A much-publicized meeting by the Federal Communications Commission later this month has been canceled. The meeting's agenda included a vote on a plan that could have provided free broadband wireless service  to underserved areas of the U.S.
The FCC said the meeting for Dec. 18 was canceled following a request from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) that the agency scale down other efforts in order to concentrate on the switch to digital-television broadcasts in February.
Pressure From Both Sides
FCC spokesperson Robert Kenny said "it does not appear that there is a consensus to move forward and the agenda meeting has been canceled."
It wasn't only Democratic legislators pressuring the FCC. The outgoing Bush administration also indicated that it opposed the plan. Last week, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez sent a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin which said, in part, that the administration believes the airwaves "should be auctioned without price or product mandate."
The FCC's plan would have auctioned off some airwaves and required the winner to offer free wireless Internet access. One version of the plan would have required the winning company to make at least 25 percent of the spectrum available free to most of the nation. Another version would have given free, unlicensed access to some of the spectrum to innovators if the acquiring company didn't fulfill its promise.
Neither version of the plan was exactly receiving accolades from the cell-phone industry or free-speech advocates. T-Mobile, for instance, argued there would be interference from the free Internet into the adjacent spectrum it licensed. However, FCC engineers have told news media that there would be no significant interference.
Some consumer advocates interested in maintaining free information flow objected to a part of the plan that would have required a filter to remove adult material for under-18 users. Users over 18 could remove the filter.
M2Z Networks
Some observers saw the FCC plan as a retread of an earlier plan submitted by M2Z Networks, primarily for use of the 2155-2180-MHz band. The auction was designed for frequencies in the 2.1 GHz Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum, which includes 2155-2180 MHz.
Backed by technology venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, M2Z has proposed that consumers buy a router that offers free, midrange DSL speeds and then pay for any upgrade to faster transmissions. M2Z's business model includes advertising for the free component.
The cancellation comes shortly after the release of a 110-page report from the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee. The report, entitled Deception and Distrust: The Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Kevin J. Martin, charged that Martin changed and withheld data and reports in order to bolster his particular positions, and that he presided over a demoralized and dysfunctional agency.
|
Nvidia Auto-Switches Notebook GPU To Save Battery Life
Microsoft Says Battery Woes Not Caused By Windows 7
IBM's New POWER7 Servers Save Energy with Big Loads
To Love or Not To Love: Apple iPad Pros and Cons
Analysts See iPad Price Drop, with Some Cannibalization
Bar Codes Go Mobile, Get Hip Again
Google May Add Facebook, Twitter Links to Gmail
IBM Opens Eco-Friendly, Cloud-Focused Data Center