Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on February 1, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of External & Legislative Affairs, responds to comments made by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt regarding spectrum auctions:
“Despite Reed Hundt’s recollection, the FCC’s track record on auctions is not an unbroken string of successes. In fact, Hundt’s tenure saw perhaps the biggest single fiasco of this sort, the PCS C Block auction. In that situation, the FCC used its discretion in a way that set aside valuable spectrum for ‘designated entities’, and excluded otherwise qualified companies from bidding. Over half of the 493 licenses from that auction were later returned to the government for non-payment, and the licenses of the largest winner, NextWave, were tied up in bankruptcy litigation for years. In that case, the FCC’s use of its ‘discretion’ ended up costing the U.S. Treasury billions, and left vitally needed spectrum unused for years.
“No one is suggesting the FCC’s conduct of auctions be micro-managed. But Congress – not the FCC – sets policy, especially when it directly impacts revenue needed for deficit reduction. And there is no more fundamental policy point than whether a spectrum auction should be open or closed. Congress has every right to tell the FCC it should not be picking winners and losers in the wireless market, or using its ‘discretion’ to tilt the playing field. We need open auctions where every competitor has a fair chance to participate, and that is what the House bill provides.”
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Posted by: Bob Quinn on January 27, 2012 at 3:48 pm
The business, education and advocacy communities have joined forces to observe Data Privacy Day tomorrow. In the past several days, programs have been held around to world to raise awareness about privacy issues. We at AT&T were delighted to take part by sponsoring and participating in a National Cyber Security Alliance forum, which was held yesterday in Washington.
As AT&T’s Chief Privacy Officer, every day is privacy day for me and my team It’s a topic we’re thinking about, talking about and acting upon on an ongoing basis. We work hard to anticipate and prepare for developments in the constantly changing world of privacy. Recently, for example, we have been focusing on instilling best privacy practices in our work with apps developers and online behavioral advertising.
At AT&T, we’ve long recognized that our privacy commitments are fundamental to the way we do business every day.
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Posted by: Bob Quinn on January 26, 2012 at 3:08 pm
“Broadband is the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century.”
That is the opening sentence of the National Broadband Plan, and the challenge that the Plan spends almost 400 pages trying to address. And that’s the point Sprint has ignored entirely in responding to my recent blog.
Fact: There are vast territories in rural Kansas and Oklahoma where Sprint used to offer their customers a 3G on-net broadband wireless experience where they will now rely on roaming (or, the practice of piggy-backing on competitors’ networks). Sprint may now claim that it had some type of “infrastructure” deal which it characterizes as “roaming” but that is not what Sprint proclaimed in its maps in identifying the “Sprint footprint” and it is certainly not what Sprint told its customers in the affected areas when it started selling them iPhones last year.
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