WHILE THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION AND OTHERS CELEBRATED anticipated public-safety and wireless benefits of last week’s 700 MHz auction rules decision, skeptics question whether the action will indeed produce a competitor to the Bell telephone-cable TV broadband duopoly and a strong commercial entity willing to partner with first responders on a shared national wireless network.
“We believe the key impact for investors is that there is unlikely to be a new national wireless carrier using the 700 MHz spectrum to compete with the telco and cable broadband incumbents, though we expect some potential new entrants to bid and make a significant effort,” said Blair Levin, an analyst with investment banking firm Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc.
Likewise, analyst Walter Piecyk of Pali Research observed, “We don’t think these rules will have any impact on the industry other than perhaps wasting a chunk of spectrum that Verizon could have used to provide higher bandwidth data services to its customers. . If anything, the 700 MHz rules might provide existing wireless operators with further justification to block applications on their networks since there is now an ‘open access’ network alternative.”
Software vendor Openet Telecom, whose wireless customers include top mobile-phone carriers in the U.S. and Europe, had a different take. Openet believes Verizon Wireless or AT&T Mobility-not Google Inc.-will gobble up the 22 megahertz of spectrum subject to limited open-access conditions that consumer groups criticized as too weak and that the mobile-phone industry complained were unnecessary. “This move is unlikely to slow down the appetite for operators to buy the spectrum, and will not significantly damage the price the FCC will achieve. It will probably increase the speed at which wholesale access is offered to third parties,” said Openet CEO Niall Norton.
McDowell against open access
Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican on the GOP-led FCC, lambasted the agency’s approval of limited open access and what he regards as the agency’s na
