Despite the belief that the midterm election voters served as dentists defanging the FCC, the agency believes it still has enough chomp to bite into two beefy issues: broadband regulation and spectrum reallocation.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has plenty of bark and will try to put some bite into it with a broadband regulatory framework forbidding service providers--both wired and wireless--from blocking "lawful" content but lets broadband providers charge different rates for different levels of service. The proposal will come up for a vote during the agency's Dec. 21 meeting.
Meanwhile, the agency plowed ahead by unanimously voting to make fixed and mobile wireless service "co-primary users" of TV spectrum along with TV stations already in that space. It also suggested that one that one TV station could share a 6 MHz slot to free up more spectrum for wireless.
The steps are part of an overarching plan to free up 120 MHz of spectrum to deal with a spectrum crunch-at least from the wireless and FCC perspective. Broadcasters, of course, have taken a much warier approach to the matter.
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