The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council’s Latoya Livingston wrote an insightful blog post on how increasing available spectrum can help entry into the digital economy. Check out her post here.

Ms. Livingston’s article raises two important points. One, why is the FCC afraid of allowing a market strategy such as consolidation do the work that it is not equipped to do? Second, why does the FCC not recognize that growth in the wireless sector does not necessarily mean having a certain number of carriers in the sector?

If you want wireless services produced and distributed at lower costs, you need to allow for scale whenever possible. As wireless services improve with the additional spectrum, entrepreneurs will bring innovative products that enhance the use of wireless networks.

It’s okay to let the market stumble and find itself. We can’t afford to have the FCC trying to hold the industry’s hand every step of the way.

President Obama may be hearing the word austerity a lot, but it does not show in his fiscal year 2013 budget, at least not for broadband. While there doesn’t appear to be anything specifically related to broadband deployment in the Department of Agriculture’s budget, the Administration makes up for it in the Department of Commerce’s budget.

The Administration is asking for $10 billion to build an interoperable public safety network. During the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, public safety agencies in different agencies had a hard time talking to each. Different equipment and different frequencies compounded the problem ten years ago and that problem still exists today. Standardizing equipment would be a good start in my opinion. Digital radios with a set of frequencies dedicated to that network would be the next step.

A couple posts ago I shared the idea of Apple buying T-Mobile. What would really be an act of charity would be Google buying Sprint. Talk about putting a company out of its misery. Shares of Sprint have been falling for six months and this company needs a parachute. It waged a successful legal/regulatory campaign against the AT&T,T-Mobile merger, but looks like it may be in need of some help itself.

Here is a quote from an analysis by Morningstar:

“We believe this strategy is correct, but execution has failed thus far in one critical area: financing. That Sprint needs to raise capital isn’t a surprise, given the steady debt maturities it faces during the next few years. Sprint’s initial reluctance to clearly lay out its funding needs and continued uncertainty around Clearwire CLWR have caused the market to lose faith in management. Backed into a corner, the firm was forced to accept costly terms on its recent $4 billion debt offering. Sprint should now have the financial resources to work through Network Vision, but the firm still has little room for error.”

Google definitely has resources and could be Sprint’s white knight. In addition, keeping Sprint viable is good for public policy reasons because it keeps another choice for mobile broadband access in the game.

In a letter dated 25 January 2012, Mobile Future urged the Federal Communications Commission to keep spectrum availability at the top of its priority list in 2012. Mobile Future attached a report documenting the impact on growth resulting from the evolution and innovation in wireless.

According to Mobile Future, more than 1.5 million jobs were created when the wireless industry transitioned from 2G to 3g service between 2007 and 2011. In addition, according to Mobile Future, every 10% adoption of 3G and 4G technology increases the chance of an additional 231,000 jobs being added over the next year.

Glad I bought my 3G last year. Love contributing to the cause.

Grover Norquist co-authored a piece criticizing the FCC’s foot-dragging on the issue of spectrum access. As a case study, Mr. Norquist refers to the challenges LightSquared is facing from other agencies while the FCC apparently is looking the other way. According to Mr. Norquist, the FCC is pulling a John Kerry double take: I was for LightSquared building a $14 billion 4G network before I was against LightSquared building a $14 billion network.

I did appreciate Mr. Norquist’s take on the FCC’s push for rules that would basically allow the agency to choose to whom spectrum will go and to decide who gets to bid on it in the first place. What the FCC is signaling is not competitive bidding. The FCC should not be picking winners and losers. The Japanese did something similar in the 1990s; picking the industries they felt should survive.

Have you heard of the Lost Decade? This type of economic strategy didn’t help Japan pull out of its economic and financial doldrums. Why should we expect picking favorites to work here in the U.S.?