FCC Votes for Auction Rules
Jul 31, 2007
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved rules for the upcoming 700 MHz auction and, as this Associated Press report outlines, the vote was 4-1 in favor of open access rules that met some but not all of the prerequisites that Google and other open access supporters had been calling for.
The Commission, minus Commissioner Robert McDowell who dissented, approved open access provisions "that will allow customers to use whatever phone and software they want on about one-third of the network to be auctioned." They did not, however, go so far as to require wholesale access to the network, which was a key provision for Google when it announced that it might bid in the auction. It's estimated that the auction will raise about $15 billion.
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