Look out, Craig McCaw! A low-earth-orbiting pie in the eye-Bill Gates a la mode-could be in your future once the world finds out you’ve joined forces with McCaw expatriates and Nextel mobile moguls to pummel bidders in the LMDS auction a la 800 MHz SMR rout.
Now there’s a good argument for letting cable TV and telephone telcos bid for LMDS licenses in their service areas.
Wait, there’s more. In the name of competition and in furtherance of small business, the FCC also plans this year to re-examine the 45-megahertz spectrum cap for broadband PCS, cellular and SMR services.
The short history of this is as follows: AT&T Corp., the dominant wireless phone operator in the United States, petitioned the FCC not that long ago to liberalize the spectrum cap. That caught the fancy of former FCC Commissioner Rachelle Chong, a wireless industry benefactor who once represented a McCaw Cellular partnership in San Francisco.
Perhaps now, with wireless startups facing financial woes-even bankruptcy-and the possibility of having to return licenses to the FCC, Big Wireless may have convinced federal regulators they are white knights that can keep spectrum from lying fallow.
And if the FCC buys the do-gooder line, all mobile phone spectrum likely will be held by AT&T and the other usual suspects.
The spectrum cap, perhaps the most significant and under-heralded achievement of former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, is the last antitrust defense against a wireless oligopoly in America.
Also as part of its 1998 biennial regulatory review, the FCC plans to act on PCIA’s CMRS forbearance petition and to streamline rules for commercial wireless carriers in general. The agency will attempt to reduce the regulatory thicket in private wireless as well.
… Sens. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) reintroduced new and improved regulatory reform.
…Ginger Lew, former official with the Small Business Administration and Commerce Department, has been named managing director and CEO of the Telecommunications Development Fund board.
… Now back to pie throwing and other attacks. Defense Secretary William Cohen has conceded that any aerial bombing of Iraq would not destroy the purported stockpile of mass destruction weapons in that country. Say what? The idea military strategists have come up with is to bomb Saddam’s TV stations and telecom facilities so he can’t call the Republican Guard, the police or Imus.
