Crashing the party can be risky business in the wireless industry.
Just ask Cyren Call Communications Corp., which dared to be audacious by asking policy-makers to take a valuable chunk of 700 MHz frequencies off the auction block so they could be deployed for a nationwide public-safety broadband network the private sector would build and share with first responders. Cyren Call, led by industry veteran Morgan O’Brien, got pummeled by wireless and high-tech heavyweights, many virulently opposed to an unorthodox approach for satisfying public-safety communications needs-particularly interoperability and broadband connectivity-that have eluded conventional solutions long before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Or ask M2Z Networks Inc., which approached the Federal Communications Commission-whose high-profile emphasis on broadband access and deployment has President Bush’s imprimatur-for 20 megahertz of idle frequencies to make free high-speed Internet available to citizens, public-safety agencies and others. As things now stand, Bush will not achieve his goal of universal, affordable broadband service in 2007.
M2Z, headed by former FCC wireless chief John Muleta, got pounded with the same hammer that came down so hard on Cyren Call. But something else happened. All of a sudden several other entities filed applications for a national wireless broadband network in the same vacant 2155-2175 MHz advanced wireless services band sought first by M2Z. It’s true: Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
First there is the off-the-cuff criticism when a proposal first comes to light, followed by official obliteration in FCC comments and petitions to deny.
Distruption in numbers
Skype Communications, a Voice-over-Internet-Protocol phone company, will find out. Its proposal to confirm the right of consumers to load third-party Internet communications software onto mobile phones and to attach devices to cellular networks has already been met with stage one, smash-mouth denunciations. Later this month, it likely will get the official treatment when public comments are filed at the FCC.
Frontline Wireless L.L.C., which proposed a public-private approach for deploying a national public-safety broadband network without removing spectrum from the 700 MHz auction later this year, could find itself in the same boat as Cyren Call, M2Z and Skype when industry provides feedback on proposed FCC rule changes it seeks.
Disruption can be downright dangerous. It is difficult going up against the $120 billion cellular industry and its sponsors in official Washington.
But Cyren Call and M2Z continue to fight, and show no signs of going away. If Skype is to survive, it better be geared for one long, tough fight.
M2Z submitted voluminous filings to the FCC last week, addressing head-on criticism by mobile-phone carriers, wireless broadband operators and other detractors.
“The parties opposing the application are not motivated by a desire to bring the highest and best services to American consumers,” M2Z told the FCC. “To the contrary, the petitioners are motivated by a desire to protect their private economic interests, which would be threatened by the entry into the market of a true new national provider of wireless broadband services. Their meritless arguments against the grant of the application are another attempt to guard access to spectrum that the petitioners typically regard as their own to use rather than as a public resource.”
Mobile-phone carriers, who have paid billions of dollars for many of their licenses, insist M2Z should not get a government subsidy in the form of free spectrum. Moreover, they argue, M2Z’s plan is based on faulty assumptions.
The arguments are similar to those lodged against Cyren Call.
A month after an industry-sponsored economic study ripped into the Cyren Call plan, which calls for a public-safety broadband trust to oversee 30 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band, the startup responded. Cyren Call said the study, conducted by Criterion Economics and funded by the High Tech DTV Coalition-which includes cellphone trade association CTIA, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA Inc. and others-“misrepresents key facts, ignores reality and distorts the record.”
“The CE Report also attempts to craft an argument and analysis that purports to show the lack of financial viability for a shared public-safety/commercial network, but instead ignores the history and the current condition of the domestic wireless industry,” Cyren Call added.
