WASHINGTON — Federal regulators sought to alter the nation's wireless future Tuesday, taking steps to improve public safety response during emergencies and to spur new competition for high-speed Internet access.
They also tried to resolve a long-standing annoyance for cellphone users -- having to buy new phones whenever they switch wireless carriers.
The key to those issues is a swath of prime public airwaves that the Federal Communications Commission must auction by January.
The spectrum, which TV stations will abandon when they switch to digital-only signals in early 2009, is considered "beachfront property" in the wireless world because it can easily carry data over long distances and through walls.
After months of intense lobbying by wireless providers, public interest groups and technology companies, the FCC on Tuesday set the rules for the sale of what is expected to be the last major chunk of spectrum available for years.
In its most controversial move, the FCC voted to require the winner of about a third of the spectrum to allow people to use any phone they want. The winner also must allow customers to download any mobile software applications.
The requirements, a compromise between competing plans by Google Inc. and telecommunications giants, would be a major change for wireless companies. Today they control access to their spectrum and usually limit customers to certain phones and approved software.
"Currently, American consumers are too often asked to throw away their old phones and buy new ones if they want to switch cellphone carriers," said FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who crafted the compromise.
Support on the commission was not unanimous. Republican Robert S. McDowell dissented on the open access provision.
After initially opposing such a plan, the nation's two largest wireless providers, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., said they could live with it.
McDowell, blasted the plan as "unnecessary regulation."
Google and public interest groups also criticized the plan, saying it didn't go far enough. They had pressed for more openness, including a requirement that winning bidders sell access to companies at wholesale prices so they could offer their own wireless services.
The commission's two Democrats, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, supported the broader plan to spur the development of high-speed Internet providers to compete with phone and cable companies and drive down prices.
