By | No Comments
Last updated: Monday, December 15, 2008

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….

See more here:
FCC Cancels Vote on Free Broadband Wireless Plan

CommentSubscribe