----- Original Message ----- From: "lists" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 9:01 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] It's been a long road
> Mark, > > While I can appreciate the perspective that you are coming from in your > desire to not fill out the Form 477, I think you are completely off base. > > This is an information gathering form, not an invitation to regulation. > Government needs information to put together policy. If we can't document > that our industry is making some kind of impact on the digital divide and > building something of value to the public, then how can we expect to get any > more spectrum? This is the closest thing to a census for our industry. The > census numbers are used to develop policy, define failure or success and > attack or defend positions. When they ask you for your customer's address and IP numbers, what will you do? > If you think that changing the name of the kind of service you offer and > pretending to be ignorant of the need to fill this form out is going to be > the best way for you to proceed, then you might want to consider relocating > to Montana. There is a well established community there that doesn't > believe in paying taxes, hoards guns and practices all kinds of > anti-establishment activities. You can probably get a great deal on T. > Kaczynski's cabin out there. > > If we are going to pick a fight with the administration, lets do it over > something meaningful - not a frickin informational form! We as a country used to have spine. I see we're just lemmings. Still, I'm going to avoid that cliff at all costs. You don't consider this "meaningful"? What the bloody heck does it have to be? A nuclear bomb? That would be slightly less attention-getting to me! Matt, there is ONE and precisely ONE reason alone in this whole freaking world YOU, ME, AND EVERY OTHER INDEPDENT WISP EXISTS and that is A LACK OF REGULATION!!!! We have no other inherent advantage, and a mountain of disadvantages, that do not outweigh this one absolutely indispensibly important factor... we have freedom to do our thing. We can exist, we can compete, we can outmove, out think, out wit, and out smart our industry competitors, and there is ONE overriding factor.. Our freedom to do business unimpeded. If our message isn't that, from day one, from word one, from point 1, from bullet #1 on the powerpoint, from flyer one, from filing one, from lobbying letter one, we've entirely missed the point. If we lose that, we've lost everything worth fighting for. I don't know what this has to do with cabins in Montana, or the nutcases who try to form thier own country, or whomever you're talking about... I'm talking about THE SINGLE FACTOR that lets me be in business, and you're sounding like you think I'm clueless here... This is self-preservation, and it's about all of us. I didn't realize you people did not think this way. I didn't realize YOU DIDN"T REALIZE IT. I can freaking live without more spectrum, without USF dollars, without more power or higher EIRP limits or a million other regulatory goodies. Not as well, but I can live. I can't live if I don't have that one golden factor - freedom to operate unhindered by mandates, regulations, etc. Our efforts in Washington are nothing but academics, or feel-good politics, if we do not stress that ABOVE ALL OTHER THINGS... And never give in, that our freedom is not up for negotiation, not for discussion, not for dilution, and certainly not to be trusted to the good intentions of any agency. Powell recognized and spoke to it, all of us talk about it regularly and sort of off-hand in our discussions of the pains and agony to be a CLEC, the sudden and near cataclysmic disruptions of the CLEC business world by small court decisions. Inherently, I hope we ALL grasp this one thing... That our lack of regulatory intervention is pretty much the one thing this industry cannot even exist without. That doesn't mean that everyone seems to be focused on it, however. It seems we lose sight of this rather fast, when a carrot of a few federal dollars swings by. I've been in the "want to be on my own and in my own business" mode for well more than a decade. The #1 factor was freedom to do as I saw fit. You're all acting as if this is just my political alter ego talking. Heck no, this is my business radar, the one that goes off like a nuclear bomb everytime I start seeing people wanting or even expecting the only thing that makes what i want to do possible to just go away, and act like it's inevitable. Yeah, I'm a political junkie, no problem admitting that, but this is purely about business self-preservation. I don't have to be ideological, I only have to be practical. The day the feds come to us and say "You can continue doing what you do, but only if you....(insert whatever here), is the day we're all dead. John, Matt, Mark, Marlon, Richard, Shannon, Victoria, Johnny, Kurt, etc, etc, etc. On that day, we're toast. We might hang on a bit longer, but its like the old scene of the condemned man on his way to old sparky...and his trip there is accompanied by the chant of "Dead man walking". Is that day inevitable? Heck, I don't know. Death is inevitable, but I intend to delay it with everything I have to use, not just walk off a cliff fatalistically. Does the FCC believe that provision of broadband connectivity serves the public welfare, and they should promote it? At least rhetorically, yes. And we should, above all things, make it crystal clear that we can exist ONLY so long as we enjoy and excercise our "lack of regulatory controls" freedom. And no, I don't mean breaking laws, I mean just freedom to conduct business inhindered. If we don't do that, and demonstrate that kind of consistent theme, what have we done? Shot ourselves in the foot. So, when it comes to an "informational form", yes, it IS that important. So long as we c an deny them the knowledgte, they have less means of taking our freedom. Can we help them do thier job, as they see it to be? Yes. Do they need to know the scope and size of the industry we have? Probably so. Do they need our names, addresses, zip codes, and how many individuals we have in each, reported 2X a year? Heck no. They have no need of my name and address and business name, and how far or wide I service. That information is only needed for ONE purpose... Control. Am I ready to cede that one absolutely vital bit of my future life, to the whims of a government agency whos existence has been nothing BUT one of control? HELL NO!!! Don't you get it? Spend a couple whole evenings, like I did, reading the filings from various industry players, on various topics. The big players do not just 'cede' thier cherished things by rolling over like a worm. They fight. Thier rhetoric is harsh, demanding, commanding. They speak big and bold and not wimpy or accomodating. And theyh don't stop fighting even if they have appeared to have lost. We should learn from that. We have something vital to us, let's be as defensive of it as we need to be to prove we believe it vital, and maybe, just maybe, they'll actually believe it. Unless of course, we don't believe it... In which case, this debate needs to be had right now, not a moment later. North East Oregon Fastnet, LLC 509-593-4061 personal correspondence to: mark at neofast dot net sales inquiries to: purchasing at neofast dot net Fast Internet, NO WIRES! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - > > Matt Larsen > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Mark Koskenmaki writes: > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/