Wireless Spectrum

Please see my new Daily Caller Op-ed: "The U.S. Government's Obsolete and Dysfunctional Spectrum Management" -- here.

• This is part 13 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

See my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "U.S. Falling behind the World in Auctioning Broadband Spectrum" here.

This is part 12 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Please don't miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "U.S. Government's Obsolete and Wasteful Spectrum Hoarding and Rationing" here.

This is part 11 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "The FCC's 1887 Railroad Regulation Mindset" here. This piece is part 10 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "The FCC Showcases its Growing Obsolescence" here. This piece is part 9 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Part 2: "The FCC's Public Interest Test Problem"

Pay attention when FreePress is quiet about something it was ear-splitting loud about before. Without fanfare, FreePress apparently has mothballed its old SaveTheInternet.com agitprop campaign apparatus by redirecting www.SaveTheInternet.com to a refreshed FreePress.net site that reboots under a variety of "Internet freedom" agitprop sub-campaigns. Mandated net neutrality government regulation has now transmogrified into an "Internet freedom."

And FreePress/Public Knowledge have cloned a SaveTheInternet twin, the comic-book-inspired, "Internet Defense League," which apparently will be the new front group responsible for much of the online community organizing and stunt-staging that FreePress/SaveTheInternet became infamous for. Think of the FreePress 1.0 email list of ~500,000 activists pinging around in a social media 2.0 echo chamber, in order to defend the Internet from capitalism, profit and private property.

FreePress' "Internet freedom" reboot apparently is in the process of getting the people and organizations which signed the original oath of allegiance to SaveTheInternet, to sign the new FreePress 2.0's Declaration of Internet freedom.

The Verizon-Cable spectrum sale remains on path for DOJ-FCC approval because it is fundamentally pro-competitive, in the public interest, creates the foundation for a fifth national wireless competitor, puts fallow spectrum to work fastest, and its approval will result in secondary market spectrum sales to other competitors that the DOJ/FCC want to get spectrum.

The recent leaks to the media expressing additional DOJ concerns, and the coordinated letters from the Hill, are apparently orchestrated by the DOJ to increase the DOJ's perceived negotiating leverage to try and "nibble" some final concessions and conditions from Verizon and the Cable spectrum sellers before the DOJ finally clears the spectrum sale for closing.

Please read my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "Obsolete Analysis Will Doom DOJ's Antitrust Probe of Cable" here.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers

Part 2: "The FCC's Public Interest Test Problem"

Part 3: "FCC Special Access: Communications Obsolete-ism vs. Modernism"

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Broadband Usage Pricing Research Series:

Part 7: "Broadband Pricing is Naturally Evolving to Usage Tiers"

Part 6: "Leaf Vision & Broadband Usage Caps"

Part 5: "Consumer Group's Advocacy Hypocrisy"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 24, 2012

Contact: Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

Verizon-Cable's Market-based Spectrum Transaction Promotes Competition

Promoting secondary market for spectrum & new forms of competition is in the public interest

WASHINGTON D.C. – In response to Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Kohl's letter to the DOJ and the FCC on the Verizon-Cable transaction, the following quotes may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition.org:

The EU's latest round of mobile price regulation provides a golden opportunity to show how market competition produces much better results for consumers than government price regulation. Ironically, the European Parliament voted this week to lower mobile roaming charges by mid-2014 to levels that will still be much higher than America's competitive wireless market prices are today.

Per New York Times reports, the EU mandated price for making a roaming mobile voice call will be reset from 35 cents a minute today to 19 cents a minute by mid-2014, and the price for receiving a roaming mobile voice call will be reset from 11 cents a minute today to 5 cents by mid-2014. Putting this in perspective, Recon Analytics' research shows that Americans pay 4.9 cents a minute vs. 16.7 cents a minute for Europeans -- ~70% less; and because of these dramatically lower American wireless prices, Americans consumers use more than twice as much wireless as Europeans, 875 minutes of use per month vs. 418 minutes for Europeans. Simply, the EU's ~50% mandated price reductions will still have European consumers paying much more for mobile usage even if one incorrectly were to assume that competition won't further lower the market price for American consumers like it has every year.