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FCC To Loosen Wireless Ownership Rules 64

Posted by timothy from the who-can-own-what dept.
jgaynor writes: "The FCC on Thursday voted to remove the existing restriction on how many frequencies a single wireless provider can own in any one location. While this is a blow for consumers who want more cell bandwidth and services like data or video - they could end up getting hosed as this might knock some smaller players out of the market and decrease competition, raise prices, etc. Excite has coverage; CBS Marketwatch does too."
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FCC To Loosen Wireless Ownership Rules More

FCC To Loosen Wireless Ownership Rules

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  • fccp (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    just as long as the fcc doesn't regulate my first posts!!
  • I have been wanting GPRS in my area, and the only carrier that offers it is on the GSM system.

    This is all good and well, but i already have a GSM phone for Europe, but it is not GPRS compatible. I don't want to have to buy another GSM phone just to use GPRS, then change providers etc.

    I have a CDMA phone with GPRS capability, hopefully some provider will get their act together and get me some serious bandwidth. I mean, how am I supposed to get slashdot on my PDA, over 9600 baud!!

  • Instead of... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rockwood ( 141675 )
    removing the entire cap, why didn't they choose a proof-to-purchase method. A little over a year ago when I purchased a few class C's for UU, I almost had to chew my leg off in showing that I needed the class C's that I wanted to buy. I understand this was/is due to limited supply and thereby it didn't bother me. I would much rather prove without a doubt that I need them, then have some other company (or individual) come along and buy them all and try to sell them back to me for three times the amount.
    Anyway.. the same could have easily been done with the needed frequencies. "We'll give you more, but first show us that you need them and what you need them for and how you will use them in a fair way to not hurt the little guy" - HSJ

  • Sorta like radio... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mberman ( 93546 ) <mberman@earthlin ... inus threevowels> on Sunday November 11, 2001 @04:36PM (#2551546) Homepage
    this is pretty much what they did with radio, recently, and look what happened...now clearchannel owns an enormous amount of the radio stations, everywhere, which leads pretty quickly to /. getting pissed off that they might decide to censor a bunch of songs... how does the FCC think anything different will happen with cell networks?
    • /. getting pissed off that they might decide to censor a bunch of songs

      I hate to nitpick, but I don't think that it is possible for radio stations to censor songs. Radio stations are private entities that can play whatever they choose to. Is it censorship if a friend brings a CD to your house that you don't like, and you refuse to play it? I wouldn't define it as such, you own your equipment and should be allow to choose what you play. Censorship applies when the owner of the distribution method wants to distribute information but the government won't let them, not when you choose not to distribute it. I don't like the fact that clearchannel owns so much of the radio market, or most of the crap that they play, but I do fully support their right to choose what they do or do not play.
      • Actually I think you are wrong. Censorship is not defined by the magnitude of the censorship or the spectrum that it it covers. Refusing to play a song for a friend is an example of censorship, as is telling someone to shut up for being annoying. It is an attempt at censorship anyway. The word has a negative connotation to go with it, but censorship is something that is necessary to keep ones sanity in certain situations. It's not only good or bad. If a radio station decides that it doesn't want to play a song, it is sensoring. I think the word is analagous to filtering as well. You can't play everything.
        • If am I wrong, which it looks like I am, then I totally support censorship by the medium owners. I believe that whoever controls/owns the medium should be allowed to determine what is presented. And if people do not like a certain distributer, they are free to find another that does cater to their desires. I would actually prefer that clearchannel started censoring songs. This allows the entry of a new stations that will play these songs, and if these songs are popular the stations should do well. If people want to buy/consume something then there will be someone to sell/supply it for them.
  • Ok, explain to me how giving a company MORE bandwidth is going to lesson the chances of getting high bandwidth services.
  • Whenever the government allows one company to take claim on more of anything, it's rarely a good thing.

    So Verizon and Cingular will inevitably conquer the wireless world now. I'm not happy.

    -Chardish

    • It takes a huge investment in infrastructure to construct this kind of network. Those survivors who are still around these days are the only companies with the viability to continue to expand. I don't fault them for being big, that is silly to criticize them for that. Size matters in this game. Note 1

      The bigger point, which has been missed here, is that 'research shows' that people really don't care much about all these whizzy services that we keep hearing that we want. Mobile video and other streaming stuff is not the killer app. People want to get text messages and have the person they called answer the damned phone. Oh, they also want the call to stay up instead of getting dropped during rush hour. Beyond that, it has not been shown that there is a significant demand for much more than what we have now. That, and technology's financial crash has cooled the jets of the 3G mavens. I know for a fact that Verizon is installing 3G equipment, but don't know the details.

      Note 1 - I think it is even sillier that there are people on /. who think that if everybody goes out and buys 802.11 junk that the world will be one big happy access point. Such an endeavor requires the kind of commitment that only a large entity can command. I'm not going to put up an access point so that you can use 'my minutes'. Sorry.

      Note 2 - Well, I thought that I formatted this message properly, at least it looks OK elsewhere. Naturally, selecting 'HTML Formatted' in the /. preview mode doesn't really show you what the final post will look like. Russian roulette, anyone?

      ---
      • > Ten years ago, people thought it was really cool to be able to make a phone call without a wire. There were no text messages, there was no digital cellular, PCS, GSM, CDMA, etc. My point here is that you say that people only want test messages and be able to hold a phone call, but the text messaging is just another bell and whistle. What will they want tomorrow is the big question...in any business. Its the guessing game of trying to get ahead of the competition. yes, consumers will tell you that they only want to be able to make a call, but still the bells and whistles sell. 3G is coming...actually 3G1X is coming and will we see were that gets us. For Verizon & Sprint in the US its going to be relatively cheap, of course the data rates are going to be that high, but it also will provide much better network performance on the voice side. Like any new technology its going to take some time to finds its place in the market. Prices will be high at first and come down and settle out as market forces come to light. I'm sick of hearing statements like, "3G is too expensive, nobody's going to want it, nobody will pay the price they are going to ask, etc." The thing is right now we don't know what the companies are going to charge. Also, who in the world would by a DVD-Burner when we have cheap CD Burners...its just some extra bells and whistles. Well, there have been early adopters and the price will continue to come down and the price of the media will come down and soon it will be standard in desktop computers and we will all wonder what people did in the "good old days" when they put less than 1 GIG on a disc. And then posters will stop writing run on sentences.

  • Okay, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trilucid ( 515316 ) <pparadis@havensystems.net> on Sunday November 11, 2001 @04:41PM (#2551565) Homepage Journal

    normally I strenuously object to allowing government interference in business-related arenas, but this is no good at all for Joe Consumer.

    A decent analogy might be an imaginary world where air is bought and sold on the market. There's a limited supply of the stuff to begin with, and without regulation large players can just buy up all the "air blocks".

    Now, I know that technically the analogy is critically flawed because we all need air to survive, and we don't "need" cell phones. However, one could easily argue that (at least for most countries) telecommunications technologies (and by natual wireless technology) plays a critical role in economies both local and national in scope.

    There's a limit to the spectrum available for wireless device use. Yes, competing companies can "use" frequencies owned by competing networks, but they have to pay more (and charge the consumer more) for this capability ("roaming" off your home network incurs charges).

    This is probably more a bad thing than good. You can't really make the argument that consumers can still fight with their wallets, because doing so would require moving to a geographic region where the dominant players have lesser influence. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm not prepared to move because I dislike my mobile provider. It seems to me this gives the big guys a huge chance to shaft their customers. It's the ultimate "my way or the highway" scenario.

    Plus, this may have more far-reaching implications than we realize. Wireless devices (meaning those other than just phones) are beginning to be common these days. How great is the chance that development on these devices could be somewhat stifled if they don't "play along" with the bigger companies that own certain frequency ranges? Sounds like a pretty far-reaching consequence to me.

    • One word: Verizon.

      If that doesn't prove that putting a finite communications resource in the exclusive hands of a single telecommunications firm is a bad thing, I don't know what does.
    • > However, in the US, wireless communication is not a utilitiey, which means our government in the last couple decades has decided that wireless communication is not a necessity for the people.
    • normally I strenuously object to allowing government interference in business-related arenas, but this is no good at all for Joe Consumer

      It's hard to figure out what you are saying. If you want government out of the way, then you should lowwer boundaries for entry and set up reasonable rules of resource sharing. The internet should be expanded by wireless nets.

      Here's an analogy that's more fitting: Public roads. Imagine if only "comercial transporters" were allowed access to the public roads. It could be argued that the public right of way is a limited resource and that irresponsible and unprofesional use of them leads to frequent collisions and great loss of life every year. To remedy the problem, the federal government issues strict licenses to a few companies in each city for about 500,000/year per transpertatin capacity. As it would be impossible to directly fund the effort with riding and shipping fees, advertisement is used to fund all but luxury rides, but eventually the luxury rides give in. Barf.

      Think bandwith is limited? Check out the 72 empty channels on an old TV tuner.

      Oh well, such is the world we live in.

  • just plain wrong (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The comment is completly backwards on this post.
    This will allow higher bandwidth and better services, but reducing competition will most likely increase prices

    • Re:just plain wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

      by maeglin ( 23145 )
      This will allow higher bandwidth and better services

      Not true. Whenever a scarce resource becomes available there is a sort of land grab. Because of the nature and cost of this particular resource, the players grabbing the "land" are the people who are already the key players in the market.

      Now, when a new company comes along with their pimp 10Mb protocol they don't have the ability to go through the usual FCC channels to buy bandwidth. One of three things will happen:

      1. The squatting companies demands an insane amount of money for the band creating at best an additional cost to be passed on to consumers, or at worse a barrier to entry.
      2. The squatting companies will tell the startup to get bent.
      3. The squatting companies will allow the startup to use the band, but requires that they use a "standard" protocol such as CDMA (yay for 9600bps!!).

      That's why it's not good.

  • Mistake in Slashdot article summary (Score:4, Informative)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Sunday November 11, 2001 @04:55PM (#2551607) Homepage
    "...While this is a blow for consumers who want more cell bandwidth..."
    I think the use of "blow" here was a mistake. From the context, it looks like timothy and/or jgaynor meant "boon"
  • I'm hoping one of the RFs out there will shed some light on the meaning of this. Is it that the current 45mhz limitation precludes the availability of some services, or that the providers can somehow shut each other out by an increase to 55mhz, or both? Neither?

    Sigh, perhaps these are the death throes of PCS?

    • Re:Opening new bandwidth? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Sunday November 11, 2001 @06:09PM (#2551806)
      The 45 MHz limitation is adequate for any rational use, but it does cause competition; it means that of the 170 MHz of cellular+PCS bandwidth, there are at least four providers, usually five or six. The big players would rather have less competition.

      The other advantage of the extra bandwidth is that it allows fewer cells to do the job. Remember the reason for the "cellular" name -- you divide the coveage area into cells, which get smaller and smaller as usage goes up, so that frequencies get reused more often. With more spectrum, a given cell can carry more calls at once. This is cheaper than setting up more antennas, needing more towers and base station equipment. So the giants -- Cingular and VZW -- will be able to carry more per cell.

      There's no real consumer benefit -- 3G is too costly for consumer use, except for voice. If you're paying 20c/minute for 13 kbps voice today, you're not going to like the price of 384 kbps data -- the price per bit will probably be fairly close to what you're paying now (because they paid that much for spectrum, not to mention the cost of the gear), making the math dismal.
      • 3G is too costly for consumer use [...] the price per bit will probably be fairly close to what you're paying now

        Even the Euro operators, who (over)paid into the public coffers for 3G licenses won't have any choice but to sell the new services cheap. Dont the economics of financing the gear, and spectrum (and licenses) keep prices within the range of the common man at least until the investment can be written down?

        I cant debate whether american operators should also have been forced to pay up front for licenses, but it's clear they have not yet overpaid.

        Otoh, maybe it is just POTS that matters, after all. I hope not. There will certainly be alot of unhappy 3G conference organizers. :{)

        Thanks, btw, for the insight.

  • Crimney, I've noticed that the more popular some of these devices are, the more radio and other broadcast stations get "stepped" all over.

    There is like one close FM rock station where I live, and it is less than 5 miles away.
    I can not tell you how many times I've had "C&W" interrupt my rock music.

    If I could get a station ID one of these days, I could sue the station for emotional trauma.

    Damn, It is bad enough living in the South/Bible belt and being depressed about it at times, but to get ugly reminders by having it encroach on the one decent rock station.

    AAAAaaaiiiiieeeeee.
    • That's irrelevant. Broadcast receivers aren't regulated, and the FCC's current rules -- well, the law the NAB paid Congress to impose last year when the FCC tried to reform 1950s rules -- are incredibly conservative with regard to interference. Nonetheless, Chinese and other low-cost radio manufacturers manage to make receivers worse and worse, so that interference can be created in the receiver no matter how far or close they are apart.

      Cellular is different -- the receiver is part of the type-approved handset, and quality standards are rather strict. The FCC isn't changing interference standards for cellular/CMRS/PCS at all. It's simply allowing network operators to buy each other up.

  • Um, what did you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Sunday November 11, 2001 @05:00PM (#2551620)
    1) George Bush won the election.
    2) Michael Powell was appointed Chairman of the FCC.

    Now, given that Mr. Powell is (a) very, very connected to the heaviest hitters in the Republican Party and in big business (b) has stated explicitly that he sees nothing wrong with 1 or 2 mega-corporations controlling all communications in the United States --- why would you expect any different outcome?

    sPh
  • Higher data rates contain much more modulation on the carrier. The modulation is suspected to do many very bad thing like causing cancer and doing brain damage. So the removal of this restriction might cause health problems to many people which might be very bad in fact. And when you rwally think about it all these mobile phones are useless anyway. Just a normal phone with a answering machine does the same job. If there is something important people will call be later or else it wasn't important. And mobile internet is very bad anyway because it distracts people from the traffic and causes accidents. Just try to post on slashdot and drive on a highway all the same time !!! You will crash in no time, unless linux crashes before you which is both very bad because in both possibilities the filesystem on you harddisk will be corrupted.
  • He's the FCC chairman, and yes he's Colin Powell's son.

    What are Mike's qualifications to run the FCC? Yep, he's Colin Powell's son.

    Mike's singular philosophy is gov't intervention is bad. He is intent on breaking down any barriers to big media. He will be rewarded immensely in his post FCC career.

    Gov't is a fucking joke. It's run by unqualified people (see entire Bush cabinet) who work for their own interests.

    Fuck Bush, Cheney and Powell. Why couldn't those muslims have flown a plane into the White House? Why?

  • Georgist Land Tax (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Sunday November 11, 2001 @05:22PM (#2551670) Homepage Journal
    Treating spectrum locale as "land" is a perfect demonstration of the value of a Georgist single tax [henrygeorge.org] aka "taxation only of unimproved land value". The spectrum locale "land" would have zero value without someone around to enforce the property right -- so the "economic rent" on that property right should be, simply, the costs of defense of that property right. This would fall out of "warrior's insurance [geocities.com]".

  • Microsoft bought up all the bandwidth. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can't believe the stupidity of this move.

    This move encourages providers to buy MORE bandwidth than they actually need, instead of forcing providers to conserve and make efficient use of a limited resource.

    Of course, the law can be changed. But once a powerful, multi-billion dollar monopoly emerges, then the lobbying effort will really kick in.

    Of course, the excuse is that this will encourage the growth of advanced, innovated telecommunications services. Bullshit. This is a land grab, and the ones who can afford the high priced bandwidth are looking forward to years of gross profits at the expense of the American people.
  • So how long before the only choice of provider is AOL-Time-Warner or Microsoft ? I really sometimes wonder if our elected officials have any clue whatsoever about technology. There is scant evidence that they do.
  • The FCC raised the spectrum cap to 55 MHz in all markets during the transition period. This change is intended to address certain carriers' concerns about near-term spectrum capacity constraints in the most constrained urban areas.

    There are alot more cellular phones being used in NYC now, and they need the capacity. I am pretty sure this is due to a huge upsurge in new phone/service contracts being purchased after Sept. 11.
  • Am I the only one that's noticed that with the increased use of cell phones, it's getting harder to complete calls during peak times? I've been with PCS for two years now, and in the past year coverage in my area has signifigantly degraded.

    Isn't it true that increasing the number of available channels for calls will help fix this problem?

  • Too many fish in the pond, it's Darwin time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) on Sunday November 11, 2001 @10:11PM (#2552321)
    Forbes [forbes.com] covered this two months ago. Basically, because too many providers are splitting up too little bandwidth, cell phone coverage sucks. It's high time the FCC got out of the way and let the stronger players acquire the weaker. Maybe service will improve to the point where I'd actually consider buying a cell phone.

    On a related note, I have no sympathy for the companies that overpaid for spectrum licenses nor the greedy Feds who thought they had a chance in hell of collecting all those $billions. Golly, who pays for those license fees? Can you say massive tax on users?
    • Frobes may well have said that, but I'd hardly trust their recommendation as a clue to benefit to me. Except, perhaps, to choose the opposite.

      I haven't seen in a technical source, as opposed to a supporter of monopolies, that this is a good idea.
      • Cell phone coverage does suck in the U.S., and where it exists it is too often congested. This is a product of the way the spectrum was sliced up and auctioned in the first place, so now this needs to be fixed. One way of doing it is to allow the industry to consolidate. There are way too many licensees in the U.S. Having two or three GSM and IS-136 carriers and two or three CDMA carriers would be enough for adequate price competition. And then there is Nextel, which uses it's own technology and spectrum. No lack of competitors, even after a big consolidation.


        One of the benefits you can expect is to, finally, have decent GSM coverage in the U.S. so you can roam pretty much worldwide. Also GPRS, 3G, and 1xRTT/3xRTT wireless data uses cellular bandwidth, which will make congested cells even more congested unless the providers can buy more bandwidth. And before you say "But what about Ricochet?" remember they went bust because they could not afford to build out a data-only network. Wireless mobile data on cellular networks is the only way to have widespread coverage from day-one.


        Also, Verizon Wireless != Verizon land-line. They are a joint venture with Vodafone. NTT owns a big chunk of AT&T Wireless, and Voicestream was acquired by Deutsche Telekom.

  • AT&T et al (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What many people may not realize is that there are several wireless companies out there right now that are just sqautting on the spectrum they have. They built out just enough to keep their licenses, and are basically just waiting for the cap to be lifted, so that whichever company (AT&T, Cingular, Verizon or whoever) already owns a considerable amount of stock can buy them out, and make them all rich. So on the upside, once the Big Guy buys them out, people who live in those areas will finally get better service. It also helps Big Guy company cut costs for nationwide roaming and things like that, so its possible (albeit HIGHLY unlikely) that Joe Consumer might not get hosed.
    The downside is that some smaller providers, who are genuinely interested in providing services, may get squeezed out of the market, since they have to partner with other providers to allow for nationwide roaming and other features that most consumers feel should come standard with any wireless plan.
    Economic Darwinism is a powerful thing. Its fine and Dandy to watch all the posts about Powell and the FCC, but this is capitalism folks... If you don't want to see the big fish eat all the little fish, stay with your local provider. Unfortunately, most people are going to look at how much cheaper the big boys can do it and go with them, forcing the little guy out of the Market.

  • from the MarketWatch link:

    Previously, carriers were limited to 45 megahertz of spectrum in big markets, or one-fourth of the available airwaves.

    from the FCC link:

    "the FCC's shift from an inflexible spectrum cap rule to reliance on case-by-case review of CMRS spectrum aggregation."

    What's going on is that the FCC has decided that the "Anyone owning more than 1/4 of the spectrum is an illegal monopolist" rule is horse shit. Apparently, there are better measures of market competition than that.

  • Great, now our government is creating a frankenstein's monster out of the cellular market, pretty soon there will be only one company providing service, then what incentive will there be for it not to suck. Exactly, none. And years from now, all of our elected officials will be up in arms screaming bloody murder, asking how this could happen, well for a supposed free market economy our government seems to stick its nose into any and everything, for instance, do we really need a Agency to regulate frozen pizza ingredients, anywho, sorry to get off topic, but I believe that in this instance that competition should be encouraged rather than Washington caving into big money lobbyists yet again, and yes folks, this all boils down to money.

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