Frontline's Hundt thinks US wireless is too monopolized!

I was shaking my head in disbelief when I read Comm Daily on Reed Hundt's interview on CSPAN's The Communicators series. 

Key quotes:

• "Hundt is vice chmn. of Frontline Wireless and he used his C-span appearance to challenge the FCC to set rules that will allow Frontline to carry out its business plan."
• "The wireless industry, which largely grew from auctions held while Hundt was Chairman, has become too consolidated, he said: "Monopolies don't work that hard to compete." Competition is necessary for innovation."

Excuse me? wireless monopolies?

• Mr Hundt continues to manufacture false information to forward his Big Government hyper-regulatory philosophy.
• The facts about US wireless competitiveness are obvious to anyone who is remotely objective.
• The US has more wireless facilities-based wireless competition and investment than any country in the world! No other country is even close!
• If wireless were a monopoly why would every American see every nth ad on TV or every nth full page ad in a newspaper be for wireless service?
• Why have wireless prices plummeted over the last decade? Monopoly pricing Mr Hundt?
• Why does the US have more free WiFi hotspots than any other country?
• Why is the real maverick wireless entrepreneur, Craig McCaw, of ClearWire, able to compete with a WiMax offering and attract almost a billion dollars from Intel if US wireless is a monopoly?
• Mr. Hundt's views are so transparently self-serving it isn't funny.

People need to remember that Mr Hundt was the one who called an SBC-AT&T merger "unthinkable." He even invented his own pet antitrust theory as FCC Chairman called: "precluded competition" that has subsequently been relegated to the dustbin of antitrust history as a ridiculously contrived device with scant basis in law or fact.

What was most telling was that when "asked for the Telecom Act accomplishment he was proudest of, Hundt said the E-rate program was the "most noble effort to connect the next generation of the Internet."

• Let's put this little gem of a comment into context.
• The Telecom Act was all about ending monopolies, promoting competition, encouraging rapid deployment of advanced technologies, and keeping the Internet unfettered by regulation...
• and his proudest accomplishment was the E-rate program, a Big Government subsidy program that had to be investigated by authorities?
• How come Mr Hundt, a so-called entrepreneur, is not proud that the US has more broadband, wireless, phone, and video competition than any other nation in the world?
• How come Mr Hundt is not proud of the Internet being the greatest de-regulation success stories in the history of the planet?
• How come Mr. Hundt is not proud of the US being the undisputed leader of all things Internet in the world?

I guess I could see that Mr. Hundt might want to gloss over that little part of history, because all that success happened despite Mr. Hundt's monumental telecom policy failures!

Mr. Hundt's hyper-regulatory policies that guaranteed CLECs' recip-comp scam subsidies, fantasy-deep UNE discounts, and one-sided, can't lose, CLEC rules -- largely fueled the CLEC and fiber bubbles and the subsequent telecom debt spiral when those bubbles burst in 2001-2002.

• Moreover, Mr Hundt's meglomaniacal attempt as FCC Chairman to personally micromanage all telecom supply and demand, every single price point and contract term through FCC regulation, and "mass" market wholesale competition with his UNE-P invention, -- which was subsequently found to be illegal by the way.
• Remember Mr Hundt's  Bell entry into long distance application "roadmap" required 100,000 page applications that had to be wheeled in to the FCC by dolly trucks!
• Read Mr Hundt's book if you don't believe me, "You say you want a Revolution?"
• I personally think he should have named the book a different Beatles title: "Back in the USSR." 

It will be an absolute abomination if this FCC is hood winked into giving multi-billion dollar corporate welfare to Hundt's FrontLine company and it's billionaire investors like John Doerr.

• Frontline basically wants the FCC to rig the 700 MHz auction by requiring that the licenses require net neutrality.
• That would effectively make the licenses dramatically less valuable.
• Thus Frontline would be able to get the most valuable commercial spectrum on the planet for billions below fair market value. what a deal!
• I sincerely hope this FCC "Saves the American taxpayer" from this outrageous corporate welfare scam.