We didn’t spend too much time hedge-hogging last week, what with the upcoming I.T. Show and the Show Daily preparations. But there were still a few things to get us talking.
Intrepid RCR reporters Heather Forsgren Weaver and Jeffrey Silva broke the story about Verizon Wireless pitching a plan to build a nationwide broadband public-safety network in the 700 MHz band. The Verizon Wireless plan would use 12 of the 24 megahertz set aside for public safety to build a nationwide public-safety broadband network.
Verizon Wireless would augment its existing infrastructure as necessary to give public safety the coverage it needs and then would extract rent from public-safety agencies across the country to use that infrastructure. The spectrum, however, would not be shared with Verizon Wireless’ commercial customers.
Does this all sound familiar? It should. Verizon Wireless’ proposal is, like, exactly what Cyren Call proposed earlier this year. Except Cyren Call wants to use part of the spectrum that Congress plans to auction off, not the 24 megahertz that Congress has already allocated to public safety.
The catch to Verizon Wireless’ proposal is that it won’t give public safety more spectrum, like Cyren Call wants to, it’ll just charge public safety rent for spectrum it has already been allocated. But really, who can fault Verizon Wireless? It’s only doing what it thinks is right…and will make money. No matter how much we think we can strategize, no one can truly challenge wireless carriers.
Oh, and we first heard about this in August. When D.C. is dead, something usually is going on behind the scenes. We had flashbacks back to Nextel Communications Inc.’s plans to take NextWave’s spectrum troubles off the government’s hands in the 1990s. Just a little proposal vetted at the FCC when everyone was on vacation. The major problem with that plan, much like Verizon Wireless’ proposal, is you can’t just exchange frequencies without the government being involved.
But back to Verizon Wireless’ plan: What if public-safety can’t come up with the rent one month? What kind of landlord will Verizon Wireless be? I’m sure that public safety will use the standard renter trick and mail an envelope but conveniently forget to include the check.
- Managing Editor Dan Meyer broke our Motorola Q test phone. (Dan did it. Dan did it.) And the Q doesn’t come with a master reset button. Hmm, a Microsoft Corp. Windows-based product with no hard reset button—seems crazy. (Maybe it’s a CrazyQ.) Every Windows-powered device should have at least four different ways to restart a crashed operating system, as well as extra-strength padding for when the device is inevitably thrown against a brick wall. Which ever Motorola engineer decided to forgo a hard reset button for the sake of a slimmer form factor should be forced to read Online Editor Mike Dano’s mind-numbing Worst of the Week columns until their eyes bleed, which shouldn’t take more than four minutes.
- Sprint Nextel is going to offer movies like “Scarface” on its new Sprint Movies pay-per-view service for cell phones. This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Say hello to my little friend!”
Though we wonder just how effective the true meaning of the movie will translate after Sprint Nextel edits the movie to its TV14 standards. If anything, Scarface is known for its subtle nuances that we fear haphazard editing could ruin.
