14 DAY TRIAL // Federal Communications Commission( FCC for short) released a draft of the rules that will govern the upcoming 700MHz band auction and for those voting for an open-access medium we have some good news. The draft rules say 22MHz from the band will be reserved for open-access (and controlled by open-access regulations). This simply means that whatever company wins the auction, it will have no control over the devices that are attached to the network or how the band is used.
Major companies involved in telecommunications like AT&T and Verizon have been critical over the open-access regulations, with an AT&T executive telling Reuters that such a policy is "something we would not be in favor of." But despite the companies' opposition, at last month's NXTcomm telecom conference in Chicago, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein became the first of the five FCC commissioners to publicly support an open-access policy. In contrast with AT&T and Verizon, Google was more than happy with the idea of open-access and it even went as far as to send a public letter to the FCC, urging it to adopt the open-access standard.
Google is neither the first nor the only company that fears that large wireless corporations will share among them the 700MHz band just like it happened with the bands used by cell phones. During the NXTcomm Commisioner Martin said again that they have to "get the spectrum out into the marketplace quikly" but did not mention the open-access proposal. Martin's rules will mean a new opportunity for companies like Google that are not established in the wireless business. On its public company blog, Google said that current bidding rules and the established carrier companies make "life" difficult for other would-be bidders.
The auction is set to begin in January 2008, so there is not much time left for the rule-making process. If the open-access standard is finally imposed, it will mean that a new broadband pipe will appear in the U.S.