Open Access is Open Ended

It’s an election year and that means we can expect to hear pins drop at the FCC, since the agency historically goes quiet as the country prepares for a new president. One policy issue likely to get closer review after Nov. 4 is wireless open access. The wireless version of the Carterfone decision came about last year when the FCC said a certain block of the now-auctioning 700MHz spectrum must accommodate open-standards handsets and applications. However, as the telecom analysts at Stifel Nicolaus’ research division noted, much of the meaning of the open-access rules will be determined by the outcome of the presidential election, which, in turn, will determine leadership at the FCC and the courts.

That leaves unanswered some questions about future regulation and business practices.

What’s clear to open-access supporters, like Google Inc., is developers have free reign to come up with applications and devices never before seen. That promotes competition, they say. But dissenters like the Free State Foundation see a different future – the beginning of a regulation morass. “The FCC is taking a step backwards to imposing common carrier regulation, a backwards step that imports public utility regulation into the broadband world,” wrote Randolph J. May, president of the Free State Foundation, a Maryland-based think tank, in a blog last year.

When the FCC decided to make part of the 700MHz spectrum "open access only," not all commissioners agreed. Republican Robert McDowell was the most vocal opponent. “By dictating how spectrum must be used, the majority is locking the commission into a particular approach that is not guaranteed to work but is guaranteed to be nearly impossible to change,” he said in a prepared statement.

And whether or not they liked it, wireless carriers had little choice but to get on board with open-access standards. Thousands of citizens clamored for them, got them and will spend their money with carriers that give them what they want.

So, Verizon Communications Inc., for one, had a change of heart. The company had been lobbying against open-access mandates in the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction and has been a harsh critic of open-access proselytizing by Google. So Verizon’s announcement late last year that it would open its networks to “wireless devices, software and applications” by the end of 2008 surprised many.