I came across an interesting ex-parte letter to the Federal Communications Commission on the Verizon-Spectrum Co. deal. In the letter Public Knowledge is addressing the FCC’s spectrum screen, a tool the FCC uses to document where available spectrum is located. In the letter, Public Knowledge describes the screen as a tool that can help the FCC “maximize wireless competition.”

Maximize wireless competition? A government agency? The FCC?

The U.S. Department of Justice through its antitrust division may try to ensure competition by addressing market concentration, but even it cannot maximize competition. That’s not its job or the FCC’s.

To maximize competition the FCC would have to take on a command-and-control posture, telling the wireless industry how and where to price services; requiring that all participants share all market, pricing, and consumer information with each other; lower all barriers to market entry; and writing rules that keep zero economic profits at bay for a long enough to ensure that some predetermined number of competitors are in the industry before those profits are allowed to fall to zero.
That’s a tall order, Public Knowledge.

At first blush I thought Federal Communications Commission Chairman Genachowski was starting the FCC’s first reality show. What he announced late last week was a competition to see which eligible telecommunications carriers could identify effective approaches to increasing broadband adoption and retention by low income consumers. At stake is a pot of subsidies worth $25 million with the winners receiving subsidies of up to $100,000 a year for three years to implement their broadband project.

The FCC made it a point that at least one of the submitted projects should address broadband adoption and retention on Tribal Lands. The FCC did not make that point for any of the U.S. insular territories.

It’s too bad. The FCC consistently talks about how broadband can spur economic development and job growth. It goes on and on about robust technology and job creating innovation, but when it comes to delivering subsidies to the U.S. Virgin Islands, the territory gets ignored.

If the FCC is interested in low income citizens adopting broadband, then the USVI provides an ideal laboratory. According to the U.S.V.I. Bureau of Economic Research, 11% of households in the U.S. Virgin Islands live on less than $10,000 a year. One-half of households in the U.S.V.I. live on less than $35,000 a year. Twenty-five percent of Virgin Islanders lived in poverty in 2008.

What is even more unbearable are children living in poverty. Twenty-three percent of families in the U.S.V.I. or 6,206 families were living in poverty, most of them with children in the household. Twenty-four percent of families with related children under the age of 18 live in poverty. Thirty-four percent of families headed by a female live in poverty in the U.S.V.I.

I guess America’s Paradise is just a vacation spot for the FCC. When it comes to making us a part of the policy landscape, it’s not a part of the FCC’s reality.

The Federal Communications Commission issued final rules for channel sharing. The rules are the result of the recently passed Jobs Act that provides for voluntary incentive auctions of broadcast spectrum.

The FCC stressed that channel sharing is voluntary and that broadcasters and other licensees of spectrum will determine whether they want to enter into sharing arrangements. The FCC expects channel sharing to free up spectrum for wireless broadband providers.

Channel sharing doesn’t mean that an over-the-air broadcaster’s only option is to give up its entire spectrum and go out of business. Broadcasters should be able to retain just enough spectrum for one standard definition program stream, while sharing the rest of its 6MHz channel.

Overall, sounds like a non-intrusive policy for freeing up some spectrum for the mobile types while keeping the over-the-air broadcasters operational.

Seems like presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Willard M. Romney has a ways to go to catch up with incumbent Barack H. Obama in terms of a social media presence, according to Investors.com. Mr. Romney allegedly has 251,000 followers on the micro-blog platform, Twitter. On the social networking behemoth, Facebook, Mr. Romney has 1.6 million “friends”.

Mr. Obama is doing better on both platforms. Mr. Obama has allegedly 14.6 million disciples on Twitter while his Facebook acquaintances number approximately 26 million.

It’s not surprising that Mr. Obama would have a commanding lead in the social media world. He has shown his preference for connectivity via technology ever since entering the White House and making arrangements for a special Blackberry that would allow him to stay connected while keeping people with ill will at bay.

Also given Mr. Obama’s relative youth and being a member of a minority demographic that makes disproportionate use of cellphones and Twitter, not only should we find Mr. Obama to be a proponent of social media use, but we should also expect him to exploit it to its fullest.

It’s not to say that Mittens can’t catch up. At this juncture it’s about how you leverage those social media resources versus how many Twitter followers are making you feel like Jesus.

Yesterday Broadband for America released a study supporting continued regulatory hands off approach to the Internet. Here are some of the reports take-aways:

• Being unregulated has helped the Internet grow and expand in the face of “demand that is not just explosive in volume but unpredictable in type. Supply has unfailingly met demand, at ever-lower prices.”
• Regulated telecommunications services have been hurt by delay and rigidity. “The Internet’s responsiveness and adaptability stands in stark contrast to the rigidity created by the regulatory compensation regimes that have stifled conventional telephony. […] What makes the Internet so effective is not just its own simplicity and adaptability, but the absence of externally imposed rigidity.”
• Regulation will get in the way of innovation. “Any attempt to impose economic regulation on the Internet is likely to slow not only its own evolution but the innovation at the edge that depends on the Internet’s core.”
• “Were the Internet subjected to economic regulation, investors would expect slower growth and less responsiveness not only in the market for infrastructure, but in the edge markets for services, applications and devices that rely on it. Funding the Internet’s infrastructure would become more difficult.”