Phone and cable company control over Internet access in the United States has led the country to fall all the way to 16th in the world in high-speed Internet growth rankings. If you live in the US, you now have limited choices with the highest prices for the slowest speeds in the world, with no privacy.

It is within that context that the FCC appears poised to make another giant blunder and hand over a broadcast spectrum to the asleep-at-the-wheel incumbents. Such a move threatens to hamper economic growth of the country’s Internet relevance by stifling competition in the critical new wireless Internet space.

Consumer Affairs reports that a coalition has formed to help the country:

In a series of three filings with the FCC, the six-member Save Our Spectrum coalition said the Commission should structure the auction of the spectrum, and the service offered over it, so that the service will be operated in a non-discriminatory manner, under an open access structure following auction rules that will allow for greater participation than simply the incumbents.

[…]

In the proposed auction rules, a filing coordinated by the Media Access Project, the coalition recommended the Commission offer the new spectrum at the wholesale level, and should “either prohibit wireline and large wireless incumbents from bidding, or require them to bid through structurally separate affiliates.”

Will they succeed? It is interesting how regulation is sometimes necessary to preserve an open market and encourage growth, but who knows what might be on the mind of those in charge of regulation. Will someone in the Bush administration claim that innovation in the wireless space by non-incumbents poses a threat to national security?