Last week the New York Times had an article entitled “Carriers Warn of Crisis in Mobile Spectrum”. It included the video above as well as the photo and caption at left, so you know that it presented several viewpoints. NAB’s Dennis Wharton was so excited about it that he sent it out with the following introduction:

To reporters who follow "spectrum crunch" stories:

I thought you might find of interest this article from The New York Times that quotes cellphone inventor Martin Cooper questioning wireless carriers' claims of a "spectrum crisis." Cooper says that wireless carriers are exaggerating their need for more spectrum and newer technologies can ease the demand for airwaves.

Cooper's statements follow others who are questioning the "spectrum crisis" notion in media outlets such as GigaOM and DSL Reports, as well as others who have proposed solutions wireless carriers can adopt to resolve network congestion issues. Last April, former FCC official Uzoma Onyeije released a paper detailing many of the same alternate solutions Cooper provides for wireless carriers to alleviate mobile broadband congestion.

Oddly, Mr. Wharton did not send me a copy of today’s Washington Post article entitled in the print edition “Regulators debate the future of broadcast” and on the website “As users flock to iTunes, Hulu and Netflix, TV stations struggle to survive”. The article starts off,

As the audience for free television fades, federal regulators are wrestling over the future of the government-mandated broadcasts, which were originally intended to knit the nation’s disparate communities together.

Today, only 10 percent of the nation relies on free, over-the-air TV, which was created by the Telecom Act in the 1930s. To get a license, broadcasters had to offer local, educational and political programming, and to make it widely available to rich and poor alike...

And as fewer people rely only on broadcast television, stations around the nation are struggling to survive even as some rural residents, elderly and the poor continue to rely on free TV..

(The Post included a “photo gallery” with their article, but did not provide embedding code like NYT did.)

I am puzzled why the Post’s Ms. Kang, who usually writes knowledgeably about FCC uses the phrase “federal regulators are wrestling”, when the reality is that they are trying as hard as they can to avoid the issue. Readers may recall my January post here about the quote from Justice Alito:

The truth in both cases is that official Washington is spending far to much time kowtowing to the alarmist and conflicting demands of BOTH NAB and CTIA.

The Times and Post articles are rare breaths of fresh air that one rarely hears from our government officials, Justice Alito excepted.

Tags: Spectrum policy