FCC: Open Access Included in 700 MHz Spectrum Notice!

Posted on April 26, 2007 - 7:48am.

Note: Excellent comments from Harold Feld on yesterday's FCC ruling on the 700 MHz Spectrum Auction. This spectrum, currently used for a range of UHF TV stations, is prized for its many potential wireless broadband applications. It was feared the auction would give this valuable spectrum a handful of large corporations - but now it may still be possible for there to be public interest set-asides. This is significant since many of the state video franchises in motion are also well disguised 'broadband initiatives' that limit the possibility of public and municipal offerings of these essential services. – saveaccess

from: Wet Machine

Open Access Included in Spectrum Notice! Fish In Trees! Rivers Running Uphill!

Posted By: Harold

Yesterday, I wrote, with regard to whether the FCC's Further Notice on the 700 MHz Spectrum Auction would include questions on our open access proposal:

I think our chances of moving forward to the next round are pretty close to zero. OTOH, I live from day-to-day in the hope of pleasant surprises.

Apparently, I live another day. And so does the open access proposal. As explained by Gigi Sohn, we live to fight another day.

It was a wild meeting. Pushed back from 9:30 to 10:30, then pushed off again until 6:45 p.m. The contentious issue was, as predicted, license size. Apparently, McDowell teamed with the Ds to make sure the Further Notice requested comment on a mix of licenses and not just the large licenses that Martin wanted.

The Order is not yet out, so I can't really assess yet what the results are. Heck, they don't even have all the seperate statements up yet. Here are links to the news release, Chairman Martin's statement (expressing disappointment over the license size issue), Commissioner Adestein's statement (with a shout out to the public interest coalition!), and Commissioner McDowell's statement (which basically says “I know I'm the swing vote, but I need to catch up on the comments because I've been out with my new kid”).

But whatever happens, I gotta give a shout out to Martin for being willing to put the open access question out there and have it debated. Yes, all credit to the Ds. But I don't believe we would be positioned to have the discussion about wireless open access if Martin had been dead set against it.

Off to bed. It's been a day.

Stay tuned . . . .

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