ArsTechnica explains how to watch the Super Bowl, on the biggest and littlest screens. Nearly six people in 10 would prefer to watch Super Bowl XLVI on a state-of-the-art TV as opposed to from the stands, according to a poll conducted by TechBargains.com.

PC Magazine reviews the 10 apps that will add to your Super Bowl experience. Twitter (twitter.com/superbowl) has put together two accounts that are spitting out “Top Tweets” algorithmically, from @GiantsTweets and @NEPatriotTweets with tweets from players, coaches, media, and the team itself.

The Super Bowl XLVI Host Committee has a Social Media Command Center. You can choose your social channel of choice from there to stay connected and watch updates in real time using Blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

For the first time in history, the Super Bowl, will be officially streamed live to online viewers and mobile phones. The NFL is providing live streaming video of the Super Bowl, both on Web browsers and through a smartphone application.

The mobile streaming app is for Verizon-only. If you’ve got an iPhone or Android with a Verizon contract, the Verizon-sponsored NFL Mobile app is free — but to view the live streaming video you’ll need to pay another $3 a day or $10 a month to Verizon. That fee is waived for owners of 4G LTE phones, as part of a promotion to encourage customers to upgrade to 4G.

Super Bowl XLVI will be a true “coming of age” for streaming media, explains TV Technology. Although high-profile events like the 2010 World Cup and Beijing and Vancouver Olympics have been streamed, a one-day sports event on the level of the Super Bowl has never been made available online. Streaming is an integral element to the game—and a real contributor to its bottom line.

The live stream will use the same Microsoft Silverlight player that NBC uses for its Sunday Night Football streams. The online stream of the Super Bowl will have its own set of ads, which will differ from those shown on broadcast television.

NBC says a 30 second spot can command as much as $3.5 million, a new record for broadcast tv. Big live events like the Super Bowl are one of the few ways to prevent television viewers from skipping commercials with their DVRs. Last year, by comparison, brought in between $2.8 and $3 million for a 30. Revenue from last year’s commercials totaled $210 million.

A carrier-free NFL ’11 app for IOS and Android is also available.

• Live scoring & play-by-play
• NFL.com Podcasts
• In-game big play and quarterly audio highlights
• Coaches press conference videos
• Breaking news
• Latest team and player stats

The official Super Bowl XlVI Guide app is now availabe for free at the Android Market and Apple App Store.

The Verge says Android users have reported some problems installing. On the iPhone, it seems to work well, running pretty smoothly for what is essentially a large 3D map of Lucas Oil Stadium and the surrounding areas.

The idea is to roll most of the things you’d want to do on a smartphone — location marking on Maps, restaurant reviews on Yelp, game day chatter on Twitter — into a single interface. Twitter hashtags will be on just about every commercial and the game itself (#sb46).

The commemorative Super Bowl app is available for Apple and Android. It costs $2.99 before the game, with the price increasing after the Super Bowl. It includes player highlight reels, Super Bowl history and photo galleries for each team. After Sunday, the winning team’s section will add game highlights and video of on-field interviews and the trophy presentation.

The Super Bowl is all about money, explains Bloomberg. Nosebleed game tickets run $2,200, hotel rooms are marked up as much as 1,758 percent, and 30-second television ads sell for an average of $3.5 million.

It’s also about technology.

Meeting the challenge of this momentous national and international telecast is production facilities provider NEP Broadcasting (Twitter). NEP will deploy three mobile production vehicles and more than 100 HDTV cameras. At kickoff, 40 cameras will be covering the action, primarily Sony HDC-1000 and HDC-1500 units, coupled with Canon glass, including three 100x lenses and 19 86x lenses. Not to mention the Skycam.

NBC will utilize a new Hi-Motion II ultra-motion camera system, made by NAC Image Technology and packaged by Ikegami, at $3.5 million a pop. They deliver 1000 fps at 1080 x 1920 resolution. The Hi-Motion II works with the Ikegami fiber interface, allowing the camera to send signals more than 6,000 ft. using SMPTE fiber as well as single-mode fiber with local power.

For graphics, seven Chyron HyperX units are on-site, with five in use for pregame demands and two for the game.

Level 3 will provide NBC with Vyvx fiber-optic network, delivering feeds to NFL operations centers in Mt. Laurel, N.J., Culver City, Calif. and NFL Network master control facilities in Atlanta, as well as other broadcast networks and satellite teleport sites for global distribution.

This year’s international feed requires eight satellite uplinks, more than a dozen remote trucks and 15 trailers, including NEP Supershooters. Global broadcasters include NHK, Shanghai Media Group , Viasat, W9 (France), Televisa (Latin America), NTV (Japan), BBC, and ESPN International Networks.

NBC has live streamed the last two Olympics, and will stream the 2012 Summer Olympics from London as well. NBC said it has learned that online viewers generally don’t cannibalize the live broadcast audience for major sporting events. The Associated Press reported that NBC typically gets about 200,000-300,000 online viewers, compared to more than 20 million that tune in for the telecast.

This is the first 4G LTE Super Bowl. Josh Smith of GottaBeMobile goes behind the scenes at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Downtown Indianapolis, Indiana.

Rizzo Consulting was the main contractor, working closely with the Lucas Oil Stadium, Indiana Convention Center and the major carriers to design, install and commission the high capacity Distributed Antenna System for Lucas Oil Stadium and the Indiana Convention Center, the first-ever LTE design for the Big Game. Their indoor DAS system at Lucas Oil Stadium utilizes some 500 antennas and is shared by the three largest cellular carriers. Their team has been working on it since August. Rizzo Consulting specializes in large DAS systems engineering, designing and building major systems all over the United States.

See: Dailywireless Superbowl Goes 4G.

Dish also clarified elements of its nationwide LTE Advanced plan. Dish wants to use 40 Mhz of spectrum in the 2.1 GHz MSS (satellite phone) band that it acquired when it bought assets from bankrupt ICO (DBSD) and TerreStar.

AT&T requests LightSquared-like buildout conditions on DISH’s proposed 2 GHz ancillary terrestrial component (“ATC”) network. AT&T also wants conditions on DISH’s 700 MHz spectrum.

Dish, in its filing says the FCC should reject both requests.

Building a network before LTE Advanced devices are widely available would necessitate the use of an earlier standard, followed by a migration to LTE Advanced. Once the standard is complete, there will be a new development cycle for network infrastructure, chipsets, and devices, which will be a multi-year effort to reach widespread availability of a terrestrial S-Band ecosystem sometime in 2015.

Dish also rejected AT&T’s concerns about their use of 700 MHz:

The request for an interference-protection condition relating to DISH’s potential use of the 700 MHz E-Block licenses held by its affiliate, Manifest Wireless LLC (“Manifest”), is extraneous to the current proceedings. A grant of DISH’s applications concerning 2 GHz spectrum would have no effect on any issues relating to a separate block of 700 MHz spectrum.

AT&T specifically relies on the Applicants’ statement that these 700 MHz licenses may be used to “enhance the effectiveness and competitiveness of any mobile broadband services.” But that mere future possibility does not make this an appropriate venue for imposing conditions on a band completely outside the current proceeding.

Dish is seeking the FCC’s approval to build a nationwide LTE Advanced network from scratch. It will use the 40 MHz of S-band spectrum in the 2 GHz range that it purchased from bankrupt TerreStar Networks and DBSD North America.

Dish Network apparently plans to use a 2×20 MHz configuration (20MHz up and 20MHz down), with potential speeds of over 600 Mbps. That’s double the bandwidth of Verizons 2 X 10MHz LTE system. LTE-Advanced features advanced modulation and MIMO antenna techniques to improve coverage and speed.

Sprint Nextel has urged the FCC to approve Dish’s spectrum transfer request. Sprint likely sees Dish as their Plan “B” if the similar nationwide LTE network proposal from Lightsquared gets shot down, due to GPS interference issues.

AT&T argued that Dish should be held to the same terrestrial buildout targets that the FCC imposed on LightSquared: at least 100 million POPs within 33 months, 145 million POPs within 45 months and 260 million POPs within 69 months.

Dish argues that LTE-Advanced is not ready. But Sprint-Clearwire has stated that it expects to be incorporating LTE-A technology on its 2.6 GHz band, later this year.

Clearwire will apparently use their current WiMAX spectrum which uses 30 Mhz (using a different 10 MHz per sector). LTE-A will enable them to reapportion the spectrum to a 20/10 MHz split, with 20 MHz going to LTE (using the same 20 MHz on each sector). Then it will add another 20 MHz for LTE (40 MHz total) using carrier aggregation techniques that are available with LTE-Advanced.

A buildout of Dish Networks might be expedited with a T-Mobile USA partnership, since T-Mobile is using the adjoining AWS band. While it’s just speculation, T-Mobile’s AWS antennas (tuned for 1.7/2.1 GHz) may also work for the Dish Network’s MSS spectrum (2.0/2.18 GHz). That could save Dish a lot of time and money.

Sprint doesn’t use the AWS band. Sprint’s PCS antennas, tuned for 1.9 GHz, might be a stretch for Dish at 2.1 GHz.

One scenario might be to add Dish’s basestation electronics to T-Mobile’s facilities. Later, perhaps, T-Mobile could physically move their AWS/Dish antennas to Sprint towers for hosting.

A possible Dish/T-Mobile merger or a Dish/Sprint merger will also take time to clear.

Dish seems unlikely to go it alone. They have stated a preference for a voice partner. It appears increasingly likely that would be T-Mobile or Sprint. There is also the assumption that the FCC will grant Dish the right to use terrestrial-only phones, as it has for Lightsquared. That hasn’t happened yet.

See Dailywireless: Sprint Gives Lightsquared 6 Weeks, AT&T Competitors: No 700MHz Roaming, Dish: Show Me the Money!, Dish LTE-Advanced Called “Ollo”, Dish Talks Up Terrestrial LTE, ViaSat-1 Launched, Charlie Ergen’s Spectacular Triple Play, Charlie’s Big Play, EchoStar Closes $2B Hughes Deal, Lightsquared: FCC Will Rule by Year End, Lightsquared: A Hardware Solution, Lightsquared Interference: No Immediate Fix?, AT&T: On the Couch, Verizon Buying Nationwide AWS Spectrum from Cable, Verizon-Cable Deal: Too Cozy?, Cross Marketing of Verizon & Cable Begins, iBooks: Cellular’s Big Bang?

“It’s going to take your voices and the voices of a whole bunch of folks similar to what happened a few weeks ago … to just rise up and make clear that that freedom, that the accessibility, capacity for innovation is vital to our future competitive position,” said Kerry, chairman of the Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee.

“Maximizing efficiency, innovation, competition, and the public interest are the goals that should guide our spectrum policies. Filling the public coffers with auction money is good, but it is not the highest good. And protecting large incumbents from more competition is not our role.”

The event, called “Unlicensed Spectrum, White Spaces, and The American Economy“, was sponsored by the Wireless Innovation Alliance and the New America Foundation.

Dr. Mark Cooper, Director of Research for the Consumer Federation of America, says that Congress should continue to put the public back in the public air waves and promote the mutually beneficial and complementary relationship between the licensed and unlicensed models.

He unveiled a report today (pdf) titled “Efficiency Gains and Consumer Benefits of Unlicensed access to the public airwaves”.

According to his executive summary:

“My analysis shows that by every measure of economic performance – device shipments, users, usage, efficiency, value and innovation – the unlicensed model has equaled or exceeded the exclusive licensed model in the past decade. Simply put, without access to unlicensed spectrum, wireless broadband service would be much more costly and far less valuable. Consumers would buy less of it resulting in fewer jobs and less tax revenue.”

Cooper believes Congress should ensure that the TV white spaces are made available for shared use and that the unlicensed model receives no less than one-sixth of any future high quality spectrum (between 500 MHz and 1 GHz) that is cleared by relocating TV broadcaster.

The House GOP spectrum bill would bar the FCC from reserving some spectrum for unlicensed uses and would restrict the ability of the FCC to structure the auctions as they see fit. Incentive auctions are aimed at getting broadcasters to give up some of their spectrum for a share in the revenues.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved its own spectrum legislation last summer (S.911). The Wireless Innovation Alliance, a coalition of tech companies, public-interest groups and others, prefers Senate Commerce’s language on the issue, which would permit some unlicensed use of the White Spaces, as well as incentive auctions to enable carriers to expand their licensed spectrum holdings.

Republicans hold a majority in the House, and the House Commerce Committee. On December 1, 2011, the HCC’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology approved, over opposition from some Democrats, a discussion draft [113 pages in PDF] of the “Jumpstarting Opportunity with Broadband Spectrum Act of 2011″ or “JOBS Act of 2011″. The National Association of Broadcasters also supports Greg Walden’s bill, which would eliminate unlicensed use of White Spaces.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski at CES last month said (pdf) that “Wi-Fi as an unlicensed innovation has gone from something that wireless carriers opposed and that wireless devices didn’t accommodate, to something that wireless carriers embrace as indispensible to their networks.

FCC Commissioner McDowell opposes setting aside Unlicensed Spectrum, a position that is held by most incumbant cellular carriers and the National Association of Broadcasters.

“At this early stage, it is not apparent that we should stop the progress well under way in the white spaces arena to create a solution for a problem – an alleged shortage of unlicensed spectrum in the 700 MHz Band — that may never exist. Given today’s unprecedented budget deficits, I question whether the U.S. can afford not to auction any and all spectrum recovered in this band,” he said.

On November 4, 2008, the FCC voted 5-0 to approve the unlicensed use of white space.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) have asked a Federal court to shut down the FCC’s authorization of white space wireless devices. The plaintiffs allege that portable, unlicensed personal devices operating in the same band as TV broadcasts have been “proven” to cause interference despite FCC tests to the contrary.

Related Dailywireless articles include; Genachowski Lobbies for Unlicensed White Spaces, Universal Service Reform Passed, Microsoft Announced Narrow Channel Whitespace, FCC Authorizes White Space Service in Wilmington, White Space Legislation Goes Dark, White Space War, Bills to Kill Unlicensed White Space?, White Space Trial Completed, White Space Trialed, Huawei to Trial White Space TD-LTE, NTIA “Finds” 1.5 GHz of Federal Spectrum, UK Delays 4G Auction Ofcom: White Spaces by 2013, UK Gets Free Public WiFi, Europe’s Digital Divide Auction,

The markets reacted swiftly. Stocks of telecom companies whose licenses have been scrapped, like DB Realty, whose promoters are invested in Etisalat DB, Unitech and Videocon, tanked instantly. Stocks of Bharti Airtel were trading up – older players like Airtel have no exposure to these licenses.

The administration at the time – led by former telecoms minister A Raja – is accused of selling-off the 2G licences on a first-come-first served basis and potentially costing the country $39 billion it would have made if it had conducted a competitive bidding auction.

In 2008, Mr Raja ignored advice to hold an auction for licenses and spectrum. Instead, he followed a first-come-first-serve policy. But he twisted the guidelines so that companies who he allegedly colluded with jumped to the head of the queue and won licenses out of turn. They paid a pittance- the rates used in 2008 were based on the prices of 2001, even though India had many more mobile phone users by then. 122 licenses were issued.

Light Reading has A Brief Guide to India’s Telecom Market and lists the carriers that are affected by cancelled licenses.

At the end of 2008, India’s mobile service providers boasted nearly 347 million connections, a year-on-year increase of nearly 50 percent. The government expects the subscriber base for combined wireless and wireline connections to touch 600 million by the end of 2012.

The allocation of spectrum and licences by the government in 2008, led to the arrest of a former communications minister Andimuthu Raja, a member of Parliament, business executives, and government officials. The 2G licences were issued at 2001 prices without an auction, even though other government agencies, such as the Ministry of Finance, had asked the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) to review the decision

In cancelling the licences, the court declared that their award had been “totally arbitrary and unconstitutional,” reports the Financial Times. “This is a major step forward for us in the war against corruption,” said Subramanian Swamy, one of the petitioners in the case before the Supreme Court and the head of the Janata Party.

The country was divided into 23 circles when the mobile phones were introduced in the country. Separate licenses were given out for each of the circles in 1994. The circles were classified as Metros, A, B or C depending upon the revenue potential for the circle.

In India, fixed line subscribers are not even 10% of the mobile subscriber base. The Indian telecommunications industry includes some 706 Million telephone (landlines and mobile) subscribers with 670 Million mobile phone connections as of Aug 2010. Virtually none are yet 3G. According to Informa Telecoms latest forecast, the number of active mobile subscriptions in India will rise to 1.159 billion by the end of 2013, making it the world’s largest mobile market.

Only nine million of India’s 1 billion people have access to broadband. India’s Department of Telecoms hopes the country will have about 48 million broadband users by 2012, and 100 million by 2014.

Big winners in the 2.3 GHz (4G) auction held in 2010 included Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone Essar, and Tikona Digital Networks. The decision by Reliance and Qualcomm to back LTE TDD, made the LTE standard an unstoppable force, especially when combined with China’s support for Time Division LTE.

Related Dailywireless articles include; India’s Broadband Auction: It’s Done, Qualcomm Gets Indian Partners, Vendors Scramble for Indian Backhaul, TD-LTE: It’s Alive!, China Mobile + Clearwire + Apple?, Sprint’s Network Vision Detailed, Vendors & Spectrum Fund Clearwire TD-LTE, World’s First TD-LTE Service Launched by Mobily, Clearwire Chooses LTE Advanced, Yota: Planetary LTE Swap, Yota Dumps WiMAX,

Of Facebook’s 845 million monthly active users, 425 million accessed Facebook in December alone through a smart-or feature phone app or through its mobile-optimized website. In 2011, 85 percent of Facebook’s $3.7 billion in revenues came from advertising, but none of it from its mobile platforms, notes Kevin Fitchard.

As the S-1 says:

We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected.

Of course Facebook’s problem has an easy fix: it can simply start putting ads in its mobile apps and website, notes Fitchard.

In its S-1 Facebook also mentioned the possibility of inserting “sponsored stories” in its members news feeds.

There are 700 million to 800 million potential Indian customers for Facebook. Facebook’s estimates of its penetration in India, is estimated between 20 to 30 percent. India is the world’s second largest market, but very few of its 1 billion-plus people have PCs or the means to access one.

Clearly Facebook’s mobile strategy is going to have a huge impact, whichever way it rolls.

Up until this point, the main use of LTE has been for mobile data traffic. The LTE standard only supports packet switching with its all-IP network. Voice calls in GSM, UMTS and CDMA2000 are circuit switched, so with the adoption of LTE, carriers will have to re-engineer their voice call network.

Voice-over-LTE enables new globally interoperable multimedia services on LTE smartphones with handover of a voice call from LTE to WCDMA. The lack of software support in initial LTE devices as well as core network devices however led to a number of carriers promoting VoLGA (Voice over LTE Generic Access) as an interim solution.

MetroPCS may deploy VoLTE in the first quarter of this year, making it the first operator worldwide to commercially launch VoLTE, the GSMA-backed standard for delivering voice calls over LTE networks. MetroPCS uses CDMA technology to offer service in addition to its 4G network using LTE technology. AT&T Mobility uses UMTS for their voice service and offers LTE on 700 MHz.

Verizon Wireless does not plan to let LTE voice calls roam on to its CDMA network, says Wireless Week, when it introduces voice over LTE (VoLTE) smartphones later this year.

“VoLTE will not hand down to 1X,” Verizon Wireless product development executive Marjorie Hsu told Wireless Week, referring to Verizon’s CDMA 1X Advanced network.

Supporters of VoLTE include nearly all of the major operators as well as equipment vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and more. Infonetics Research predicts that 78 percent of the operators that participated in its study said that they will have VoLTE, RCS (rich communication service) and/or VoIP over 3G deployed by 2013.

Last month, Microsoft demonstrate pre-release Windows 8 on Snapdragon S4 processors with LTE support. Demonstrations of pre-release Windows 8 on the Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 reference hardware tablet with LTE were held during Dr. Paul E. Jacobs’ opening keynote address at CES in Las Vegas.

The handover mechanism is supported on Ericsson’s carrier products, including LTE/WCDMA/GSM RAN, Evolved Packet Core, MSC and IMS to work towards VoLTE enabled LTE smartphones.

Two options for carriers have momentum: Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) and LTE VoIP-based Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC). The latter is widely supported in the industry and has been recommended by the LTE OneVoice Initiative, which has the support of some of the world’s largest operators and network equipment providers and has been endorsed by the GSM Association (GSMA).

The first operators are expected to begin deploying Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC) during 2012, followed by more global commercial launches in 2013.

Mike Shatzkin says, “The big six is run by the smartest group, the most innovative group, the most forward thinking group across the board that major publishing has ever had. Each and every one of these companies is run by a legitimately smart, forward thinking leadership. And yet, they are in a very, very difficult position.”

Related articles on Dailywireless include; Audio Books: Future Unlimited?, Digital Book Conference, Tablet Ownership Doubled Over Holidays, iBooks: Cellular’s Big Bang?, Kindle Fire: Profitable, Apple Textbook App, XO-3: OLPC’s $99 Tablet, Barnes & Noble: Getting Out of Publishing?, E-Books: Banner Year , Barnes & Noble Introduces $249 Media Tablet, Nook Tablet: $249, Kindle: Ignition Point,

An iPhone ad on the Apple website shows a driver receiving and flawlessly sending a handsfree text with Siri.

Rose was not so lucky. He also mentions a new Canadian study showing “drivers using hands-free devices to make calls can be just as distracted as someone fumbling with a phone.”

On The Big Bang Theory, Raj falls for Siri.

The changes are part of bigger efforts to reform the $9 billion universal service fund which subsidizes phone and Internet service to rural areas. The Universal Service High-Cost program, a part of the larger USF fund, is designed to ensure that consumers in rural and high-cost areas have access to telecommunications services at rates that are affordable and reasonably comparable to those in urban areas.

The Low Income program provides discounts on the installation of telephone and monthly telephone service to low-income consumers. This program has been divided into two programs; Link Up America, which provides a discount on the cost of commencing phone service, and the Lifeline program, with discounts on monthly phone service.

The High-Cost program is meant to ensure that consumers in rural, insular, and high-cost areas have access to telecommunications services at rates that can be afforded and reasonably comparable to those in urban areas. For this, the program provides subsidies to carriers.

The FCC estimates that its reforms will save the government $2 billion over the next three years. Key elements of the reforms include:

• Setting a savings target of $200 million for 2012, and putting the Commission in a position to adopt an appropriate budget for the program in early 2013 after review of a six-month report and one-year report on the effects of the Order.
• Creation of a National Lifeline Accountability Database to prevent multiple carriers from receiving support for the same subscriber. The database will build on FCC efforts in 2011 that eliminated nearly 270,000 duplicate subscriptions in 12 states following review of over 3.6 million subscriber records, saving $33 million.
• Creation of eligibility databases from governmental data sources, enabling fully automated verification of consumers’ initial and ongoing Lifeline eligibility. This would reduce the potential for fraud while cutting red tape for consumers and providers. A database based on the three most common federal benefit programs through which consumers qualify for Lifeline will be created no later than the end of 2013.
• Establishing a one-per-household rule applicable to all providers in the program, defining household as an “economic unit” so that separate low-income families living at the same address can get connected.
• Establishing clear goals and metrics to measure program performance and effectiveness.
• Phasing out support for services such as Toll Limitation – subsidies to carriers for blocking or restricting long-distance service—and ending Link Up – subsidies to carriers for initial connection charges. Link Up will continue in Tribal lands.
• Reducing burdens on carriers by establishing a uniform, interim flat rate of reimbursement, allowing carriers to obtain a subscriber’s signature electronically, and streamlining enrollment through uniform, nationwide eligibility criteria.
• Adopting an express goal for the program of ensuring availability of broadband for all low-income Americans.
• Establish a Broadband Adoption Pilot Program using up to $25 million in savings from other reforms to test and determine how Lifeline can best be used to increase broadband adoption among Lifeline-eligible consumers. Starting this year, the program will solicit applications from broadband providers and will select a number of projects to fund. Lifeline will help reduce the monthly cost of broadband service, but applicants will be expected to help address other challenges to broadband adoption, including the cost of devices and digital literacy.
• Proposes increasing digital literacy training at libraries and schools.

The reforms met a largely positive response from the wireless industry. CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent said the association was “pleased” that consumers would still be able to choose wireless service under the program and urged the FCC to move quickly on its proposed database.

Bob Quinn, AT&T’s chief privacy officer and head of federal regulatory affairs, was less chairitable.

“No one must pay an 18 percent tax on the electric bill to fund the low-income electric programs,” he said. “One has to wonder why communications consumers are treated differently in this regard.”

The FCC estimated that 9.2 million U.S. households, or about 26 million people, didn’t have access to wired broadband in 2010. Excluding those who can get broadband wirelessly, the number shrinks to 5 million households or 14 million people. That’s 4.5 percent of the population.

Related Dailywireless articles include; FCC Reforms $4.3B USF Fund, FCC Reforms Universal Service, Will USF Funds Subsidize AT&T Buildout? and White Space Legislation Goes Dark

Seybold has valid points. The NAB no longer is required to provide public interest programing. The small number of group owners that run local television stations get their spectrum free, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

That’s not fair. Broadcasters should pay for their spectrum – like everyone else.

As of 2010, The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the US, with News Corporation, Time Warner and Viacom ranking second, third and fourth respectively, according to Wikipedia.

Big media is inimical to Democracy. Local ownership, diverse voices, and truly competitive media markets serve the public interest. It’s the LAST thing the NAB wants.

There are basically two pieces to incentive auctions:

1. Smaller broadcasters might vacate their dedicated channel and co-habitate on a digitial subchannel on a competitor’s channel.
2. Currently unused television channels “white spaces” would be sold to the highest bidder (probably big telcos).

Negotiations between the House and Senate to resolve differences over spectrum bills stalled. The Senate bill (S.911) calls for a national governance model while the House (JOBS) bill relies on a regional model run by the states.

Walden’s FCC Process Reform Act would take power away from the FCC. Walden is unlikely to give the FCC free rein to conduct the auctions without strict guidelines. His JOBS bill, with the help of NAB, would eliminate unlicensed White Spaces.

Eliminating unlicensed White Spaces would seem to guarantee the multi-billion dollar the Universal Service Fee – a Big Government, Big Tax, Big Subsidy program if there ever was one – will continue to bail out rural telecom companies.

Unlicensed White Spaces – like WiFi – has the potential to save everyone money and lower government costs. Walden’s JOBS bill appears to serve (mostly) the NAB, not his conservative constituents, Grover Norquist, or public safety advocates.

Related Dailywireless articles include; White Space War, Bills to Kill Unlicensed White Space?, Public Safety Net Removed from Debt Ceiling Bill, The D-Block Gamble, D-Block Gets a Hearing, National Wireless Initiative, White House: D-Block to Police/Fire, State of the Spectrum, NTIA “Finds” 1.5 GHz of Federal Spectrum, National Wireless Initiative, White House: D-Block to Police/Fire, White Space War, White Space To Go, White Spaces Get IEEE Standard, Broadcasters: Portable Devices Kill DTV, Mud Fight in White Space.