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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday March 27 2014, @02:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the follow-the-money dept.

Angry Jesus writes:

A rare auction of valuable frequencies has sent the big four carriers on a lobbying spree that may determine who controls your cell phone. Verizon and AT&T want the FCC to remove restrictions that limit the amount of spectrum any one single buyer can purchase, making the size of the bid the only consideration, and they've surreptitiously commissioned academic research they can use to back-stop their claims of why that would be a good thing. T-Mobile and Sprint have hired their own set of think-tanks to do the same for the opposite position, but they don't have as much money as the two big companies have to spend on "useful idiots" who agree with their positions but not necessarily their goals.

Behind all of these machinations lies the larger question are spectrum auctions and the attendant spectrum oligopoly even in the public interest at all?

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by hamsterdan on Thursday March 27 2014, @09:41PM

    by hamsterdan (2829) on Thursday March 27 2014, @09:41PM (#22252)

    Yes it does. The CRTC in Canada reserved some frequencies for the new players to prevent Robelus from buying them all. Some new players had deep enough pockets to get in the game (but are selling packages that are about the same as competition, so costumers are still screwed.)

    What scares me more is we lost channels 70-83 (800Mhz) in the '80s to cell companies, lost 53-69 a couple years ago (700, cell companies again), next step will be 35-50 (600) leaving very few channels for off-air TV. (gues who gets screwed again?)

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