The Hill, May 6, 2008
By Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.)

When I was growing up, the closest thing we had to a wireless phone was a cheap set of walkie-talkies that had a range of about 100 feet and the sound quality of the original telephone — at best.

It’s hard to believe that back then, consumers had to rent a telephone from the phone company. When I was growing up, you could have any color you wanted so long as it was black, and if you were lucky, the phone company offered one that could be hooked onto your wall.

But in the late 1960s the FCC wisely decided that consumers didn’t have to keep renting a phone if they didn’t want; people other than the telephone company might have better ideas for how we could communicate with each other. Those rules are commonly known as Carterfone, after the company that first sued AT&T to get permission for its product to use the phone network.

I believe we find ourselves at a similar crossroads today. There are thousands of entrepreneurs who have new ideas for what our next cell phone should look like and what we should be able to do with it. However, innovators are complaining that their ideas that work on the Internet are excluded from wireless devices because carriers don’t approve of them. And consumers get angry, as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell said, when they find out that they can’t take their phone to a new wireless provider, or that the phone they want is locked to a competitor.

I applaud the FCC for setting aside a block of that spectrum in the latest auction of our airwaves that will require the winning network to be open for the devices and the applications of the consumer’s choice. And I look forward to seeing how Verizon, the winner of that block, implements a new, more limited policy across the entire spectrum for their Open Development Initiative.

After all, when you buy a car, you’re not limited to the brand of gas you can buy. When you buy a TV set, you’ll be able to use that set whether you’re going to get cable or satellite, or just watch over-the-air broadcasts.

As Walt Mossberg, a technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal wrote, the same thing applies when you buy a new computer. When you go to buy a computer, there are as many different kinds as you can imagine: fashionable to affordable, big and quick, light and lean. And after you take it home, no one tells you what Web browser or music program you can run on it.

But the same idea doesn’t apply for wireless phones, and as Mossberg put it, “the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cell phone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.”

Unlike during my childhood, the phone companies are more willing to engage outside developers who have new ideas. Like then, however, the idea a carrier approves isn’t very disruptive to its existing business model. Good luck trying to run an application that would use your phone’s GPS and your phone’s data plan to give you free directions — not when the carrier would rather sell you that service for a fee.

The communications landscape is different than it was in the late 1960s. Millions of consumers are cutting the cord, so to speak — dropping their telephone line and exclusively using a wireless phone.

The explosion in wireless communications means growth in our economy and an explosion in innovation. It also has the potential to provide much greater benefits for consumers and to give our first responders the tools they need to keep us safe.

Our best chance to give our constituents those benefits was during the spectrum auction earlier this year. We had many goals in that auction, and while I think the FCC met some of them, I fear that it was not able to achieve all of them.

For example, we were not able to give consumers many new choices of wireless phone providers. Among the top markets, only one, Boston, will see a new company come in to compete. AT&T and Verizon together spent more than $16 billion of the $19 billion the auction raised. Nor was the auction able to produce a nationwide broadband network for public safety first responders. The FCC will try again later this year after a thorough examination of why bidders chose not to compete for that block.

Although I’m disappointed with the outcomes, and question their methods in some cases, I don’t fault the FCC for trying to address these policy goals. The law is quite clear — spectrum auctions aren’t designed simply to raise the most money for the Treasury. Congress encouraged the FCC to use spectrum auctions to achieve other policy goals as well.

Many of the same people opposing the open-access conditions on our airwaves have supported conditions of other kinds. For example, my colleagues representing rural America argue for build-out requirements. These are often rightfully implemented so that companies “use it or lose it” — which ensures that rural areas get the access their constituents deserve.

Industry analysts suggest that the latest auction was the last major spectrum auction for the foreseeable future — so to some extent, I believe we’ve missed out on our best chance at delivering on all the promises of wireless to our constituents. That’s why I believe Congress and the FCC should consider applying Carterfone rules to the wireless world.

And I believe we should consider what the Conservative Party in Canada did late last year, when it prevented dominant incumbents from participating in a recent major spectrum auction.

Those changes could open up wireless to truly benefit American consumers.

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