Please read below and see my remarks on this feeble attempt to help
Americans.
New spectrum legislation crafted
By Dan O'Shea
Apr 5, 2006 12:02 PM
Five members of the U.S. House of Representatives have announced new
legislation that allow broadband wireless carriers and other companies
to use television spectrum in the band between 608 Mhz and 614 MHz for
unlicensed wireless services.
The legislation was introduced by Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and his co-
sponsors Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Paul
Gillmor (R-Ohio) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.).
The Telecommunications Industry Association applauded the move. Agency
president Matthew Flanigan, said in a statement, "TIA believes that
these proposals could provide for more efficient and effective use of
the television broadcast spectrum, as well as have significant benefits
for the public by increasing competition in the wireless broadband
industry and providing incentives for the development of new and
innovative broadband devices and services for businesses and consumers.
http://telephonyonline.com/wireless/regulatory/House_spectrum_bill_040506/
My thoughts:
The House bill to give us a single 6 MHz channel is far too little to
help and could even be regarded as a slap in the face if you have been
starved for the quality spectrum we need to do the job as we all have
for so long. This does not match the legislation being introduced by the
Senate at all and could lead to making this a dead issue instead of
helping bring broadband to the masses as intended. It does not surprise
me that the TIA has applauded this as it serves their purposes of
holding our efforts back. They would prefer to either have only licensed
spectrum which acts as a means of keeping competitors out of the
wireless space or as we see here they would like to see competing offers
from the Senate and House so that the true opportunity as outlined in
the FCC 04-186 is locked in debate and taken off the table to meet some
compromise or worse yet the effort is killed from having too little
common ground to pass a vote from both sides of Congress.
If any of you are in the states of Washington, Tennessee, Wisconsin,
Ohio or Virginia I certainly hope you will call your Reps today and let
them know that 6 MHz of spectrum is like giving a spoonful of water to a
man walking in the desert for days. The parched man will surely take it
and wonder why you even bothered to mock him with such a paltry offer.
This is terrible news and we need to act quickly.
The FCC has created the logical platform to move ahead in allowing the
unlicensed use of unused television channels in its 04-186 rulemaking
which it has allowed to leave in a limbo state and tasking the FCC with
passing their own rulemaking is the logical way to move forward and help
the broadband industry. Believing that one 6 MHz channel for broadband
use is helpful is just plain laughable and shows a complete lack of
understanding of our problems in helping deliver broadband to rural and
under-served citizens who are begging for access to broadband and cannot
receive it from any source. These unused television channels will give
them broadband. A single 6 MHz channel is not a true effort to help and
is insulting to the public. Without several channels to allow for
frequency reuse the single channel forces providers to either segment
the single channel into minuscule sizes delivering substandard speeds or
face almost certain interference as multiple attempts to use the same
small 6 MHz channel space would interfere with adjacent efforts from
other operators doing the same. In short this is not worthy of
consideration and should be scrapped.
The only logical step is for the House of Representatives to pass
legislation which will task the FCC to pass its 04-186 rulemaking which
will open unused television channels up for use as unlicensed carriage
of broadband to Americans. This is not just important, it is mandatory
if we are to truly close the "Digital Divide" which is now wider than
ever due to a lack of quality spectrum able to do the job. The problem
is not that rural Americans do not want broadband or that private
enterprise has failed them in some way, the problem is that the
thousands of Wireless Internet Service Providers who serve them lack the
necessary spectrum to bring their citizens the broadband they are
begging to receive.
Now I want you guys, all of you guys, to go to
http://www.house.gov/writerep/ and write a letter to your Rep. The site
will find your rep by zip code for you. Even if you are not in the
states where this laughable legislation originated you need to speak
out. We obviously do not want to alienate the whole House of
Representatives but we do need them to understand that this is not going
to come close to doing the job they are trying to do and that this is
not going to fix anything unless we have access to a larger amount of
quality spectrum. So please go now and make this happen, right now, in
the next 10 minutes.
Scriv
Dawn DiPietro wrote:
All,
Could this be good news for WISP's? Any thoughts on how this may
affect the wireless industry?
Regards,
Dawn
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