The Basis for the DOJ to Break up the FCC Granted Carrier Monopoly on the Wireless Internet
Mark Beaulieu
(article in development - last edited Oct 6 2006)

In 1982 the U.S. Department of Justice(DOJ), headed by U.S. District Court Judge Harold Greene, broke up the Bell telephone monopoly into one long distance company AT&T and seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), more commonly called "Baby Bells." After a historic 1984 consent decree, the company was forced to spin off its local phone companies and the FCC issued an arbitrary set of rules to control ownership and operation of cellular networks.

To restore a fair market, remove barriers of trade, and improve the public welfare, the DOJ will be required to break up the wireless license grants given by the FCC. This will result in an open radio Internet base of law.

How did the 1982 case come about and where are we now?

Item 1 - Equipment Prohibition - A company was prohibited from connecting their modem to the Bell Telephone wired network because it might "bring the network down". The small company won, but the Bell monopoly moved very slowly to amend its policy of insisting that customers only buy Bell equipment.

Item 2 - Restraint of Competition - In the US, consider that you cannot buy the phone of your choice to attach to the carrier of your choice. This is unlike the computer industry where you can buy the hardware and OS of your choice.

Item 3 - Restraint of Trade - The products consumers can buy are limited by the monopoly and not the market. Again and again the "walled garden" approach by carriers and the absolute insistence of their products appearing first in all public sales channels is clearly a restraint of trade. The problem with this type of restraint is that it denies the more natural free market where competing vendors and consumer choice fuel a larger and more taxable economy.

Item 4 - Not Serving the Public Interest - Defining public interest is often self-serving, but we must face the facts. The public is very interested in the Internet. The wireless Internet is now part of the Internet. The entire Internet serves the public as receiving critical life saving information, as well as a public conduit for communication and citizenry participation. The FCC is in the business of granting spectrum for the public good. It can be shown again and again that the carrier implementation of their network is serving regulated monopolistic for profit ends and not the public good. We can begin with E911 that was mandated for implementation in the 1990s and is still available. The nature of Internet media now far exceeds the narrow goals of voice subscriber licensing and the greater good of public interest must be rectified.

Item 5 - Premise of the FCC Licensing is Invalid - The effect of the 1982 decision was to declare that the Bell Telephone "backhaul" was in the public interest. But for broadcasters and cellular companies the airspace is in the public interest. Trouble is that the FCC grants spectrum for very specific media and regulates that media purpose in very specific ways. Essentially the air belongs to everyone for every Internet purpose.

Internet media, as Nicholas Negroponte points out from his tenure at MIT Media Lab is a bit broadcasting business. On the Internet with a computer anyone can listen to radio, read news, watch tv, have a phone conversation. It is all in one now. The DOJ must rectify and rule on the fundamental groundwork for digital media. They must call a spade a spade and rectify the original model of the FCC that until now has divided spectrum and granted its use for media specific entities. This is dead as a dodo. We see now with the all digital 4G networks that all media digital forms flow in the air.

In summary, the DOJ must break up the spectral space media ownership and restore its use and purpose as a public property.