FAA Seconds FCC On Grounding In-Flight Mobile Phone Calls

from the but-what-about-voip? dept

Over the weekend, a story out of the UK began to get some buzz, when an American FAA representative supposedly told a British newspaper that the FAA will not approve in-flight mobile phone calls after the agency received a ton of complaints when it publicly began considering the shift in policy. Of course, this is somewhat meaningless, because the FCC had already said no to the change in policy, and both agencies would likely need to agree before any change went into effect. So, for those of you (and we know there are lots of you) who were terrified by the idea that you might get stuck sitting next to someone jabbering away into a mobile phone for a cross-continent flight... rest easy. Well, rest easy until you realize that voice is just a form of data, and it's only a matter of time until internet access in the sky means the person sitting next you will be jabbering away via Skype for a cross-continent flight no matter what gov't agencies have to say about mobile phones in the sky.

Filed Under: airplanes, in-flight voice, mobile phones, voip
Companies: faa, fcc

Exploiting Telco Regulations For Free Calls And For Profit (Lots And Lots Of Profit)

from the so-easy,-it's-almost-criminal... dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how suddenly a bunch of "free" calling services were popping up that all seemed to use phone numbers in Iowa. This included a service that would let you call an Iowa number and from there call anywhere in the world for free as well as a variety of "free conference calling" services. All of these systems were actually exploiting some legacy telco regulations, that were officially designed to help rural telcos get extra money to build out more rural service. Basically, the government allowed rural telcos to charge high termination fees to other telcos when calls from their lines terminated on one of the rural telco's lines. So, if you had AT&T and called your cousin in Iowa who had some small rural telco, AT&T would actually have to pay that telco some charge per minute, with the idea being that the telcos would use that money to invest in infrastructure. Of course, the infrastructure they invested in wasn't exactly building more lines to wire up others in the town, but in VoIP systems so they could reroute calls in to anywhere else, and then team up with various online sites to get as many calls as possible routed through those systems. Then they could just sit back and collect the millions of dollars rolling in from telcos. Broadband Reports points us to an article at the Wall Street Journal going into more details about how this happened -- and how the FCC is now scrambling a bit to see if there's a way they can stop it. In the meantime, the WSJ piece notes that while the telcos have been told by the FCC that they have to keep connecting these calls, they've simply stopped paying any of the termination fees as they await the results of the various lawsuits. Of course, all that's done for now is made the various free conference call services switch to other rural telcos in other states. Eventually, though, they'll run out of other states to go to (or the regulators will finally realize how their regulations are being exploited) and the little regulatory exploit will go away.

Filed Under: arbitrage, free conference calls, iowa, telcos, termination fees
Companies: at&t, fcc, freeconference.com, qwest, sprint, verizon

Should There Be Mandatory Email Address Portability?

from the nope dept

Apparently someone has filed a petition with the FCC to try to have the FCC require email address portability. The idea is that, if you were to change email providers, the old provider would be required to forward your email to a new account. If you go to the link above, Declan McCullough points out seven reasons why it's dumb to mandate this (in part because this is way outside the FCC's scope of authority). However, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea for email providers to offer that service themselves as a differentiator. In the meantime, this doesn't seem like much of a problem for most people. Either they have their own domains or they do a pretty good job of informing anyone who matters whenever they change email addresses.

Filed Under: email, fcc, portability
Companies: fcc

More 700MHz Auction Fun: Frontline Asks FCC To Ban Verizon Wireless From Bidding

from the ah,-the-one-up-manship dept

For something as boring as a spectrum auction, the upcoming 700MHz auction sure has its fair share of excitement. There are the rumors of Google and even Apple potentially bidding on the spectrum. Google requested that the FCC attach some specific conditions to the auction, which the FCC gave some lip service to, but hardly a full endorsement. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless initially liked the conditions set by the FCC (meaning it thought it had a good chance of getting the spectrum) until it began to think through the scenarios (or heard more credible stories about competitive bids) and then suddenly decided to sue the FCC, claiming that the rules being set are illegal. Of course, others can play the lawsuit game too. Frontline Wireless, a new company basically built to bid on this spectrum, is now accusing Verizon Wireless of breaking the law in not disclosing the details of a recent meeting between Verizon Wireless officials and the FCC about the auction -- as required by the law. Thus, Frontline is asking the FCC to sanction Verizon Wireless, including the extremely unlikely possibility of barring it from the 700MHz auction. Of course, just imagine the resulting lawsuits should the FCC actually agree and bar Verizon Wireless. Somehow, given Kevin Martin's chummy relationship with the telcos, it seems unlikely that Verizon Wireless will be stopped from bidding.

Filed Under: wireless auctions
Companies: fcc, frontline, verizon wireless

Comcast Fined For Airing Fake News Without Revealing It Was Fake

from the this-ain't-Jon-Stewart dept

Over the last few years there's been quite a bit of controversial over the practice of biased parties putting together video news releases. They look like typical local news feature segments on a particular topic, but they're actually put together by companies, PR agencies or even government agencies. Cheap or lazy TV stations will often air them as filler, though they rarely explain the origins of the report (and often will play them off as the work of their own news agency). The FCC has been warning stations about the practice of airing these videos without disclosure, but it hasn't had much of an impact. That may be changing. The FCC has now fined Comcast $4,000 for airing one such VNR, about some kind of sleeping pill without disclosing that the "news" report was produced by the company that made the sleeping pill. While it's nice that someone is cracking down on this deceptive practice, there are questions over jurisdiction. The FCC has jurisdiction over broadcast TV, but not necessarily cable TV. If anything, this seems like the sort of thing that the FTC should be looking into, rather than the FCC. Either way, the point should be clear: TV stations that are airing these videos may start to be a bit more careful (and a bit more open) about using them.

Filed Under: fake news
Companies: comcast, fcc

Verizon Decides It Doesn't Like Open-Access Wireless Rules After All

from the damn-competition dept

Discussion of the upcoming auction for licenses for 700 MHz spectrum has been dominated by the desire of Google and other groups to have "open-access" rules put in place. These rules would force license winners to sell wholesale access to their networks, allow any compatible device to be used on them, and follow net neutrality principles. The FCC paid some lip service to the issue by attaching just two of the conditions (net neutrality and allowing the use of any compatible device) to just a portion of the spectrum, and adding that the conditions will be dropped and the auction for the relevant licenses restarted without them if a reserve price of $4.6 billion isn't met. This was a political show that made it look like the FCC was taking some action, but the likely overall impact on the market will be minimal. Perhaps what made it clear that the rules were toothless and wouldn't have much competitive impact was the fact that incumbent telcos AT&T and Verizon voiced some support for them. But it would appear Google execs' comments that the company will "probably" bid on the spectrum, even though the FCC didn't adopt all its proposed principles has spooked Verizon, as the telco is now suing the FCC, saying it overstepped its authority in putting the conditions on the licenses.

When it looked like the open-access rules wouldn't have any effect, and that the auction for the licenses with them wouldn't attract enough buyers to hit that $4.6 billion reserve price, Verizon went the politically and PR-expedient route and voiced its support for them. Now that it looks like Google's going to be ready to pounce on the spectrum and pay the reserve price, Verizon contends the rules are illegal. Without the involvement of Google or another deep-pocketed bidder, Verizon could wait for the auction to restart without the rules, then pick up the spectrum free from the open-access rules. Since it looks like Google will bid up to the reserve price, Verizon faces the prospect of getting caught in a bidding war with the company, and should it win, it would have to operate any network in the spectrum with the open-access rules -- which it clearly doesn't want to do.

Filed Under: fcc, open access, spectrum, wireless
Companies: at&t, fcc, google, verizon

FCC Not Convinced To Just Hand Over Spectrum To Startup In Exchange For Potential Future Profits

from the FCC-prefers-its-money-upfront dept

In May of 2006, a VC-backed startup called M2Z petitioned the FCC to hand over some spectrum for free in exchange for a cut of future potential revenues. As you're probably quite aware, the FCC has been focused lately on auctioning off slices of spectrum to private companies for use in various wireless projects. The spectrum seems to only be getting more and more valuable as demands for potential wireless applications and services increase. Of course, as we've seen in the past, these spectrum auctions don't always work out so well, with companies overbidding and being unable to actually do much with the spectrum. Part of the problem is that the FCC wants to put all sorts of rules on the spectrum usage, rather than letting it be used for whatever makes the most sense, like some other countries.

However, the M2Z proposal seemed pretty questionable in its own way, promising nothing up front, and then making plenty of promises on the backend. The company claimed it would cover 95% of the country in broadband in 10 years, would have a "free" tier that was relatively slow and filtered, a more expensive upper tier, as well as offering priority for public safety uses. It may have been intriguing simply for the fact that it was different, but the FCC wasn't convinced. As has been expected for quite some time, the FCC has rejected the proposal, though some believe that the debate over this topic may eventually lead to good things from the FCC with the spectrum it's going to release in the near future. Of course, in the end all this really highlights is that the FCC still is focused on dribbling out bits and pieces of spectrum using different rules and regulations each time -- rather than coming up with a truly comprehensive spectrum allocation plan. Of course, some of us have been pointing this out for years, and the FCC never seems to get any closer to a comprehensive spectrum allocation policy -- and the country continues to suffer for it.

Filed Under: fcc, spectrum, spectrum auction, spectrum policy, wireless
Companies: fcc, m2z

Google CEO Says It Will 'Probably' Bid On Spectrum Licenses

from the here-comes-the-cash dept

Google has been making noise for some time about getting its hands on some wireless spectrum licenses. It's been behind a push to get the FCC to institute "open access" rules for license winners in the upcoming auction of 700 MHz spectrum, and the FCC implemented a couple of rather meaningless conditions to certain licenses in the auction. Google's main goal was to get the FCC to force license winners to offer wholesale access to their networks to anyone who wanted to buy it -- making it clear that Google's real interest isn't in acquiring spectrum licenses and building a network of its own, but rather having the ability to buy wholesale network access, and to do so in a competitive market. Google's push to get the FCC to create this market for free failed; now, Google's CEO says the company will "probably" bid in the auction. If Google were to win some licenses, it could choose to lease them to network operators in exchange for network access, with whatever conditions it wants to attach. This could achieve the same end result -- a marketplace with several bidders competing for Google's business -- as the getting the FCC to mandate open access. Obviously Google would rather have gone down that route than having to shell out several billion dollars for the licenses. Either way, don't expect Google to begin building its own physical network, but its motives in acquiring and redistributing access either as a virtual operator or in some other way are clear.

Filed Under: fcc, open access, spectrum, wireless
Companies: fcc, google

FCC Says White-Space Spectrum Device Doesn't Work

from the proto-failure dept

A gaggle of tech companies, led by Google and Microsoft, have been pushing the FCC to open up the "white space" spectrum -- open airwaves in between those used by TV broadcasts -- for use by electronic devices and broadband services. This has been talked about for quite some time, and represents one way to more efficiently use spectrum, which is a finite and very valuable resource. The group delivered a prototype to the FCC earlier this year, as a way to show that the technology to allow devices to automatically detect what spectrum's in use and what's available, and route communications accordingly, is viable. The FCC's been testing it for several months, and it's all good, except for one little problem: it doesn't actually work. The Commission says the prototype couldn't detect TV broadcasts, and it also sometimes interfered with them. While this current iteration of the technology sounds like a failure, the FCC is still open to the idea of allowing use of the white spaces; now Google, Microsoft and their friends just need to get the technology right before things can move forward.

Filed Under: fcc, spectrum, white spaces
Companies: fcc, google, microsoft

FCC Pays Open Access Wireless Networks Some Lip Service

from the appearance-of-activity dept

The FCC yesterday approved the rules for the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum license auction, scheduled for early next year. This is an important auction because of the quantity and quality of spectrum it covers, making it particularly suitable for wireless broadband networks. A coalition headed by Google has been pushing the FCC to adopt four "open access" principles for the spectrum, which would require license winners to open their networks to any compatible device, allow users to access any service they wish, and to sell wholesale access to their network to third parties. Google even said it would bid at least $4.6 billion in the auction if the FCC adopted the four principles. Unsurprisingly, the FCC didn't, instead going with rules that were largely along the lines of what Chairman Kevin Martin had earlier proposed: licenses for 22 of the 60 MHz on offer will require winners to allow any compatible device on their network and not block access to any services, but will not have the wholesale requirement that Google and its partners were looking for.

Without question, there's some gamesmanship going on here. If Google really wants to own spectrum licenses and have a network that follows its open access principles, there's nothing preventing it from bidding in the auction, winning licenses, and either running its network that way, or leasing the licenses to somebody who will. What's more likely, though, is that Google simply wants the ability to buy wholesale network access, rather than own licenses or build its own network. Again, there's nothing preventing it from entering into such a deal with any license holder, but requiring all the license holders to wholesale access would create a more competitive market and drive down prices. But perhaps the bigger game here is the political one by the FCC. These open access rules, really, are pretty toothless, and perhaps that's best illustrated by the fact that both AT&T and Verizon support them. The device requirement could easily be rendered meaningless by the winning bidder's choice of technology for their network. Using a proprietary or unpopular technology would likely mean that the only outlet to purchase compatible devices would be from the network provider. The open access to services requirement is one the operators would likely follow anyway, since blocking access to certain sites and services wouldn't make their wireless broadband services too popular with consumers.

While perhaps these rules represent a small first step for the FCC towards fostering a more competitive broadband, they seem much more like a missed opportunity to affect some real change. It seems like more than anything, this is a bit of smoke and mirrors that makes it look, to the casual observer, like the FCC's done something significant, when it's actually done very little -- and that would fit with the persistent whispering about Martin's political ambitions.

Filed Under: fcc, telecom, wireless
Companies: at&t, fcc, google, verizon