FCC: Broadband And Socialism

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 29, 5:50AM EDT

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The FCC will have another of its interminable airwaves auctions soon. Telecom and tech companies will run in to buy spectrum so that they can send voice, video, data, and junk without having to hang wires or bury wires in the ground.

The agency may put a little twist into the next auction. According to The Wall Street Journal "The Federal Communications Commission is considering a plan that would require the winner of a planned airwaves auction to offer free wireless-Internet service to most Americans within the next few years."

Those receiving the "free" internet could not use it to look at porno or other nasty stuff. It would not be good for the FCC to help promote that kind of behavior.

The agency would like to have its cake and eat it, too. Private companies will pay the agency a ton for spectrum which they can use for commercial purposes. In exchange, they can give a part of that away and spend money helping to bring broadband to every man, woman, and child. Those airwaves cannot be used to support any bad behavior.

Someone needs to call a psychiatrist for Kevin Martin.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.