December 15, 2008 by Jay Smith
On Saturday the United States, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cancelled a vote on the provision free broadband across the country, that was scheduled for the 18th of December. The reason for the delay was a bipartisan letter from Democrat, Jay Rockerfeller and Republican, Henry Waxman to Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC. They asked that the FCC postpone any major projects in order to focus on the National switch to digital TV, scheduled for February.
Waxman and Rockerfeller’s point was that there are already question marks over the FCC’s ability to handle the potentially problematic switch to digital TV. Therefore, it would be foolish to add to their workload at this point.
One company that will be happy about the delay is T-Mobile. Provision of free broadband to all US customers requires the auctioning of the segment of airwaves next to the portion that the company recently paid $4.2 billion dollars for. They are worried about interference from their neighboring segment, though the FCC claim that this will not be a problem.
Either way, it seems that the dream of free US broadband, which has already endured delay after delay, will have to be put on hold again.
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