FCC Says TV Airwaves Being Sold For Wireless Use Are Worth $86.4 Billion (reuters.com) 72
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday the price of 126 MHz of television airwaves taken from broadcasters to be sold for wireless use in an ongoing auction is $86.4 billion. The FCC disclosed the price in a statement after completing the first part of an auction to repurpose low-frequency wireless spectrum relinquished by television broadcasters. The so-called "broadcast incentive" spectrum auction is one of the commission's most complex and ambitious to date. In this round, called a reverse auction, broadcasters competed to give up spectrum to the FCC for the lowest price. In the next stage, the forward auction, wireless and other companies will bid to buy the airwaves for the highest price. If wireless companies are unwilling to pay $86.4 billion, the FCC may have to hold another round of bidding by broadcasters and sell less spectrum than had been expected, analysts said. The Wall Street Journal points out that $86.4 billion is more than the market cap of T-Mobile and Spring combined. It's roughly double the amount raised in the last FCC auction, where ATT spent $18.2 billion and Verizon spent $10.4 billion. It's highly likely we'll see multiple rounds stretching into 2017 that will eventually match the supply with the demand.
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On behalf of every British Columbian who can't stand seeing your stupid language printed on everything, hurry up, please.
Ours is the furthest province from yours and we should be the least accommodating of your bastardized fronglish bullshit.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything in the USA is becoming either Arabic
I know, right? It's on our street signs, our currency, and it looks to have even crept into our Slashdot IDs!
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On behalf of every British Columbian who can't stand seeing your stupid language printed on everything, hurry up, please.
Ours is the furthest province from yours and we should be the least accommodating of your bastardized fronglish bullshit.
See, this is exactly why you wildlings will never make it south of the 49th parallel; you're always fighting amongst one another. And guess what? Winter is coming again and you'll be trapped in the frozen wasteland.
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[...] you stupid english speaking bastards!
Don't you mean Hanglish [youtube.com]?
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
It's something of a flim-flam, though--they're not "buying" anything, merely purchasing the right to apply for a license that can be revoked. Granted, license revocation is a rare thing, but it's out there does to some degree constrain the operators of licensed broadcast/wireless systems on every band.
Think of it like this: Any way you issue the licenses, they're valuable. By charging for them, you at least raise some money in exchange for this valuable license, rather than just giving it away for the $295 application fee.
That said, I'd be thrilled to see a significant portion of this allotment reserved for municipal wireless broadband in "unprofitable" areas. We have to close the internet gap to give our rural neighbors the chance to enjoy the development and growth that connectivity enables.
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Good morning. I'm here to defend the FCC. I'm not sure against whom or what... but god dammit... I'm defending them. Thank you for your time.
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Just remember, this is the FCC that gives the people exactly 0% of the designated broadcast spectrum. The FCC that is owned, lock stock and barrel by commercial interests.
I get television broadcast, cellular service, AM/FM/HD radio, wifi, bluetooth, and a whole gaggle of other stuff that I can take for granted because it isn't jammed by all the electronics in my house, including the power supplies to all that stuff. If you want to bitch about not being able to hear the term cunt-shit on the local top-40 station, I'm what you would call a gifted-idiot so I understand you there, but I'm not really sure why they're some enemy to hate in this context. If you think the United
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That said, I'd be thrilled to see a significant portion of this allotment reserved for municipal wireless broadband in "unprofitable" areas.
The unprofitable areas are those areas with low population density. Do you know what you don't find in areas with low population density? That's right, municipalities that have money to invest in wireless broadband.
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That said, I'd be thrilled to see a significant portion of this allotment reserved for municipal wireless broadband in "unprofitable" areas.
The unprofitable areas are those areas with low population density. Do you know what you don't find in areas with low population density? That's right, municipalities that have money to invest in wireless broadband.
Right, when I lived in nearly unpopulated San Francisco and my only choices for internet were Comcast cable and "up to" 1.5mbit AT&T DSL. I didn't really want Comcast (or AT&T for that matter), but I was outside of the range of monkeybrains wireless isp [monkeybrains.net] so I was stuck with Comcast.
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Right, when I lived in nearly unpopulated San Francisco
My bad. I didn't remember that San Francisco is an unprofitable area for wireless telecommunications services. So yes, there's ONE municipality in an unprofitable cellular market that could install wireless broadband.
Sheesh. Read what you reply to, ok?
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The unprofitable areas are those areas with low population density. Do you know what you don't find in areas with low population density? That's right, municipalities that have money to invest in wireless broadband.
You're thinking too 1:1. Although it is unlikely that every little podunk town will be able to have their own municipal wireless system, the frequencies in question are utterly pristine, and we have a long history of broadcast engineers sharing these frequencies and not interfering with each other, despite having stations blanketing the country. By positioning a tall enough/correctly engineered station in a central location, many rural communities could share one "system" between them.
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Actually, it is a tax on the consumer.
Certainly, there should be some way to regulate air wave usage. But, just where do those billions come from?
Anyone buying those frequencies, must make a profit. Therefore, any cost like this, is in some way or another passed on to the consumer. And, as a fixed cost that can't be optimized/improved/reduced, it's a cost that is universal to all wireless providers.
Meaning? It's a tax on your bill. *YOU* pay for it, not the wireless providers.
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You're claiming that it's unwise to allocate resources to those who can make the best economic use of it. You are further implying either that you in your omniscience know what the best use is, or that corrupt and capricious government will bring about best use.
Great Britain leaving the E.U. is the best thing that has happened in the world this year, perhaps this decade. The E.U. is becoming a suicidal tyranny, and England is refusing the command to kill itself.
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Can someone explain... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why this is being sold, rather than leased?
Shouldn't this just be like a 5-15 year lease to the spectrum for whatever amount the companies are willing to bid?
'Sale' sounds rather permanent, and divvying up a limited resource, like the airwaves even for ridiculous sums of money like 90 billion, seems rather anti-competitive to me.
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Yeah, they are buying these for all eternity. But I tell you what: instead of recurring lower income, politicians like it better to have bigger sums of money on the table they can decide about.
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buying these for all eternity
Sure, just like the broadcast TV companies did before that....except they no longer have that spectrum.
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Companies want to be assured that they are going to be able to recoup those all costs (and it often takes 5+ years to roll out).
I suggest a lease which lasts for 10 years, and then after the initial period is permanently renewable on a yearly basis with a fee of: 10% of the original lease cost PLUS 15% of the gross revenue of the portion of any commercial operation utilizing the license.
Also, if another company thinks the license is more valuable and they believe they can provide something of highe
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10% of the original lease cost PLUS 15% of the gross revenue
Fifteen percent of gross revenue? You're kidding.
Also, if another company thinks the license is more valuable and they believe they can provide something of higher utility to the public utilizing that piece of spectrum,
You mean like every competitor would think? And every other user of spectrum, too? They all think they've got a better use.
prove they are actively using the allocation for useful commercial purposes of benefit to the public in every County in the united states
Now I know you are trolling. A cell company which has spectrum under this lease in the Portland market has to prove they are doing something beneficial with it to EVERY COUNTY IN THE US?
If the challenger's intended use is Non-Profit, such as a Public service, or as a Public WiFi offered for a personal or community interest, then they are awarded without cost if there is demonstrable value to the public of a certain level,
Wow. Simply wow. Take it away from the companies providing cell phone service so that someone can offer "Public WiFi".
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What, so you're suggesting that the tax you pay to use cell service increases?
Certainly, there should be some way to regulate air wave usage. But, just where do those billions come from? Or in this case, your leasing costs?
Anyone buying those frequencies, must make a profit. Therefore, any cost like this, is in some way or another passed on to the consumer. And, as a fixed cost that can't be optimized/improved/reduced, it's a cost that is universal to all wireless providers.
Meaning? It's a tax on your
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But, just where do those billions come from? Or in this case, your leasing costs?
Major telecoms are getting out of the Landline business and into the Cellular business. The reason is not that cell phones are better technology.
The reason is that it is ridiculously profitable for them.... Land-based telephone lines have regulated pricing; Wireless and Fiber do not.
If the price controls did not exist for landlines; There would be no 3G or 4G networks. We would still be paying $0.50 a minute for long di
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Major telecoms are getting out of the Landline business and into the Cellular business. The reason is not that cell phones are better technology. ...
The reason is that it is ridiculously profitable for them.... Land-based telephone lines have regulated pricing; Wireless and Fiber do not.
This is the first time I've heard fiber referred to as "cellular business".
They're getting out of the wireline business because it is ridiculously expensive. Maintaining a copper pair to a home is a huge expense. Installing a new one is hard. You have to deal with a huge number of franchising authorities. The costs of labor go nothing but go up. The costs of hardware do nothing but go up.
Cellular, on the other hand, can set up a tower or two outside a small city and cover the entire city without having to
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I'll bet that's what the TV broadcasters whose channels are gone thought, too.
Renting airwaves (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are we selling these airwaves? We should be renting them by the month. This prevents the wastefulness and hoarding of resources by a company that never plans to use them. What if some company buys them all up and never uses them in hopes that they double in price in the next 10 years due to scarcity?
I said nearly the exact same thing as a solution for keeping the IPV4 address space from running out, as most of the space is currently being hoarded by large organizations that don't need full Class A blocks:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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I said nearly the exact same thing as a solution for keeping the IPV4 address space from running out, as most of the space is currently being hoarded by large organizations that don't need full Class A blocks:
What about ... using ipv6 instead?
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I'm holding out for IPv12.
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We should be renting them by the month.
Will you be changing cellphones every month when your current provider no longer has the lease to the spectrum band you were using? Phones can only support so many radio band filters without increasing size and cost, so different versions are frequently built with support for only the frequency bands used by specific carriers, especially on low-cost phones. You know that the radios on the cellphone towers don't magically support every frequency as well, right? Would you spend large sums of $$$ to buy equipm
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Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt...
The airwaves are only licensed. A contract of only months would be moronic, as it takes YEARS to build out any cellular network, and nobody would make the investment without some guarantees that they can keep using them for quite a few years.
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That's why....how are grown men so fucking naive?
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Renting them by the month now! That's even worse than buddy's overall lease term above!
You do realise that this money comes from YOU! You, the person that has cell phone service.
Where else does the carrier get money to pay for the lease?
The cost of these airwaves should be ZERO. Not one penny.
Yes, they should be regulated. Yes, if you don't use them, they get pulled.
But paying for them? Billions and trillions? THAT COMES FROM YOU IN THE END!
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Let's see, I've got the use of these airwaves in this area for $100,000,000 this month. I'll just invest $5 billion in hardware so that I can use them. My business plan says I'll break even in 4 years.
Next month --- What do you mean, the bands I've spent $5.1 billion to use won't be available to me any more?"
Bandwidth for High Power Wi-Fi (Score:3)
Why not ?
Meshing routers could cover large areas cheaply !
How about repeaters for the digital TV signals? (Score:2)
I think a lot of people in rural areas got a raw deal from this digital TV signal upgrade, because it makes it impossible to pick up a lot of stations you used to be able to tune in with the old analog system.
Where we live, for example? We're about a 70 minute drive away from Washington DC (with many people in town commuting to/from the DC area daily for work), yet you can't pick up the DC network stations over the air. (Well, you *might* get 1 or 2 if you aim the right antenna just the right way -- but yo
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Spring? (Score:2)
What area does spring cover? Ive never heard of them before. Then again maybe they ment sprint.
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What area does spring cover?
I hear their coverage is eternal, but there is a very low signal to noise ratio.
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You mean less than $2/mo. per person * 10 years? Oh, what exorbitant services, this must involve.