Fresh voices, new blood

For the 700 MHz C-Block license and perhaps other frequency bands, it’s mostly a matter of cagey competitive ambition. For the D Block, it’s mostly a matter of desperation. No matter. Getting more input – outside of the sometimes self-limiting marketplace of ideas – is a welcome and healthy development for both 700 MHz experiments.
So it is that a competition of sorts is evolving for the wireless open-access platform and accompanying handset applications. Verizon Wireless has joined other blue-chip wireless companies in endorsing the LiMo Linux platform as the carrier’s preferred open-access operating system. That sets up a nifty little race to the top with Google Inc. and its Android Open Handset Alliance.
Google, which wants Verizon Wireless to sign in blood red its commitment to open access in the C Block that the Internet search giant could easily have won for itself, has cleverly created a reality show-like $10 million Android Developer Challenge. Google recently announced the top 50 winning teams, each of which will receive a $25,000 reward and the chance to compete in the next round for 10 $275,000 prizes and 10 $100,000 prizes. Maybe Ryan Seacrest will announce the next batch of winners.
Google’s inspired initiative harkens back to the Federal Communications Commission’s pioneer’s preference program, which helped to spur innovation in personal communications services in the mid-1990s. Controversy and poor ratings ended the FCC pioneer’s preference program in 1997. Still, the agency’s effort was not in vein. Perhaps it was a case of the program having a limited shelf life.
The D Block probably doesn’t lend itself to the kind of Android developer challenge produced by Google, but it doesn’t mean the FCC has to restrict itself to a traditional public comment exercise that’s always ripe for gaming and can be intellectually stifling as a general matter.
As such, the FCC appears ready to reach out to the best and brightest investors, engineers, economists and others in hopes of making the D Block public-private partnership work the second time around. It’s worth noting that the rest of the Bush administration and most of the Democratic-controlled Congress seem content to leave the burden on the FCC to meet first-responders’ communications needs. Why? Because FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and his colleagues are the only policymakers willing to take the risks to make a national public-safety/commercial license a reality. But Martin’s leadership alone may not be enough. Congress and the Bush administration should be thinking about how it could assist the FCC.