The Technograph

Last year, Google made quite a brouhaha in the telecommunications business on two counts: the auctioning of the 700MHz wireless spectrum, and the freeing of unlicensed TV airwaves for public use. For a brief synopsis of both situations, Google guaranteed a minimum bid of $4.6 billion to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) auction of the 700MHz wireless spectrum, the wireless frequencies that will be unused once TV broadcasters are forced to migrate to digital signals, if and only if the FCC could guarantee that the spectrum could be leased wholesale and that devices employing it were open to use by any service provider. After bidding ended, Google promptly sued Verizon, the winner of a certain block of the spectrum, for legally side-stepping the requirement for devices to be open.

Really, Google, what did you expect from an entire industry whose modus operandi is to lock their customers in, by phone, service term, or provider? Why else would AT&T be the only service provider you can get an iPhone with?

The latter situation, meanwhile, involved the so-called “white-space” spectrum, or the frequencies “between” TV channels. From Google's website, FreeTheAirwaves.com:

Remember that fuzzy static between channels on the old TVs? Today more than three-quarters of those radio airwaves, or "white space" spectrum, are completely unused. This vast public resource could offer a revolution in wireless services of all kinds, including universal wireless Internet.

In this case, Google launched a successful campaign to petition for the freedom of whitespace frequencies to unlicensed public use, gathering a grand total of over 20,000 signatures to its cause. On November 4th, 2008, the FCC voted 5-0 to free the whitespace frequencies. Noble and selfless Google at the forefront of public service, once again.

However, as Dan Schiller, professor of Library and Information Sciences reminded me in our last correspondence on the topic, it is important to remember that Google, like any other for-profit company, is driven by its stockholders and its bottom-line. “I don't side with the Verizons or with the Googles,” he said in an email, “Both are self-aggrandizing rather than citizenly.” He went on to say that the solution seemed not to create a new class of unlicensed users, but instead to make it a substantial requirement or reward for public spectrum band users (read: service providers) to become responsible for the public in some way shape or form. This means focusing on something integral that we may have all forgotten in the rush to market-logic: what we, the public, need.

In the 1920s, the US required that corporations apply to a federal agency, the embryonic FCC, to use the wireless spectrum, and those licensees had to bear what were called “public interest responsibilities,” the exact content of which was hotly contested, though they amounted to what, today, would be called corporate social responsibilities. Various religious, cultural, labor, and educational institutions pushed for robust, or open access, and noncommercial interests, whereas large broadcasters and corporations pushed the other way, for minimal access.

With the Cold War, however, came a fear of Socialism that remains to this day, ending the entire democratic process of debate over the use of the wireless spectrum. To further compound the problem, various think-tanks and corporate PR people seized on this as an opportunity to espouse the idea that public interest responsibilities were illusory. As Professor Schiller put it, “that the only public interest was market self-interest.”

With the financial meltdown as evidence, the result of failing financial engineering spiraling out of control, the market's short-sighted self-interest just may not be the best for the public. So maybe it's time we asked ourselves, “What do we need? A failing automobile industry? A trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout? Or should we instead start thinking about corporate “public interest responsibilities,” and talking about what they, once in a while, owe us? After 2008's $700 billion bailout, they do, after all, owe us.

Tagged with: Google, wireless, Internet, radio, airspace, wifi, digital