Frontline Wireless’ Bad Idea

06/07/2007 05:32:56 PM

Newly formed Frontline Wireless, LLC has a star-studded team behind it including former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, Jim Barksdale of Netscape fame, and super-VC John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.  Frontline has proposed a plan to the FCC for the use of 10MHz of the 700MHz frequency band coming up for auction which sounds superficially like it might be a good idea.  It isn’t.  The economics behind the plan are deceptive. If implemented, it will be a threat to public safety.

The FCC has asked for comment on the Frontline plan, and rumor has it that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin thinks it has merit.  Unfortunately the very short formal comment period has ended.  That’s no reason , however, not to look very carefully at what’s wrong with this idea.  Hopefully the FCC – with some helpful pressure from the public and Congress – will not adopt the Frontline proposal.

Frontline proposes that 10MHz be carved out of the 60MHz allocated for commercial auction and reserved for national award to a bidder who will build a public safety network at the bidder’s expense.  This bidder will get the right to sell use of the 10MHz to commercial interests – ISPs, mobile companies, and the like – subject to preemption by public safety in an emergency (“emergency” to be defined).  Frontline is upfront about the fact that they intend to be a bidder for that spectrum and they appear to be well enough connected to raise the capital to build the required network.

The benefits to public safety, according to Frontline, are that the build-out of the network is paid for by the bidder and that public safety gets emergency use of 10MHz if they should need it. The politics of their plan are based on the fact that everyone – including me – is all for public safety.

Here’s some of what’s wrong with the plan (according to me):

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  This lunch would not only be costly but dangerous.