Favored wireless model runs into foes
WASHINGTON — For the past three years, a startup called M2Z Networks has been figuring public a way to blanket the nation with a free wireless broadband network to ensure all Americans have audience to basic high-speed Internet connections.
Along the way, the company has place support in over-powering corners of Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. It has attracted funding from several of the Valley’s top venture-capital firms. And it has captured the concern of Kevin Martin, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, who is backing a plan essentially mirroring the M2Z proposal as a way to promote universal broadband.
Finally, this month, the company was nearing a breakthrough. Martin has pushed for a full FCC vote in continuance his plan, that would adjust the rules on the side of auctioning off the slice of wireless spectrum that M2Z wants to put its ideas into action.
But opposition forces gathered steam, deferring dreams for now.
Led by T-Mobile USA, the nation’s wireless carriers accept been lobbying to beat Martin’s proposal, which they say would interfere through their concede services.
The Bush administration wasn’t happy either: It urged the FCC not to proceed with each auction that would favor one company’s business model.
And some key Democrats on Capitol Hill called on the means to hold off on controversial items — what one. would include the M2Z digest — until the Obama administration takes over.
Facing such objections, Martin canceled this Thursday’s vote on the free broadband form. The proposal remains on circulation at the FCC, and M2Z is suing the agency to gain access to the slices of the airwaves that it of necessity.
But now it looks like the company be disposed require to wait until next year to know its fate.
Although the president-elect has not taken an official position on M2Z, he has said that wireless services could be one important passage for bringing broadband to totally corners of the country. And that could be good tidings for M2Z.
What’s at stake, insists M2Z co-founder Milo Medin, is a “lifeline” wireless broadband network that would provide basic connections for people who cannot supply the guerdon services offered by the big phone and cable companies or live in places to what those services are unavailable.
“We Americans are creating a two-tier digital society,” Medin aforesaid. “If you’re not connected today, you’re really at a disadvantage. But we can remove barriers that isolate people from the digital realm.”
