Month: February 2008

700 MHz: When Will it End

, , , , ,

E Block reached its reserve price in round 44 on Thursday and the FCC announced that it was going to six bidding rounds per day beginning on Friday, Feb. 8.

However, while D Block is probably permanently stalled below its reserve price for Auction 73 and will likely have to be reauctioned, there is still sufficient activity in the auction to expect that it will continue for as much as two more weeks, depending on whether the FCC decides to further accelerate the number of rounds per day. The following table shows the rates of convergence to full clearance over the past six and the past three rounds. These rates are consistent with an auction conclusion in the last week of February or the first week of March if previous auctions are a reasonable guide. However, there have been sufficient anomalies in auction performance in Auction 73, notably high amounts by which A and B Blocks have exceeded their reserve prices and the speed with which these prices have been obtained, which caution us not to rely too much on previous auction behaviour. The FCC has been gradually upping the number of bidding rounds per day and I expect further increases, as the agency seems inclined to press the auction to conclusion.

On the basis of these facts I would estimate at least two, perhaps three more weeks of bidding, primarily in E Block, before we see the end of Auction 73.

Hypothesis: Why Limbaugh, Coulter et al are renouncing McCain

, , ,

As has been reported widely, the right wing blowhards of talk radio & pundit television have been making a big stink about how John McCain is anathema. Some people who comment on this phenomenon attempt to explain it in terms of ideological disagreements between the candidate and said blowhards, or in terms of personal animosities arising from McCain’s prickly temper and his dissing of some of the lesser gods of the Republican pantheon, etc.

I think that’s a lot of baloney.

Continue reading

Comcast Reacts To FCC Probe By Changing Fine Print

, , , , ,

Well, it appears that Comcast has learned a valuable lesson from our complaint about blocking BitTorrent and subsequent FCC investigation. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, the lesson appears to be “make our policies more explicitly outrageous.”

My thanks to Marvin Amouri at Free Press for this excellent analysis of Comcast’s new terms of service. As Marvin notes, Comcast released this puppy quietly on its website, taking advantage of the pre-existing fine print to alter terms unilaterally. (Question for Comcast, if I don’t like the new terms, can I cancel without tirggering an early termination fee?)

Marvin really says everything that needs to be said on his excellent post, so I shall limit myself with simply rolling my eyes and wondering when we will have a Congress and an FCC genuinely interested in promoting broadband adoption and competition rather than providing cover for lazy duopolists squeezing locked in customers unwilling to invest in network upgrades. Oh yeah, I forgot. According to this Administration, we already solved the broadband problem.

Stay tuned . . . .

The Economics of Telco Deregulation: Califronia Dreaming, Economic Realities, and the “Reverse Ramsey” Pricing Model

, , , , , ,

This article in the LA Times on the impact of telco price deregulation in California is a good illustration of the complex nature of the economics of competition and deregulation, and why it’s so friggin’ important for regulators and the public to understand this stuff. In 2006, the California PUC decided that voice service faced sufficient competition to phase out price regulation. In theory, competition would lead to lower costs and increased services and would remove the invariably stultifying impacts of regulation.

The result has been an increase in the availability of services and an overall decrease in the cost of service, but not in the way that ordinary folks understand or that regulators professed to expect from deregulation. Most customers have, in fact, increased the amount they pay for telecommunications services overall. But because they buy larger bundles of services that profess to discount the price of each element in the bundle, the average cost per service is lower although the amount of money paid has gone up. That might seem a good value trade if it were driven strictly by consumer choice. But consumer choice is driven by the decision of telcos to increase the cost of stand alone services. So people not looking to bundle do so because it is “cheaper” while poor people who cannot afford the higher price for the bundle get a real price hike with no value added.

Example: Feldco the Telco raises the price of basic local voice from $10 to $20, and raises the price of additional services taken a la carte from $5 to $10, but I offer a package of basic voice and five additional services for $30 (which I tell you charging $5 for voice and $ 5 for each additional feature). Any customer that can afford to upgrade to my bundled package will do so, because the “value” of the bundle (at my new prices) is $70 and you are getting it for $30. So even though you upgraded and are paying me more, the cost of basic voice (calculated as part of the package) just dropped by $5. What a savings! of course, the customers who cannot afford the additional $10 a month for the bundle experience a real price increase of $10.

Basically, the problem of wealth inequity that we have seen in every other sector of the economy — where the highest earners have enjoyed the greatest increases — is now mirrored in California’s telecommunication service market. How did this happen? Do we care? And what does this tell us about the future of the metered internet, wireless competition, and the ever popular video competition?

Answers below . . . .

Continue reading

Why I Have Decided To Endorse Obama.

, , , , ,

So here it is “Super Duper Tuesday.” My own local primary (MD) will not be until next week. And while endorsing a candidate is always a perilous thing for those of us that work in Washington, I have decided to give the Tales of the Sausage Factory Endorsement to Senator Barack Obama.

Why? See below . . . .

Continue reading

Bob Knight retires

,

In my little screed yesterday about how the Republican values of fake piety, cheating, and worship of authority pervade the discussion of sports on Boston’s WEEI radio station, I mentioned the reputation of Bobby Knight, the winningest coach in the history of college basketball, for not cheating. By all accounts these were the priorities that guided his entire forty-year carreer:

1. Ensure an education (both academically and in life) for student-athletes.
2. Follow the NCAA rules.
3. Win.

Bob Knight retired yesterday, “effective immediately”.

I was among the many many people who thought that Indiana University did the right thing in firing Coach Knight. He never learned to control his temper, and could be an outrageous bully. He forced the situation at Indiana, essentially telling the regents of the school, “me or the president of the University: one of us has to go.” So, appropriately, he was told to go, leaving a school where he had coached for 29 years and won three national championships. He spent the twilight of his career putting little-known Texas Tech on the basketball map.

Knight’s nickname was “the General” or “the little General”, and Texas Tech was a kind of exile, his own little Elba Island. But if he thought it was an ignominious come-down, he never let on. To me, an occasional watcher of college basketball games on TV, Knight seemed as happy there as he did anywhere else. Which is not very happy at all.

Today I tip my cap to the man. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports has written a great appreciation of Knight’s integrity here.

UPDATE

In the comments, Armands makes a good point:


That’s twice now you’ve used the word “homoeroticism” without any context or explanation, and with an obvious disapproval. Very disheartened. Be more careful which words you treat as slurs, and how you throw them around.

SECOND UPDATE

In order to prevent any confusion about my intent, I’ve removed the word from the opening sentence.

Please see below for a clarification.

Continue reading

700 MHz: Oops

, , , , , ,

The last round of the day for Auction 73, Round 31, was postponed until tomorrow by the FCC late today. The announcement on the Integrated Spectrum Auction System read:

“2/4/2008 04:11:42 PM
Round 31 Postponed
Due to a delay in the availability of complete downloadable reports, Round 31 will be postponed until 9:30 a.m. ET tomorrow, February 5, 2008.

”We will continue with the previously announced five round bidding schedule until further notice. Bidders are reminded to monitor auction announcements for further changes in the bidding schedule.”

Sources at the FCC indicate that the system glitched on producing the end-of-round reports from Round 30 and there was insufficient time to locate and correct the bug before Round 31 was scheduled to commence at 4:30 p.m. EST. Round 30 still hasn’t been posted on the Integrated Spectrum Auction System as of 4:40 p.m. EST, and it was due at 3:40, which suggests that the bug hunt is a bit more complicated than the FCC initially anticipated, but there’s no reason to think the auction won’t recommence tomorrow as scheduled.

Saints Belichick and Brady fail attempt at bodily ascension into heaven; whiney-ass titty-babies of WEEI-land put on suicide watch

,

On Boston’s WEEI radio, where mindless Republican cant mixes with sports cliche, capitalist hagiography and homoerotic hero worship, the pain is palpable.

I’m a fan of the New England Patriots and wanted them to win the Super-Duper Bowl. But I certainly didn’t expect that they would, given what went down the last time these two teams played. Neither did I expect that they would lose. I had no expectations; I thought it could go either way. It was a fun game to watch, back and forth right down to the last minute. The Patriots could have won it, but they didn’t. Oh well.

But there’s a bright side, a very shiny, happy bright side to the Pat’s loss. And that’s that the canonization of saints-in-waiting Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and Bob Kraft and the rest of the Patriots enterprise has been put on indefinite hold. And what’s even better, all the bozo Pats fans who take this stuff too seriously will have to shut up, at least a little. And what’s the best thing of all is that the talk radio radio hosts of WEEI, among whom are some of the biggest assholes in all New England, are going to be whining and weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth from now until spring training, whilst the rest of the sports-watching country gloats about how the “arrogant, cheating” Pats choked.

What a happy thought!

Continue reading

700 MHz: More Evidence for Success of Anonymous Bidding Rules

, , , , , , , , , , ,

I’d like to reiterate what fellow Wetmachiner Harold Feld wrote yesterday: the telecoms incumbents’ claims of problems arising from anonymous bidding are nonsense, part of a campaign to sow disinformation lest Auction 73 (700 MHz) and its success persuade the FCC to permanently adopt anonymous bidding rules for its auctions.

I call your attention to this table, which compares the number of bids on each license in B Block in rounds 1-26 of Auction 73 to the number of bids on each comparable CMA in Auction 66 (AWS-1) in rounds 1-26 of that auction. Note that in general the smaller the CMA number, the larger the population of the CMA (e.g., CMA001 is New York City and its immediate environs, CMA002 is the Los Angeles area, etc.).

What is striking about the data presented in this table is threefold. First, significantly more bids are being placed in general in rounds 1-26 in Auction 73 than in Auction 66. Second, extraordinarily more bids are being placed on the smaller and intermediate-size CMAs in Auction 73 than in Auction 66. Third, a much smaller percentage of licenses are receiving no bids in the first 26 rounds in Auction 73 than in Auction 66.

I am hard put to find an explanation of this extraordinary increase in competition, particularly for the smaller and intermediate-size licenses, which does not involve the effects of anonymous bidding. I suggest that the data, even though they do not disclose bidder identities, are entirely consistent with a more vigorous presence of new entrant and non-incumbent bidders who are protected from retaliatory and blocking bidding by large incumbents by anonymous bidding and are, therefore, more willing to engage in strong competition.

The telcos and cablecos can wail and moan to Communications Daily about the “risks” of anonymous bidding to the FCC, but the principal risk of anonymous bidding seems thus far to be the risk that fat-cat telecoms incumbents won’t be able to get all the spectrum in this auction by their usual bullying and exclusionary tactics. There’s no risk at all to the treasury — revenue from the auction is already wildly exceeding pre-auction projections — and there’s no risk that competition will be wan, as the data presented here amply demonstrate.