The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doles out wireless spectrum every few years using an auction process that anyone who has ever used eBay is already familiar with. Several of the FCC’s responsibilities are to make sure that the right people are allowed to join said auctions, that the wrong people are not allowed to participate, and to put rules on the spectrum being sold in order to create some competition in the market. There’s a new bill in the House of Congress right now called the “JOBS Act, H.R. 3630” that’s mainly about putting Americans back to work, but buried deep in that 369 page document [PDF file] is a highly controversial section that’s causing a major shit storm right now. Section 4105 reads as follows:
ADMINISTRATION OF AUCTIONS BY COMMISSION
Section 309 of the Communications Act of 1934 is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraphs:
CERTAIN CONDITIONS ON AUCTION PARTICIPATION PROHIBITED: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Commission may not prevent a person from participating in a system of competitive bidding under this subsection if such person (A) meets the technical, financial, and character qualifications required; or (B) could meet such qualifications prior to the grant of the license.
CERTAIN LICENSING CONDITIONS PROHIBITED: In assigning licenses through a system of competitive bidding under this subsection, the Commission may not impose any condition on the licenses assigned through such system that (A) limits the ability of a licensee to manage the use of its network, including management of the use of applications, services, or devices on its network, or to prioritize the traffic on its network as it chooses; or (B) requires a licensee to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis.
Translation: The big boys, AT&T and Verizon, should be allowed to buy as much spectrum as they want and shouldn’t be forced to let anyone else access their networks. This obviously has a lot of people upset, enough so that the CEOs of Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, C-Spire Wireless, Leap Wireless, NorthwestCell, Bluegrass Cellular, and Atlantic Tele-Network wrote a letter [PDF file] to 7 senators and 13 members of the House to strip section 4105 out of the JOBS Act.
We were pleasantly surprised when the government stopped T-Mobile from being bought up by AT&T, so here’s hoping they can amaze us again and remove the offending section from the JOBS Act so that America’s wireless market can remain competitive.