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back to article FCC chair paints a picture of wireless devices as open as PCs

The chairman of the US regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Kevin Martin came out this week and told a US newspaper just what he has in mind for the 700 MHz spectrum auction in late 2008, talking about an open network which lets any wireless device connect to it, and which places no limits on the services that …

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  1. Lou Gosselin

    Finally some good news

    Overly restrictive service providers have long hampered innovation in favor of profits. History shows that in the US, if it wasn't for outside intervention, AT&T may have prevented internet from coming to life or at least postponed it's arrival by a couple decades. Someone had to step in on the behalf of consumers to give them choices and allow them to use services as they saw fit.

    Today we have the same issues in the wireless domain. True, there are at least a few more brands "competing" today. However they are all mutually content with the status quo of charging a fee for everything under the sun no matter how trivial the service may be. My plain vanilla cingular plan charges $0.10 per text message sent and received (even spam of which I get one or two per month). That's $2000 per megabyte assuming a 50 byte packet, no wonder they don't want to free up the pipes to developers!!

    Innovation in the wireless sector would finally flourish if it were allowed (or rather forced) to open up.

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  2. xjy

    Force is the midwife of history

    Either the public interest must force the private, or the private will force its interest on the public and violate it. Forget "We, the People", go "We, the Public"!

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  3. Chris Coles

    The FCC has a problem with some US patents that grant rights of transmission

    What the FCC is struggling with is that there are several US telecoms patents that have been granted that, as a part of their claims, have been granted the right to transmit over any network. They have to pay a royalty to the patent holder as they do not have a license to grant their own license to transmit in those circumstances. They are thus trying to get around the patents by trying to make the auction a sale of an open system. The inventor will still have a right to a royalty on the license sale proceeds and he will still end up being paid for his rights. The wheels of justice move ever so slow, but they will get there in the end.

    For the record, this is a part of my recent submission to the FCC

    Federal Communications Commission

    445 12th Street, S.W.

    Washington DC 20554 Thursday June 7th, 2007

    Electronic Submission via the FCC ECFS comment filing system

    Dear Sirs,

    Comment On Google Proposals Regarding Service Rules for 700MHz Band

    Spectrum WT Docket No. 06-150; WT Docket No. 06-169; PS Docket No. 06-229; WT Docket No. 96-86

    First of all I remind you of my letter to Michael K. Powell dated October 26, 2001 on the letterhead of GPNS Corporation under the CC Docket No. 94-102 in which we stated:

    “but we also have been granted Patent rights by another branch of Government that impinges upon the workings of the FCC. We enjoy “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale or selling…”

    We ask if there has been adequate consideration of the matter of the grant of licenses.

    1. Whether for transmission between a portable wireless transmitter and a base

    station.

    2. Or, for example, location and monitoring Services.

    Have potential licensees, (in particular where it must have been known from the outset, that there would be conflict with the already granted US patent rights that give us now our intellectual property base), been kept informed that our right to grant a license might well impinge upon the license being sold by the FCC?

    Has consideration been given to the need to recompense us for the royalty income that will entail from the grant of such licenses?”

    The FCC never did answer the questions raised, and considering the potentially very substantial sums of money involved; perhaps this is an appropriate moment to do so before the next auction being mooted of the 700 MHz spectrum?

    The patents in question, 5,712,679 6,181,373 and 6,469,735

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