rahul Gaitonde, BroadbandBreakfast.com
It is like a bad dream for me seeing how the FCC seems to almost intentionally ignore WISPs as potential recipients of TV spectrum for broadband use after how long and hard we have lobbied for this precious and limited commodity.
In the article Genacowski is quoted as saying:
“Spectrum flexibility is smart policy,” he said. “Generally, we would consider all options to improve spectrum flexibility, but will focus on incentive auctions.”
You could easily replace his words with the following:
“We will take the hundreds of comments from WISPs over 6 years and flush them down the toilet because we would rather sell off the greatest public asset on earth, TV spectrum, to the highest bidder in huge geographic swaths to prevent anyone other than rich speculators and national carriers from gaining any of it”.
I cannot believe the rest of the world is oblivious to how terrible incentive auctions are to the future of all communications. It is one thing to have back room deals where the public is fleeced. It is quite another to do it right out in front of their eyes. The latter seems to work better in this case. Nobody seems to really mind that our government is openly making cash deals “incentive auctions” to prevent all but the richest from making use of this valuable public asset. The idea of allowing individual tower licenses or having some spectrum set aside exclusively for small business use is obviously a terrible idea right?
What will we do next? Take our national parks away and auction them to the highest bidder? If we did it the way they do spectrum incentive auctions then each national park individually would be 1 license That way only the richest companies in the US would control all the national parks. That makes a hell of a lot of sense doesn’t it? I could just spit on this FCC. Why is the world so blind to this? They are stealing from us in plain view. For all to see. And everyone is just letting them do it.
There is only one difference between the simile above regarding how incentive auctions for spectrum are like those of auctioning off national parks. That difference is that there is still much land in the US that individuals can afford to buy and use as a location to earn a living, build a home, raise a farm all without fear of others trespassing on their ground. In the US getting exclusive access to spectrum for multi-point communications is not possible through any means other than incentive auction. It is simply ludicrous. If you are not a wealthy speculator or a national carrier then it is nearly impossible to be part of the spectrum incentive auction game. The big boys know this. The FCC knows this. It is how they are going to make sure we lose.
The FCC claims they will also consider other spectrum policy. They already know we support Licensed Light. I want them to allow some Spectrum Homesteading. These are things we have talked to them about.
They do not seem to be part of the picture though do they? It is simple. The FCC does not give 2 $hit$ about WISPs who are struggling to make a go of things with no spectrum rights at all. They are angling to auction off ALL access to the TV bands before we have a chance to truly serve the public good as we have been begging to do for 6 years. They are playing the shell game and we are all just sitting here mesmerized, watching them shifting the shells around.
If I had my way our next FCC trip would be to send ALL of us to the front door at the FCC and march around with signs telling people to stop letting the FCC sell off our assets. I would march around and yell it to the top of my lungs. “Stop the stealing!” “They are selling away your property” “The FCC does not care about broadband” “Auctions are WRONG!”. I think I would look pretty funny out there doing this by myself though. Everyone else just seems to be too busy watching the shells move around the table to care.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Larsen seems to be unaware of the fact that auctioning of spectrum is mandated by Federal law. The place to start, if one is to make spectrum allocation more reasonable, is Congress – not the FCC, which has very little discretion.
They do it out in the open cuz they don’t care – mostly because Joe Consumer doesn’t care either. Joe Consumer just wants access…they don’t care from who (or is it whom?). There was a time in the late 90’s that I wanted to set up my own pirate radio tower so I could stick it to the man…but I got scared about how the man would stick it to me once they caught me. Grassroots is where it has to start and hopefully we will open our eyes and take action before it is too late. Too late not only for WISP’s or radio or TV or groceries or farmers who don’t want to plant GMO seeds or you name it – pretty soon the man will dictate what time it is. BTW – keep up the good work – all of your posts are intelligent and thought provoking. I only wish I had a suitable answer or two.