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Google outlines proposal for 'Wi-Fi on steroids'

Google on Monday said it has a plan to have American consumers from Manhattan to rural North Dakota surfing the Web on handheld gadgets at gigabits-per-second speeds by the 2009 holiday season.

The company, joined by other heavyweights like Microsoft and Dell, has long been lobbying for the Federal Communications Commission to free up unused broadcast TV channels known as "white spaces" for unlicensed use by personal devices. That portion of the TV band is highly prized because it can propagate long distances and through obstacles.

It also possesses the bandwidth to support vastly faster data rates than … Read more

Dish Network may be eyeing mobile TV biz

Could satellite TV provider Dish Network be planning to build a mobile TV service with its newly won 700Mhz spectrum?

That's the question that many analysts were asking after it was disclosed this week that the company, also known as EchoStar Communications, spent $711 million for a block of licenses in the auction that is ideal for offering mobile broadcast TV, according to a Reuters story.

The much-talked about auction ended Tuesday raising about $19.6 billion for the government. Wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon Wireless won the bulk of the spectrum.

The licenses that Dish bought … Read more

This week in cell phones at the FCC

Only the most passionate cell phone geeks know that the Federal Communications Commission holds a treasure trove of information on upcoming handsets. Because the FCC has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not to mention test its SAR rating, the agency's online database offers a lot of sneak peeks to those who dig. And to save you the trouble, Crave has combed through the database for you. Here are a selection of filings from the past week on new and upcoming cell phones. Click through to read the full report.

Alcatel OT-E221A Huawei U1300/V725 LG KF750 … Read more

The XM-Sirius merger should have happened months ago

Yesterday on CNET News.com, my colleague Richard Derfendorf wrote about the impending decision on the part of the FCC to either allow or deny the merger between XM radio and Sirius Satellite radio.

According to Derfendorf, the FCC is "inching closer" to making a decision on the deal and does not look "as daunting" as it once did. He went on to explain that some analysts believe the long wait (a little over 400 days) is actually working in the satellite companies' favor.

And while all that may be true, there's something going on behind the scenes that shouldn't be overlooked. The fact that XM and Sirius were forced to wait this long to finally receive a decision is both ridiculous and just plain wrong.

Unfortunately, you can bet ClearChannel Radio and other terrestrial monsters have something do with it.… Read more

FCC inching ever closer to decision on XM-Sirius

After Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin's announcement this week that the commission is indeed getting closer to making a decision on Sirius Satellite Radio's proposed acquisition of rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings, the stock prices of both companies climbed and everyone interested braced for, well, a little more waiting.

But because it's already been more than a year since the deal was announced, that prospect no longer seems terribly daunting. The principals are used to it. And, as the Motley Fool and others have observed, the delay may have worked in the merger's favor: the … Read more

Consumer watchdogs push for FCC auction investigation

Consumer watchdog groups and some lawmakers want to know why the block of spectrum reserved for public safety in the Federal Communications Commission's 700 MHz auction didn't hit its reserve price.

On Wednesday, a coalition of nine consumer advocacy groups, including the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union and the Media Access Project, sent a letter to the chairman of the FCC asking the agency to investigate whether the public safety requirements for "d" block license were too stringent. The groups also want the FCC to study whether plans for the shared public-private network are even … Read more

Verizon wins 'open access' licenses in FCC auction

It's official: Verizon Wireless has won licenses for nationwide coverage in the C-Block in the 700MHz spectrum auction conducted by the Federal Communications Commission.

This means that Verizon, not Google, will control the spectrum that is required by the FCC to adhere to special open-access rules.

Google had lobbied the FCC last summer to include several rules in the 700MHz spectrum auction that mandated open access. The FCC adopted only one of Google's proposed rules, which requires the winner to allow any device or application to connect to a network that uses this spectrum.

Google made good on … Read more

Cable chief: Let us 'experiment' with our networks

With discontent still festering over Comcast's admitted slowing of file-sharing uploads, the cable industry's chief on Thursday set out to do a little damage control.

Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, said he's "amused" that in all the coverage of the Comcast-BitTorrent spat, no one's talking about the cable industry's role in getting high-speed Internet service to millions of American households and, by extension, enabling online applications and services to take off.

"One of the ironies is that most of these applications depended on cable's rollout of … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 684: Dude, it's not Dell

EPISODE 684

Amazon’s right on Vista SP1 http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9897191-56.html

FCC Ends 700 MHz Auction http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9897722-7.html

Dell refutes solid state drive failure claims (Thanks Russ960!) http://www.cnet.com/8301-13924_1-9897828-64.html

Apple could split device sales with music labels http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9897871-7.html

Adobe CEO says Flash apps coming to iPhone http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9897861-1.html

The reality of the RDF: how Apple motivates us to creativity http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080319-brands-as-personality-why-apple-motivates-us-to-creativity.html

Toshiba losing money in HD DVD business http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080319/ ap_on_hi_te/japan_toshiba… Read more

FCC approves new method for tracking broadband's reach

WASHINGTON--As expected, federal regulators on Wednesday voted to overhaul the way they measure how widely broadband is available across the United States.

For years, the Federal Communications Commission has been drawing up reports on the state of U.S. Internet access availability based on methodology that considers 200 kilobits per second (Kbps) service to be "high speed"--and such access to be widely available even in ZIP codes that may, in reality, house only one connection.

The decision to move away from that methodology is potentially significant. Critics, both inside and outside the agency, have charged that the … Read more

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