Wrestling with open access

FCC chairman Kevin Martin has created quite a controversy with his comments over open access rules applying to the upcoming 700 MHz auction. The wireless industry is doing everything short of calling for his head on a plate. But the odd thing is, what Martin is saying isn't really a revolutionary idea by any means. In fact, it's what the wireless industry has already concluded. The days of the closed mobile data model are numbered.

Sprint has reached that conclusion. Not only has it opened up its mobile content deck, its new WiMAX network purportedly will be an open-access network, and a wholesale one. AT&T/Cingular has been fumbling with open models since the days of mMode. And I often get the impression these days that T-Mobile couldn't care two figs what you do with its plodding mobile data network as long as you pay its monthly access fees. So it's no surprise that the most vocal critic of Martin's open access comments has been Verizon Wireless, which runs the most closed data network of them all (though, to give the company credit, it's also been one of the most successful ones).

I can understand VZW's distaste for having such regulations foisted on it. Wireless operators have been paying billions for spectrum of late, and being told exactly what business case that spectrum can be used for is certainly distasteful. But maybe the industry is looking at the equation the wrong way. With spectrum so valuable, the tendency is to horde it like misers, releasing capacity in little bits and pieces usually attached to very specific services. The wireless industry also rightly points out that open access spectrum would lower the value of that spectrum to the license holder, and thus reduce the windfall the federal government takes in from the auction. So why not embrace that model? Maybe the government shouldn't be relying so much on the auction of the public airwaves to fill up its coffers. If the spectrum sold for cheap there wouldn't be such an incentive to wall it off from other providers. Certainly the cost of building a 700 MHz network would be high, but ultimately the one who builds it has control over it, even if it has to let other people play with it.

These airwaves are owned by the public, and I think Martin makes a good case for the fact that the public would be better served by open networks rather than closed. AOL may have brought the Internet to the masses, and the Bell companies and the cable operators may have delivered the first home broadband, but it wasn't those companies that truly innovated the Internet services and applications we depend on so much today. But the FCC can't have it both ways. It can't expect to use the wireless industry as its own personal piggy bank and then dictate their every move afterward. If we want a new model for the mobile Internet, great -- but we have to do away with the old model of distributing spectrum to get it.

Contact me at kfitchard@telephonyonline.com.