Open-access proponents let out a collective sigh of relief in late January when an anonymous bidder with a fat purse exceeded the $4.6 billion reserve price for the nationwide C-block of 700-MHz spectrum.
The still-sealed $4.71 billion bid, which came during the auction's 17th round, means that the Federal Communications Commission's open-access stipulations will be all but ensured when a future network based on C-block spectrum is built out. Google and other companies fought hard for these open-access requirements in the months leading up to the auction.
"I think this is ultimately a good sign," said Gregory Attiyeh, managing director of FTI Consulting. "Even though we won't see an open-access network for a while, it reinforces the fact that open access is the thing of the future: It gets the ball rolling."
The open-access conditions attached to the national C-block of spectrum ostensibly mean that the eventual winner of the licenses must allow all compatible devices and applications to run on the network. That's in marked contrast to the way most cellular networks work today, where the owners of the spectrum -- the carriers -- have virtually total control over the handsets and applications that use their networks.
Open-access proponents see the change as necessary to encourage innovation and competition in a wireless-devices industry that has long been stifled by U.S. carriers' unwillingness to relinquish control.
If the FCC's $4.6 billion reserve price had not been met, the C-block would have been auctioned off without the open-access conditions in place.
Even though wireless-industry activists have been calling for open access for years, some of them are less than thrilled by the latest developments in this auction.
"I'm of an opinion that this is much ado about nothing," said Dewayne Hendricks of Tetherless Access, a vocal proponent of open access.
Hendricks pointed out that there are still plenty of exploitable loopholes in the way the FCC is defining open access for the winning bidder.
"If you look at the final rules that the FCC put out there, whoever wins the spectrum basically defines what open access means," said Hendricks. If, for instance, a carrier wanted to argue that a particular device or application poses a danger to the network -- an argument carriers have frequently made before -- it could ban that device or service from the network.
Carol Mattey, a former deputy chief of the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau and now the managing director of Deloitte & Touche's consulting practice on regulatory and capital markets, says that the FCC's loose open-access rules could undercut the otherwise revolutionary potential of open access.
"There are specific limitations," she said, "and like everything else in life, the devil is in the details."
Mattey acknowledges that the high-level open-access requirements for the C-block are a true step towards openness. But on a more granular level, it will ultimately come down to the winning bidder's approach toward network management that dictates what open access truly is, she said.
"We won't know those kinds of details until we get out there into real-world applications," Mattey said.
The precise implications of a new open-access network won't be known for some time. Some say this is beside the point, anyway. The true accomplishment -- an industrywide movement toward openness -- has already been achieved, thanks largely to Google's lobbying efforts and its announcement of a new, open, mobile platform called Android.
Indeed, even former bastion of closed-network policy Verizon has proven willing to open up its network. If nothing else, it shows that "openness" is the wireless industry's new byword.
