FCC eyes free puritanical wireless vote
No-smut opt-out?
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
The Federal Communications Commission is set to consider chairman Kevin Martin's plan for free US-wide puritanical wireless broadband at its next meeting on December 18.
Last week, just before the Thanksgiving holiday, Martin circulated a new version of the proposal among his four fellow commissioners, and according to an FCC spokesman, the plan will likely turn up on the commission's December meeting docket when it's unveiled later this week - perhaps as early as tomorrow.
Under Martin's original plan, trumpeted back in June, the commission would auction off the spectrum between 2155- and 2180-MHz on the US dial, and the winning bidder would have no choice but to plant a free network on a quarter of that 25-MHz. Kevin Martin and crew would also require "family-friendly" filters designed to rid the free bandwidth of porn and other smut.
The setup is suspiciously similar to a plan first floated by Washington-connected startup M2Z Networks. In May 2006, M2Z asked the FCC if it could license a slightly smaller swath of spectrum (2155- to 2175-MHz, the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS)-3 band) for a free puritanical network with download speeds of about 768kbps.
After sitting on the plan for more than a year, the FCC said "no." But after a lawsuit from M2Z, Kevin Martin revived the proposal as a possible spectrum auction.
Martin also added an extra 5-MHz to the proposal (2175- to 2180-MHz, part of the AWS-2 band).
To the surprise of no one, the Deutsche Telekom-owned T-Mobile is leading a chorus of carriers, ISPs, and handheld manufacturers who say that Martin's proposal would interfere with the adjacent AWS-1 band. That's T-Mobile's bandwidth. And various consumer advocates have objected to the no-smut bit.
Martin's latest proposal is expect to allow censorship-wary parents to opt-out of the network's porn filters. ®
COMMENTS
@Steve Wedge - It's free, dammit!
Scotty, beam me up. I'm tired of living down here in la-la land. Turns out there's no free lunch.
Perhaps
This network should be separate from the "real" internet, with things like email allowed to filter through(the onus would be on webmail providers to create a govweb interface). Since it's being provided on the taxpayer dime, it should be extremely selective about what's let on it.
It's free, dammit!
There you go again -- bitching about something that would be free and not even available to most of you!
I like the bit about job-finding as one of the potential uses. It should be geared toward utilitarian uses and definitely NOT toward dissemination of pr0n, torrents and the like.
We have an expression over here that you probably have heard before: Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Mine's the asbestos-lined one...
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
