Two prominent Capitol Hill Democrats have written a letter to Federal Communications Commission chair Kevin Martin supporting his proposal for a national smut-free broadband service. Their statement takes on wireless company charges that it will interfere with wireless services in neighboring spectrum areas.

"We agree with you that promoting universal broadband is an urgent national priority," wrote Edward Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) on Friday. "However, we are concerned that incumbent wireless carriers are seeking unnecessary and unprecedented testing delays to prevent new innovative competitors from entering the market."

The letter is the first serious support that Martin's beleaguered scheme has gotten from Capitol Hill. The FCC wants to auction off the 2155-2180 MHz spectrum region to a bidder who will provide a nationwide broadband service that's free from both access fees and pornography. This area of the spectrum is also called the Advanced Wireless Services 3 (AWS-3) region. Martin's plan has come under heavy fire of late, not only from wireless companies and Congressional Republicans, but from public interest groups and trade associations that call it a threat to freedom of speech on the Internet.

TDDweedledee and FDDweedledum?

The first line of attack has come from wireless companies, prominent among them T-Mobile. In early July, the wireless provider filed for an extension on the proceeding, warning that, if the proposed service uses Time Division Duplex (TDD) technology as proposed, it could interfere with services in the nearby AWS-1 block. The FCC auctioned off AWS-1 frequencies in 2006.

Used for broadband transmission, TDD divides uplink and downlink tasks into different time frames, allowing them both to work on the same frequency. Its close relative, Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), assigns upload and download transmission to different channels. T-Mobile uses FDD and says that a TDD protocol parked nearby could prevent the company from making use of at least three blocks of spectrum it bought in the AWS-1 band. The company wants the FCC to extend its proceeding on Martin's proposal to allow for a series of tests similar to the FCC's field tests of unlicensed broadband apps, or "white space" devices, which are taking place right now.

"The Commission cannot responsibly reach a decision on the proposal advanced," T-Mobile says, "without gathering empirical data concerning the interference risks that have been identified," adding that "TDD proponents have not provided any evidence whatsoever to meet their burden."

Peaceful coexistence?

Those proponents, of course, think otherwise. M2Z Networks is the nation's foremost booster of the proposed plan, and the most likely bidder if the AWS-3 spectrum goes up for auction as the FCC wants it contoured. The company met with the Commission for the umpteenth time last week and, in so many words, charged that T-mobile and the rest of the wireless industry's objections were bogus.

M2Z claims that peaceful coexistence between TDD and FDD has been demonstrated outside the United States by none other than T-Mobile. The firm's filing says that, in the Czech Republic, the wireless company has a TDD system running "in close spectral proximity" to an FDD transmission set-up, with no harm done.

M2Z also cites a recent study done by the United Kingdom's Office of Communications (OFCOM) that pretty much gives TDD and FDD a pass to operate in proximity with each other. In the situations that OFCOM studied, the engineers found "little risk" in the first adjacent block, and "insignificant" risk in the second.

Ars suspects that critics will scrutinize that study for dissimilarities between base station operations in the United States and Britain. But M2Z also argues that many of these interference problems can be worked out via negotiations between the various service providers, as they have in the past.

Markey and Eshoo also mention the OFCOM study in their letter. "We are concerned that unnecessary interference testing would needlessly delay this auction and that this constitutes the very rationale to kill this effort totally," they conclude, adding the standard downer that U.S. broadband penetration currently ranks "a dismal 16th in the world."

We're offering you protection

Eshoo, in fact, has submitted a bill to the House of Representatives that pretty much proposes what Martin wants. Her Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act of 2008 (H.R. 5846), reserves the same chunk of spectrum (2155-2180 MHz) and requires the service to provide technology that "protects underage users from accessing obscene or indecent material." The legislation presently awaits debate in Markey's House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications. It has 14 co-sponsors, mostly Democrats, including Markey.

If this plan gets past big wireless, there is, of course, another hurdle ahead: the constitutionality of a government mandated service that doesn't just obey the FCC's legally shaky indecency rules, but has to block (dare we say "censor"?) the indecency in advance.

As Ars has reported, in July, nearly two dozen prominent public interest and civil liberties groups warned the FCC that the filtering part of the scheme could find itself facing a deluge of lawsuits. So far, proponents of the idea seem to have adopted an "We'll drive off that bridge when we get there" approach to the First Amendment question.

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