Off the wall, again

Wall Street Journal editorialists must be feeling downright cocky about now, fresh off their inimitable ‘I-told-you-so’ jab at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin in the aftermath of Frontline Wireless’ demise and subsequent handwringing over whether anyone else in the private sector has the stomach to spend billions of dollars on a national commercial/public-safety broadband network – a task made all the more daunting by having to answer to first responders at every turn.
WSJ opinion orators have never been hot on the public-private partnership idea, having first aired suspicions last April about what the FCC might do to accommodate two Washington insiders – Reed Hundt, Frontline’s vice chairman and a former Clinton-appointed FCC chief, and Morgan O’Brien, Cyren Call czar and former Nextel chairman – to improve a highly fragmented, funding challenged public-safety regime whose deficient interoperable and broadband capabilities were highlighted after the 9/11 terrorist strikes.
Martin was on the receiving end of the latest WSJ broadside, having been accused of tailoring 700 MHz rules to Frontline, only to have the Silicon Valley-backed startup disappear when upfront money was due. The attack by such a powerfully conservative editorial voice had to sting such a powerfully conservative telecom regulator. Indeed, addressing reporters at a rare press briefing, Martin was verbose in arguing that Frontline did not get all it sought.
It’s true: The D-Block experiment is risky business. There’s a decent chance the WSJ will have another chance to stick it to Martin if AT&T Mobility or Verizon Wireless or some dark horse doesn’t place a minimum $1.3 billion bid for the license. But would that prove the newspaper’s editorial staff right? Does failing to get an optimal result in the first stab at an untested, unconventional solution to a life-and-death problem mean the FCC should not have tried? Would it have been more prudent for the FCC to have played it safe, to have waited and seen whether the markets might somehow sort it all out? The WSJ’s criticism of Martin is actually a not-so-well-disguised dig at government itself, an institution that frequently overreaches and worsens matters yet remains an essential – albeit highly imperfect – safety net in our democratic-capitalist system.
Believing the FCC should’ve just sat on its hands and ignored the limited opportunity to leverage the 700 MHz auction to improve the sorry state of public-safety communications in America is the real folly here.