Eli Richman

In the days following John Oliver's Sunday video on network neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission's public comment filing page has blown up. Indeed, the volume of commentary was over 10 times the amount Oliver inspired over the same number of days in 2014, when his influence was widely credited with encouraging the FCC's decision to reclassify internet service providers under Title II regulations a few months later. The comments varied greatly in form and content. The number of comments probably isn't reflective of the true number of people commenting, as some of the comments were submitted under the same name.

With the Federal Communications Commission's forward incentive auction now complete, providers who won licenses have differing amounts of new 600 MHz spectrum to bring to market. But the amount providers paid for those licenses varied wildly, with some companies paying more than 10 times as much per license as other companies in certain cases.

Big providers like AT&T and T-Mobile generally paid the most, as these companies had no bidding credits to lighten the cost. But that doesn't tell the full story, as AT&T spend almost eight times as much as T-Mobile spent per license even as the latter took home a whopping 1,525 new licenses. AT&T, meanwhile, obtained just 23. For small providers, here defined as those pulling in under $55 million in revenue, the results were similarly uneven. Channel 51 paid far and away the most for each of its eight new licenses, while Omega Wireless, with 119 new licenses, got away paying under $1 million for each one. Of course, the playing field in this case was somewhat skewed, as small providers got a scaling credit depending on their revenue size.

The FirstNet Board approved a major budget package, which at $6.585 billion would support a wide swath of developments targeted for Fiscal Year 2017. In addition to $85 million for FirstNet operations, the budget included $6.5 billion obligated toward supporting a network contract in FY17. FirstNet would contribute up to that amount to enable a public/private partnership in the contract, as well as 20 Megahertz of low-band spectrum.

“This mission-driven budget reflects our goals for the organization, for the Network, and for public safety,” said FirstNet Chair Sue Swenson. “It will drive the achievement of major milestones along our Strategic Roadmap in what will be a pivotal year for FirstNet, including critical post-award priorities such as State plans and continued outreach to public safety.” The development couldn’t come soon enough for first responders counting on the network to transmit life-saving information between centers such as police departments, fire departments or emergency medical services. Such responders been told to wait for years now, but are also in a profession that waits for no one.