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Court: FCC auction on for August
When the FCC graciously pushed back the AWS auction date from June 29 to August 9 of this year -- putting us a month further from universal free wireless broadband, as far as we're concerned -- we knew there was trouble brewing in paradise. The agency's official line was that bidders needed more time to get ready for the bank-busting auction (expected to raise somewhere between $8 and $15 billion), but a handful of smaller potential bidders were threatening a lawsuit to get the rules changed, claiming that the auction was stacked against them. Apparently, the spat stems from a rule limiting auction discounts -- actually designed to help small bidders -- to companies that have buddied up with larger bidders, a rule that makes sense to us. A request to stay the auction eventually found itself before a US Court of Appeals, which ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to establish that damage was being done to their chances in the auction by letting it proceed, and furthermore, "The public interest also militates strongly in favor of letting the auction proceed without altering the rules of the game at this late date." We couldn't agree more, let's get this show on the road -- we have some pay-per-use WiFi accounts to cancel.
FCC delays spectrum auction until August
If you were planning to invite the guys over for everybody's favorite "spectrum auction night," you might want to rethink those plans. Turns out the FCC is delaying the advanced wireless services (AWS) auction from June 29 to August 9. They're excusing it by saying that applicants need more time to prepare for the sale, but there's another problem rearing its head that the FCC might be buying time to deal with: Three small companies are threatening to sue the FCC over the recently revised designated entity rules, which were ironically changed to help out small companies in competing against the big carriers for wireless spectrum. Those very major carriers are fine with the new designated entity rules, which make it harder for large carriers to use small organisations to nab spectrum for them, and want to go ahead with the auction as soon as possible. We're not quite sure what to make of this, but it looks like there might be quite the legal battle, which just means more months between us and that golden dream of free national wireless broadband.[Via Phone Scoop, thanks Marty]
