Fergie's Tech Blog

FCC Idea Sets Off Firestorm Over Wireless Access

Elise Ackerman writes in The Mercury News:

For months, the nation's largest telecommunications companies and biggest technology brands have maintained an uneasy truce while investing billions of dollars in an attempt to dominate the mobile Internet.

Now, thanks to a proposal by a little-known government official, all-out war has broken out between the two sides over the potential payoff for those huge bets.

At stake is an area of the nation's airwaves, now used to broadcast UHF channels, that could support a new nationwide high-speed mobile network. Technocrats in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., believe this network can kick off a technology boom reminiscent of the late 1990s. They envision a cornucopia of new mobile gadgets that can be used anywhere to shop, play, socialize or study.

The problem is telecoms like AT&T and Verizon vehemently oppose conditions suggested by Silicon Valley heavyweights that would dramatically open access to the new network, placing them in opposition to Google, eBay and Frontline Wireless, a start-up company back by famed venture capitalists L. John Doerr and Ram Shriram, who also backed Google.

posted by Fergie @ 7/16/2007 10:18:00 AM