My Thoughts Exactly:
Happy Birthday, Pete!

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Sunday afternoon I went to a celebratory sing-along at the Featherstone Art Center in honor of Pete Seeger on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Pete himself was evidently in New York City at a big concert hosted by Bruce Springsteen, peace be upon him, but I am glad that I was where I was.

I’m generally not the sing-along type, but heck, this was a celebration for Pete Seeger! The man’s not only a great champion of liberty, equality, and democracy; he’s also the driving force behind Sing Out!, and who the hell am I to disrespect that? When Pete Seeger says “Sing!”, I sing. I sang as loudly and as well as I was able. Everybody sang. We sounded really good.

The United States of America skated very close to fascism in the 1950’s and 60’s. When most of country was denying or avoiding or hiding in fear from this simple, ugly truth, Pete Seeger was there singing it out to us, standing up to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, accompanying himself on 5-string banjo and smiling like the risen Christ.

It’s not at all clear that we’ve skated away from that hideous “ism” even now. Rather than rant about that, however, (it occurred to me as I was sitting on the floor Sunday, singing like a schoolchild, laughing or crying, or both), maybe I should try to learn a thing or two from the old woodchopping folk singer.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Republican Bill To Reform FCC Not A Bad Place To Start Discussions.

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There’s an old saying that goes “when it rains, can’t fix the roof; when it don’t rain, the roof don’t need fixin.’” That rather sums up most efforts at government reform. When you’re out of power, you can’t really do anything about it. When you’re in power, it turns out things don’t really need fixing. So no shocker that Joe Barton (R-TX), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, joined by Mr. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), ranking member of the Telecom Subcommittee, have decided to introduce an FCC reform bill now that (a) Democrats control Congress, and (b) Democrats control the FCC. You can find the press release here and the full bill text here.

If political expediency were a mortal sin, however, nothing would ever get done. So it is not enough to simply note that politicians of either party are more apt to want reform when they are on the outside. It is important to examine the bill in its own right. Given that a lot of folks in both parties and in the public interest community would like to see some longstanding issues corrected, and I have opined on the matter myself from time to time, it’s important to consider whether the Barton-Stearns bill makes a good start and a basis for going forward. Remember, we want functional government. If out of power Rs are now in the mood to address real issues and get substantive stuff done, the thing to do is make it easy for them to work together with Ds. Perhaps it will become a habit. OTOH, as Ds have learned over the last several month, agreement for the sake of agreement is not worth doing.

My personal feeling after a quick read is that this bill is not a bad place to start on some long-standing procedural gripes, but that there are a couple of things that worry me.

Details below . . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
FCC Announces 2.5 GHz Broadband Radio Service Auction. Who Will Show Up to Fight Over Rules? Or Bid?

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One might think from the press coverage that all spectrum auctions are multi-billion dollar affairs like the AWS-1 Auction in ’06 or the 700 MHz Auction in ’08. But these auctions are the exception rather than the rule. More typical are the steady stream of small auctions like Auction 78, which auctioned remaining licenses in the AWS-1 band.

Which brings us to the Wireless Bureau’s Public Notice of the Broadband Radio Service (BRS) auction. Some of us have followed the adventures of the 2.5 GHz band back when it was “Wireless Cable” and the non-commercial licensees used it to offer closed circuit television for what we now call distance learning. These days of course, we know this as the “Broadband Radio Service” (BRS) and the “Educational Broadband Radio Service” (EBRS), and we care about the 2.5 GHz band as the home of Clearwire and the great hope of WiMax.

You might think that the “WiMax” auction would be a big deal — but only if you don’t know the band, its history, and the inventory up for auction. If you know that, you know why this auction is likely to prove as boring but ploddingly necessary as a run for office supplies.

So why do I consider this worth blogging about, other than my sentimental fondness for the band and my general obsession about things spectrum? Because (a) my cause celebre, anonymous bidding, faces its first post-700 MHz challenge, and (b) 2.5 GHz is the home of the major WiMax plays, and what happens in the auction has the potential to shape the field going forward and influence whether deployment goes more smoothly or gets all bollixed up.

More detail below . . . .

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Inventing the Future:
2.0 Sees the Light of Day

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Sorry for going dark for a bit. I’ve been working on our 2.0 version. You gotta love it when you work way hard and it’s way fun. But:

  1. I’ve had no time to write.

  2. I couldn’t write about what I was working on (until now).

I’ve got lots to babble about now and will do so soon, after a bit of rest. In the mean time some other folks’ take: Reuters (press release), Culture of Collaboration (blogger’s tight overview), Virtual World News (nice summary representation).

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Congratulations to Gene Kimmelman, and to the American People.

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I haven’t been posting much and will continue to be busy for the next while, owing to Passover and bunch of other things. But I had to give a brief post of congratulations to Gene Kimmelman on his appointment to the Department of Justice as Chief Counsel for Competition Policy and Intergovernmental Relations. Gene has been a tireless advocate for consumer protection and pro-competitive policies as the head of Consumers Unions Washington office. His addition to the DoJ in this critical office is good news for those who want to see policies that genuinely promote competition rather than deregulation for its own sake.

Stay tuned . . . .