Frequencies for sale

Martin did not, however, grant the tech industry supplicants' other wish: to require winning bidders to open their networks to competing providers, which would buy access to the network at wholesale prices and then resell it. So the frequencies may not yield the result that would benefit the public most: a third, independent broadband pipe to compete with DSL and cable-modem services. Instead, the auctions could be won by AT&T and Verizon, which would have little incentive to share the frequencies with companies that want to compete with their DSL or mobile phone services.

Critics in the mobile phone industry complain that Martin's rules favor Google at the taxpayers' expense. And they're probably right about the cost -- attaching regulatory strings to the frequencies will almost certainly reduce what they fetch at auction. But the point isn't to raise the most money for the Treasury, it's to generate the broadest public benefit from these valuable public airwaves. Martin's proposal could inspire the same kind of inventiveness that's been a hallmark of the Web. Still, his draft doesn't go far enough. The FCC should also require winning bidders to provide wholesale access to their networks, at least for the frequencies in question. That's the best way to increase competition in broadband.