What is "We will tell them again that Americans deserve free over-the-air broadband and that we'd be happy to provide it," supposed to mean? How would such a service be provided for "free"?

Spectrum regulation is for the common good. Not regulating it can cause all kinds of problems not just the one that Andrew refers to but incompatibility between networks does in the end not increase consumer choice. But also issues of obtaining planning permission for masts and antennas becomes a whole lot trickier for unregulated services. Who regulates the power of such setups? Who carries the can for anybody irradiated by excessively powerful and incorrectly placed base stations, etc.?

but until they go sour innovative companies must have the chance to work and grow. The FCC is a world-class example of a failed government agency. They can't seem to do anything internally and always end up handing problems off to the "friendly telcos" that help them work out a solution.

In addition the FCC's frequency licensing program is as corrupt as it could possibly be. In the auto auctioning industry what the FCC does is called "fixing", where a bidder ends up bidding against the "coke machine". Bidding starts and suddenly the price has jumped by orders of magnitude, but no one seemed to have bid. Who was it that did the bidding, the "coke machine"... the "auction" was already decided before it began.

People go to prison for auctioneering this way. But its OK for the FCC.

The cash cow that is the entertainet has been marked to be butchered. The only sure thing for the consumer will be tiered rates, greater overall cost and reduced service, and, oh yeah, there'll probably be more taxes too.

Of course the FCC is rejecting applications from companies who want to provide free broadband wireless. Providing a quality service for free? We can't have that, especially when AT&T and Verizon can just sit on the spectrum until they can figure out some new way to rip off consumers with it. The only way to get an application accepted is to stress a for profit business model. Then when you get the license, change your mind and provide free broadband wireless access.

LOL.....