You’re the expert on broadbanditry but I think you may be too cynical on this one. Forgetting good and evil and just looking at the business interests of the companies involved, the telcos have every incentive to PREVENT the 700MHz spectrum from being used to create effective competiton to the duopoly they enjoy. Google has great incentive to see effective competition AND will get no return on whatever it pays UNLESS it can put the frequencies in use. The telcos, on the other hand, might well derive greater value by letting the frequencies lie fallow (or effectively so) than letting soemeone else put them to use.

I posted more on this at: http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/07/googles-good-ba.html

The Martin open device, open applications mandate is pretty unambiguous. Why not focus on making sure both of these are really open.

If you read Googles proposal, the fourth open requirement gives me real heartburn: “third parties (like Internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at any technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee’s wireless network.” They didn’t say “resellers should be able to interconnect,” but rather “third parties should be able to interconnect.” This leads me to believe Google wants to create direct connections that bypass the public Internet even if they are not the wholeseller or reseller. Google has the backbone infrastructure and local data centers to exploit direct interconnection in ways that Google’s competitors could not. It would be very difficult to see this as consistent with net neutrality. In fact, it is inconsistent with Google’s second requirement open applications.

If Google ends up winning the auction AND the rules around open-ness are enforced by FCC, how can it be an unpalatable situation?

Regarding ambiguity – unfortunately, ambiguity is the middle name of Google. Don’t expect them to give you any more information than more of the above spin about ‘open-ness’.

The explanation to this google deal is pretty simple: they win the deal, they sit in the middle as a clearing house for everything. they have not clearly outlined what their intentions are, what they need to do with this spectrum and how they are going to support third parties.

Those are important questions. Which in my mind if don’t go unanswered, they are no different than telco plans.

On what is the solution: lease it, not sell it. this keeps everyone honest and fosters the most competition. they are doing it in rest of the world. why not here.

Ref: previous post.

Probably as quickly as college kids alter their belief in income redistribution once they graduate and start making money.