IP Democracy: Consumers Union: No More Spectrum for AT&T

This Red Herring piece gives a good recap of yesterday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on wireless issues. The biggest piece of news: the Consumers Union is asking that if the AT&T-BellSouth merger is approved, the government bar the big telco from gaining any more wireless spectrum.

In her testimony, Consumers Union policy analyst Jeannine Kenney said that a combined AT&T-BellSouth will already cut a wide swath through not only the wireless but the wider communications world.

If AT&T’s acquisition of BellSouth is approved, and we urge that it not be, AT&T will be the dominant provider of both wireless and wireline services in its enlarged 22 state region with complete control over Cingular, giving it unprecedented ability to foreclose competition not just in bundled services, but also in single components of that bundle.

Intel’s Kevin Kahn, who is Director of the Communications Technology Lab, argued for spectrum reform that pushes WiMax ahead.

Thus, as demand grows for an established standard, such as Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11), or as new standards based around new technology are readied for the marketplace, such as WiMAX (IEEE 802.16), regulations need to change to allow their use and broad acceptance. Standards provide international interoperability and the opportunity to achieve economies of scale and scope, but none of this is possible without the necessary spectrum.

Update: Reuters’ Jeremy Pelofsky has this longish piece about Democratic Senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry’s brief appearance at the hearing yesterday. Kerry took advantage of the platform to throw a few pot-shots at President Bush’s broadband policy.

“Despite the president’s promise of ubiquitous broadband by 2007, we are clearly, now well into 2006, short of that goal,” Kerry said at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing. “Only 40 percent of households in America have it.” “It seems, incredibly, the FCC is sitting on the rulemaking that will help correct this problem,” Kerry said.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on March 15, 2006 8:14 AM to IP Democracy