Frontline has played - and continues to play - an important role in shaping the policy dialogue on the need for open access networks, increased broadband and wireless competition and a public-private partnership for first responder interoperability. These ideas were the basis for a key FCC decision in July on the 700 MHz auction.
Frontline submitted a comprehensive plan to the FCC to promote public safety interoperability through a commitment to build out an advanced national broadband network at no cost to first responders, innovation through open access obligations and wireless broadband competition through wholesale requirements.
As both policy advocates and bidders in the upcoming auction, Frontline continues to participate in the dialogue over how open access provisions are defined and implemented, and how a viable partnership for a nationwide public safety broadband network can be built with advanced technology.
You can learn more about the plan from various FCC filings linked below:
FCC: Next Steps
The FCC took an important step closer to fostering a nationwide interoperable broadband network for first responders, and to providing a more open wireless platform for consumers, when it approved a ground-breaking decision on plans for the 700 MHz spectrum. Click here to read the FCC's Report and Order on the 700 MHz band plan and service rules. Click here to see Frontline's press release on how the decision allows it to move ahead with the next steps of its business strategy to take part in the January 2008 auction.
The Commission also has issued a Public Notice on proposed competitive bidding procedures for the 700 MHz auction. Click here to view the full Notice. Click here to see the comments that Frontline filed on how the proposed rules fall short of meeting the Commission's own goals for the auction and steps that the FCC could take to change this. Click here to view the reply comments.
Frontline: Catalyst for Change
The FCC initiated these changes for open networks and a public-private partnership for first responder interoperability earlier this year when it adopted an order and a further notice of proposed rulemaking addressing rules for licenses in the 700 MHz band. Click here to read the full proposal, which sought comment on Frontline's plan. To view Frontline's comments, click here. Click here to view Frontline's reply comments.
To view the proposal for a national public safety broadband network for interoperability, filed as part of the “Ninth NPRM” proceeding on public safety broadband in the 700 MHz band, click here. Click here to see the reply comments filed by Frontline.
Critical Need: Wireless Competition
The pending FCC auction of 700 MHz spectrum holds enormous potential to promote competition in the rapidly consolidating wireless and broadband market. To usher in an era of wireless Internet, Frontline proposes a new network with advanced fourth generation capabilities made available on an open basis.
However, for new companies such as Frontline to provide consumers with viable wireless broadband options, it is critical that the FCC's rules facilitate competition at this auction by new market entrants. This is especially true because these 700 MHz airwaves, for the two largest incumbents, have a high "foreclosure value" because they inherited 800 MHz cellular licenses during an era in which licenses were awarded for free rather than sold at auction.
Click here to view a filing by renowned auction experts Peter Cramton, Andrzeg Skrzypacz and Robert Wilson on how FCC auction rules that facilitate participation by new entrants, as well as incumbents, create greater bidder competition and cause winning bids to reflect the economic value of the spectrum. For a letter from these economists and Simon Wilkie, Executive Director of the USC Annenberg Center for Communications Law and Policy, to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on the importance of auction rules not allowing incumbents to foreclose entry, click here.
Gregory Rosston, deputy director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Deputy Director of the Public Policy program at Stanford University, and Drs. Cramton, Skrzypacz and Wilson, have submitted a paper to the FCC that outlines the implications of a threat to the auction's success caused by several factors, including reserve prices that are arbitrarily too high and based on faulty comparisons with spectrum prices in the 2006 Advanced Wireless Service auction. To view this filing, click here.
Critical Need: Innovation
A new group of veteran wireless entrepreneurs, Wireless Founders Coalition for Innovation, also seeks open access requirements in in the 700 MHz band. The Coalition stated to the FCC: "The 700 MHz auction could prove to be a pivotal event in the history of the wireless industry, marking the transition to the age of the 'wireless Internet.' But this will only happen if the FCC takes some entrepreneurial steps of its own, and gives the American people a chance to participate in the upside from a new and improved approach to wireless policy." View the Wireless Founders Coalition for Innovation letter to the FCC here.
Be sure to watch this space for additional filings in this and other FCC proceedings related to the 700 MHz band and upcoming auction.
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We have long advocated much more investment and competition in broadband networks. Frontline's wholesale, advanced IP access network is open for investment, protocols and new applications.”
