Posted on 01/17/2009 9:56:56 AM PST by Para-Ord.45
telecommunications company has confirmed for this columnist that its vice president for policy—who is also an Obama donor and a former lobbyist—is advising Barack Obama’s transition team on telecom policy.
Obama’s transition team, which has failed to disclose this executive’s involvement, happens to have proposed a significant change in telecom policy that will profit that very company, called Clearwire.
By pushing to delay the long-scheduled transition of television broadcasting from analog signals to digital signals, president-elect Obama is directly aiding Sprint and its partner Clearwire while hurting Verizon.
Clearwire’s executive vice president for “Strategy, Policy and External Affairs” is R. Gerard Salemme. Writer Julian Sanchez reported Wednesday on the website Ars Technica that Salemme is serving on the Obama transition team as a telecom advisor. Clearwire told this columnist that Salemme is on leave to help craft Obama’s telecom policy.
Clearwire provides infrastructure for Sprint’s wireless data network. In layman’s terms, Sprint pays Clearwire to connect your Blackberry to the Internet.
The fates of Sprint and Clearwire, as well as their competitors, particularly Verizon, are tied up with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) actions on digital television because wireless broadband (high-speed Internet over cell-phone signals, in effect) is tied up with the FCC’s actions on digital television.
Here’s the policy issue in brief: For decades, TV programming has been broadcast over the air in analog format. These days—in addition to cable, which, obviously, goes over cables and not over the air—television broadcasters can send programming over the air in digital format.
By using digital broadcasting, more programming can be crammed into a narrower range of frequencies. Seeing this as an opportunity, the FCC—which has complete control over who can use what frequencies in the U.S.—started pushing during the Clinton administration to end all analog TV broadcasting and move it all to digital broadcasting.
After years of wrangling and negotiating, Congress and the FCC set February 17, 2009—between the Superbowl and the NCAA tournament—as the date for all TV broadcasting to switch to digital.
This will free up a huge swath of frequencies, which the FCC has auctioned off to other telecommunications firms. One buyer was Verizon, who will use this spectrum for its wireless broadband networks (again, providing Internet for Blackberries and similar devices).
Specifically, they will use this spectrum to launch their fourth-generation wireless broadband network (or “4G” as it’s known, in contrast to the “3G” you hear about with today’s iPhones and Blackberries). So, Verizon’s 4G network awaits the transition to digital TV.
But Sprint and Clearwire, on spectrum they already own, have begun launching their 4G network. That means Sprint is ahead of the competition in wireless Internet. It also means Sprint and Clearwire stand to benefit from Obama’s push to delay the transition to digital TV: The longer broadcasters use analog signals, the longer Verizon has to wait to get the spectrum it needs for its 4G network—which gives Sprint a longer honeymoon as the only network offering 4G speeds...
Corruption: We can do it.
Let me see if I get this straight. Weren’t there hundreds of millions in that Democrat stimulus package to bring broadband to underserved areas? I was already wondering why that was so high on the agenda.
Every little thing Obozo does benefits some donor of his. For the good of the country, my foot.
Bump for later read.
I love “obozo”
The figure I read was $6,000,000,000,
And sitting here on a 56K dialup line in a rural area trying to get AT&T off it's dead ass and give us DSL, this sounds mighty good to me.
I live in a rural area too. I obviously have no problem with you and me getting broadband but there is significant doubt as to whether it truly is meant to help people like you and me or whether he’s paying back some big donor. I just don’t trust the man for a minute.
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