Does anyone know anything about this? It was not on the news or anywhere on the net, but apparently the meeting that was cancelled at the last minute on Thursday December 18th killed the hopes of a "FREE BROADBAND" plan proposed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin,a Republican. Mr. Martins plan involved using a "fallow" portion of the MICROWAVE spectrum to allow FREE wireless broadband internet access to the entire USA. The plan which was expected to be approved at the meeting today met with stiff resistance from incumbents and from some other lawmakers .....Now if it happens at all it will be on O'BOMB'A 's watch... Sounds kinda important to me why didn't the media report on this ...I would think this would be a big story worthy of mention beyond a little post on ATS: DIRT

They can't deal with the competition to deliver content.

Free = bad for telecomms and media. If they can't charge us for it, whats the point?

wow, let me tell you something. I wanted to get into the ISP business. Well guess what every angle I try getting into I notice they charged heavily and made you sign a contract.

After looking how to get into the ISP business I found out by a person in south Carolina that owned a small ISP business she told me that AT&T owns most of the network in the U.S then followed by version and so on.

So I am saying that the FCC is all crooks. They favor big business. I notice huge companies are the only ones able to buy frequencies.

The reason they canceled that meeting is that AT&T and many huge corps don't like that idea giving free internet to the people.

In the U.S it's all about corporatism. If you look at direct tv and dish network they charge americans and I hear other countries would catch it for free.

It's all about business. I am really for a free internet access wirelessly.

also if that does get passed then say goodbye to gps systems in cars cuz you can download free ware programs on your laptop.


Wll I hope to see internet free at some point. I tried getting into the isp business found I had to pay 1,000 bucks a month for a 1mb bandwidth line and also 500 bucks for the contract draft fee and after reading the contract I found many hidden charges which they never told me. So I decided to not start such a thing.

I know about the criminal way the FCC works....Before the internet... before wireless phones... I needed Mobile radio and telephone interconnect service for my business ...During the application process you were basically bidding against your competition for bandwidth and they would then sell it to the highest bidder.

The government cannot give internet access away free, Microsoft ,ATT Comcast ,DISH and all the other for profit companies would never allow that! Kind of like Tesla free energy technology.HMMM..WAIT!!!! Same technology just a different application..Still..NOT FREE please remit your check by email

If you read into the bill, The FCC was going to auction off wireless spectrum to the highest bidder, providing the winning bidder provide free Internet access on said spectrum. This is the second time they have tried to sell this scam. How could a company make money to pay off their initial investment????

This will never happen, look at the "free" dial up companies... where are they now?

the government can not charge companies to use frequencies and then give frequencies away for free, it will ruin a lot of business's and put a dent in the governments wallet!

Haha...

I worked for a small computer company in Florida way back when I worked real jobs...we tried the exact same thing and hit the exact same wall, it was ridiculous and clearly a monopoly.

Good job bringing that up computerwiz32 as alot of people here may not realize how consolidated the internet is...