Google and eBay vs. the Phone Companies

[Kristijntje]

Google is urging the FCC to adopt specific rules for the commission's auction for the 700 MHz band of wireless spectrum. If the FCC meets these conditions, Google said it will bid $4.6 billion or more in the auction. "When Americans can use the software and handsets of their choice, over open and competitive networks, they win," Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote in a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin...

Specifically, Google wants the FCC to adopt rules for the auction that it outlined in a July 9 filing with the commission, requiring four types of open platforms as part of license conditions: open applications, so that consumers can download and use any software, content or services they want; open devices, so consumers can use a cell phone with the wireless network of their choice; open services, so that resellers can buy wireless services from a 700 MHz licensee on a wholesale basis; and open networks, so that ISPs (Internet service providers), for example, can interconnect in a 700 MHz licensee's wireless network...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/KjxLpSyH...ched.xhtml

[mandy]

A related article:

Internet companies are lobbying the FCC to open up wireless networks to new applications and devices. If they win, we could all have cheaper, better, more wonderful cellphones...

Last week Google announced that it would bid $4.6 billion for a slice of the public airwaves that the FCC plans to put up for auction next year. The radio space being sold -- known as the 700 MHz band -- could provide faster, more reliable wireless Internet connections throughout the nation, and large telecom firms are setting aside huge sums to snap it up. But Google, which is acting in concert with a host of Internet companies, has lobbied the FCC to make the waves open -- to force any firm that purchases the radio spectrum to follow the Carterfone rule, among several other principles of openness. Google says it will participate in the auction only if the FCC agrees to moves its way...

If the FCC comes down on the side of openness, proponents of a wireless Carterfone rule say, customers would see a host of new technologies pop up on their phones, and they'd likely see prices come down, too...

full article: http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2007/...arterfone/