March 2015

From my perspective, the recent AWS-3 auction has to be deemed an overall success. It is hard to say otherwise when it released 65 megahertz of spectrum for more efficient purposes, allocated 1611 licenses to current and prospective wireless providers to expand wireless broadband services, and grossed revenues totaling $44.9billion (net revenues are estimated at $41.3 billion). Nonetheless, this auction highlighted many important issues and raised quite a few concerns. Here are some takeaways that will help shape my views as we consider future spectrum policy:

Licensed vs. Unlicensed Spectrum. This auction clearly demonstrates there is still a critical need for licensed spectrum in our overall spectrum framework.
Paired vs. Unpaired Spectrum. As I have said before, I think the Commission, and the American people, lost an opportunity by not finding appropriate spectrum to complement the A1 and B1 blocks. Specifically, the FCC should have paired this 15 megahertz of spectrum, instead of offering 5 and 10 megahertz unpaired spectrum licenses.
Location Still Matters. This auction confirmed the significance of the value generated from licenses in the largest markets.
Low-Band vs. Mid-Band Spectrum. The overall revenues of this auction also cast doubt on some estimations of the unappreciated value of mid-band spectrum.
Designated Entities. The FCC must rethink its designated entity policies.
Planning Ahead. To ensure continued growth and innovation in America’s renowned wireless sector, we must identify now the spectrum bands that can be auctioned for exclusive use in the future.

An unknown party hijacked widely used tools developed by Baidu, the largest search engine in China, in an apparent attempt to target online software used to get around Chinese censorship. The assailants injected malicious code into the tools Baidu uses to serve ads on a wide range of Chinese Web sites and to provide analytics for Web developers, according to researchers. The code instructed the browsers of visitors to those sites to rapidly connect to other sites, but in a way that the visitors couldn't detect. That sent a flood of traffic to two anti-censorship tools offered by the group GreatFire hosted on GitHub, a popular site used by programmers to collaborate on software development. One of the tools targeted by the attack effectively allows Chinese users to access a translated version of the New York Times.

At times the attack made GitHub, which is used by programmers around the world and the US government itself, unavailable for some users. GitHub was briefly blocked inside China in 2013, but reinstated after an outcry from programmers. Because GitHub uses encryption to hide specific parts of the site, the Chinese government cannot selectively block only some of GitHub's content. But blocking the site wholesale could be damaging to China's economy because it is so widely used by the tech industry. While determining the entities behind these types of attacks is difficult, the Chinese government would be an obvious culprit, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The only people who would really benefit from it would be China," he said. Using such a bold tactic to attack content it dislikes seems to be either a way for the government to send a message or test out new capabilities, he said.

Lawmakers in Congress have largely ceded their ground to regulatory bureaucrats, the head of Verizon told legislators. In a letter to the bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees, CEO Lowell McAdam lent support to Congressional efforts to update the 1996 Telecommunications Act, saying the existing telecommunications laws and regulatory processes are “outdated and broken.” “It is time for Congress to re-take responsibility for policymaking in the Internet ecosystem,” he wrote. “It is time for Congress to assert its longstanding role of setting, in a bipartisan fashion, public policies for the communications sector that both protect consumers and provide incentives for investment and innovation in new products and services.”

In the short term, he urged lawmakers to come together on legislation to replace the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality regulations, which take the controversial step of reclassifying Web service to treat it like a public utility and “lead to far more questions than answers.” In his letter, he also pointed to the scuffle over the FCC’s recent auction of some government airwave licenses, during which two Dish Network subsidiaries were able to obtain about $3 billion in government subsidies intended to incentivize small businesses to participate.

[Commentary] When I first saw the Federal Communications Commission order fining Schurz's WDBJ Roanoke-Lynchburg (VA) $325,000 for broadcast indecency, I frankly didn't have much sympathy for the station. I figured that the offending story about an ex-porn star joining a local rescue squad was another attempt by a station to pump up the ratings with a some gratuitous sex. But after looking at the station's response to the FCC inquiry and a transcript of the story, I see that the story, which aired in July 2012, is legit.

It seems that some people around Cave Spring (VA) apparently didn't like having a ex-porn star on the rescue squad and were trying to get her bounced from it. I do believe the station's story. I don't think the reporter, the photographer, the news director or any producer intentionally included the offending images into the story as some kind of joke. But it really shouldn't matter. Regulating indecency in broadcasting should be as unconstitutional as it is in publishing, the movies, the Internet and every other medium.