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Broadcast television channels will soon vacate these airwaves when they go digital by 2009. These public airwaves could revolutionize the ways we connect to laptops, cell phones, PDAs, music players and other mobile Internet devices. They can deliver an open Internet into your house without the need for a telephone wire or cable modem.
Phone and cable lobbyists are pressuring the FCC to hand over these airwaves to companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. They plan to horde this spectrum and stifle competitive and cheaper alternatives to their established networks.
This would be a disaster. After years of phone and cable company control over Internet access, the United States has fallen to 16th in the world in high-speed Internet rankings, with few choices and some of the highest prices for the slowest speeds in the world. We will continue this decline as long as we let AT&T, Verizon and Comcast dictate the terms of Internet access for the majority of Americans.
These phone and cable giants refuse to open their networks to competitive applications and services. They lobby Washington to stifle new innovations like Internet phone service and to destroy Net Neutrality, the one principle that protects equal opportunity and free choice on the Web