Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Laura Smith's Commentary

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:47:27 -0400

------- Original Message --------
   From: Robert Schwaninger <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Laura Smith's Commentary

The gravitational forces of the FCC have been shifting for some time and the pull
away from spectrum management toward industry management has been evident for
years.The original consideration of the agency was to manage the radio spectrum
(albeit for the greater good of the few, a concept that has not changed
dramatically since 1927), and thus, the licensing mechanism was created to assure
fidelity in operation upon and use of the radio spectrum.However, the job of
managing the radio spectrum is difficult and, therefore, the agency has sought
ways to make it easier for years.

The second round of the cellular grants was a major watershed in policy.Based on
statements made by the Chairman and the chief advocate of the new "throw the doors
open" policy, Commissioner Stephen Sharp, the FCC declared that the differences in
the applications for cellular licenses filed for the second 30 markets was
not decisionally significant, therefore, the agency should grant the applications
by lottery.As a young attorney who had been given the job of reading each
multi-volume application to rate the features, relevance, and engineering
associated with each hopeful's exhibits, I can tell you that the differences were
huge.Even a punk attorney like me could have chosen winners in every market based
on the then existing rules.But the Commission saw that comparative hearings would
slow the process, cost a bunch of money, and would make the largest players
unhappy.Thus, by fiat the agency declared that each of the applications was
essentially equal and could be dealt with in a manner that no longer emphasized
public interest, but private corporate profits.

From lottery came auction and from auction came the ULS and from the ULS came the
digitized, computerized mechanism for licensing radio systems, which reduces all
uses to pixels and data input functions, moving the FCC farther and farther away
from the actual operation of radio devices and rendering it moreover a data
management function, rather than the expert agency whose primary function was to
manage the use of the radio spectrum for the purpose of forwarding the public
interest.

Along with its dramatic shift in responsibility from regulation to reporting, the
FCC also became a source of revenues to the U.S. Treasury, with its functions no
longer donning the mantel of regulator, but rather the green visor associated with
tax collectors.Its role became one of Wall Street partner and sometimes sycophant
to a growing and powerful swell of capital that was flooding technology companies
that constantly complained that the agency was constraining innovation each time
it even hinted at returning to its primary role of spectrum manager.

The changes wrought from the FCC's reluctance to engage in spectrum management
have been far-reaching, evident, and with many costs.Industrial radio has suffered
dramatically in priority and reliability.The noise floor is rising like the gulf
waters of Louisiana that have engulfed entire forests.Opportunities for local
business has been reduced again and again, as margins are eroded via the levying
of taxes, regulation, and operational constraints that do not have a genesis in
spectrum management, but in reduced priority before the agency.Amateur radio
operators are treated like regulatory nuisances rather than the devotees to the
radio art that vitalize the industry.Spectrum is consolidated under the ownership
of an elite group of well-financed entities, then allowed to lie fallow in huge
regions across rural America where the internal rate of return shown on the
owner's business plan does not support construction of facilities.Meanwhile, the
agency blithely offers such placebos as disaggragation and partitioning as faux
opportunities to small companies whose owners will wait endlessly for any such
opportunity to actually arise.

The latest push toward greater unlicensed operation is the next step in the
agency's efforts to disassociate itself from the duties of spectrum management.The
needs of the public are being placed in two large hoppers, public safety and
commercial, and the avenues to create commercial offerings are being widen to not
even include the niceties (or the necessary oversight) of licensing.

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges & Refill Kits for Your Epson at Myinks.com
Free shipping on orders $50 or more to the US and Canada.
http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5705&lp=home/epson.asp
http://us.click.yahoo.com/brYXfA/_xWGAA/ySSFAA/61FxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/