THE BIG NEWS
"The Commission should recognize that it created a disincentive for Google to participate in the auction and will continue to dissuade Google from investing in all kinds of things if it keeps handing over the keys to the kingdom."
Patrick McFadden
Vice President, Spectrum Policy, NAB
COALITION COMMENTARY
Well McFadden swings this one out of the park. And he is making the same points we have been making here for the past two years, so it is nice to get our far-out opinions validated by the big boys of broadcasting. Here's the rub folks, Google, and their buddies Microsoft, as we have dubbed MicroGoo, well they think that by getting a few 6-MHz channels here and there and they will have what they need for their unlicensed ventures. They know, and we know, that what the Vacant Channel order will give them is not enough for what they need. And that even is with the guard band giveaways. But that's ok. They are not bidding in the auction, so they do not care if it gets delayed in the courts because of this attempt to upend decades of broadcast licensing rights. And we wonder about what McFadden says when he points out the FCC may have blown potentially billions of dollars of additional auction revenues. Has the auction been fatally flawed and will it still bring in what the FCC anticipated?
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