Verizon Won, Now What?

With the coming end of analog television, an historic opportunity was created. The soon to be vacated portion of VHF television spectrum, popularly known as VHF was to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. In case you haven't noticed, VHF signals are particularly adept at penetrating walls and other obstacles.

It was widely hoped that this would help create a so called "third broadband" offering to the home, adding to cable and telephone company offerings. This would be especially vital in rural areas to deliver broadband everywhere (or at least to areas that fiber doesn't run to). Many also speculated that Google would pursue this as some type of nationwide munifi project with an open handheld device to access this (undoubtedly with the only search engine set to Google). Last night we learned there was a winner, and today we learn that the biggest prize went to Verizon.

While it was hardly a secret that Verizon was interested in this, I certainly wasn't rooting for them. For starters, are they really going to build a legitimate alternative to fiber to the home, when they've already overinvested in Fios? I doub it.

Verizon also has a very hefty wireless division. Ditto for the open handset model that would operate on the new frequency. Also, with their wireless broadband offerings, charging $40 for a mere 50 megs of data, I'm not thinking that we'll see a real alternative broadband offering here.

So, just what is Verizon going to do with over 9 billion of soon to be vacated wireless spectrum? I'm not really sure, but I'm not expecting to see any real competition for mobile broadband, fixed broadband, or wireless anytime soon. I only hope that I'm wrong on this one, because our nation is behind on broadband, I hope we haven't squandered yet another opportunity. Then again, maybe things will be more open than I expect.

Jonas