The Federal Communications Commission has granted cable operators permission to completely encrypt their television lineups, potentially requiring every subscriber to rent set top boxes or CableCARD technology to continue watching cable-TV.

The FCC voted last week 5-0 to allow total encryption, a reversal of an older rule that prohibited encryption of the basic tier, allowing cable customers to watch local stations and other community programming without the expense of extra equipment.

The cable industry said the decision is a victory against cable theft, claiming that nearly five percent of all cable television hookups are illegally stealing service, at a cost estimated at $5 billion in lost revenue annually.

But some third party companies offering alternatives to costly set top boxes with endless monthly rental fees claim the industry move towards encryption is more about protecting the cable monopoly than controlling signal theft.

Current licensing agreements do not allow third party set top manufacturers to support scrambled channels without an added-cost, cable company-supplied set top box or card. That means a would-be customer would have to invest in a third party set top box and a cable company-supplied set top box to manage scrambled channels. That may leave customers wondering why they need the third party box at all.

This presented a problem for Boxee, which manufactures third party set top boxes, some with DVR capability. If cable systems completely encrypt their lineups, Boxee customers will need to rent a cable box and work through a complicated procedure to get both to work together.

Boxee officials suggest both an interim and long term solution to the dilemma — both requiring the goodwill of the cable industry to work out the details.

For now, Boxee and Comcast have agreed to work together on an HD digital transport adapter (DTA) with built-in Ethernet (E-DTA). A Boxee user would then access basic tier channels directly through an Ethernet connection and change channels remotely using their enhanced set top via a DLNA protocol.

A longer term solution would be to create a licensing path for an integrated DTA solution included inside third party set top boxes. This would eliminate the need for an added cost E-DTA box.

Cable operators planning to encrypt their entire television lineup will soon begin notifying customers of their plans. Under an agreement with the FCC, those with broadcast basic service will get up to two boxes for two years without charge (five years if the customer is on public assistance). Those who already have a cable box or DVR will get one box for two years at no charge. The cable company can impose monthly rental fees on additional boxes and begin charging for every box after two years.

Former FCC chairman Michael Powell, who now presides over the nation’s largest cable lobbying group, called the FCC decision “pro-consumer” despite the added expense and inconvenient many customers will experience.

“By permitting cable operators to join their competitors in encrypting the basic service tier, the commission has adopted a sensible, pro-consumer approach that will reduce overall in- home service calls,” said Powell, president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. “Encryption of the basic tier also enhances security of the network which reduces service theft that harms honest customers.”

Comcast is a leading proponent of total encryption, because it would allow them to start and stop service remotely, without having to schedule a service call to disconnect service. Cablevision already encrypts its entire lineup in certain areas under a previously-obtained waiver from the FCC. The company said it saved money reducing labor costs associated with service calls to physically connect and disconnect service.

“We know where you live, where your office is and who you owe money to. We are having your house watched and we are going to use this information to destroy you. You made a big mistake messing with TCI. We are the largest cable company around. We are going to see that you are ruined professionally.” — Paul Alden, TCI’s vice president and national director of franchising to an independent consultant hired to review competing cable operators for Jefferson City, Mo., in a historical example of cable industry abuse

The Federal Communications Commission last week voted unanimously to expire rules that required cable operators to make their programming available on fair and reasonable terms to competitors. Big mistake.

We have been here before. Let us turn back the clock to the days before the FCC and Congress mildly reined in the cable television industry with the types of pro-consumer regulations Chairman Genachowski and others have now let expire. Why were these rules introduced in the first place? Because years of industry abuse heaped on consumers and local communities took their toll, with high prices for poor service, outrageous corporate bullying tactics, and endless litigation to hamper or stop consumer relief.

How long will it take for the industry to resume the same abusive practices that forced the FCC and Congress to finally act once before?

The Central Telecommunications. v. Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI): The Poster Child for Cable Industry Abuse

Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) was the nation’s largest cable operator. Later known as AT&T Cable, the company was eventually sold to Comcast.

Back in the 1980s, before the days of direct broadcast satellite competition like DirecTV and Dish, and years before telco-TV was allowed by law, the cable industry totally dominated the video marketplace. The only challenges came from incredibly rare competing cable TV providers or three million home satellite dish owners or wireless cable subscribers.

The industry’s only check on unhampered monopoly growth came from local authority over cable operations through the cable franchising process. If a cable company got out of control or did not offer the programming or service a community found adequate, it could offer a franchise to another company, effectively kicking bad actors out of town.

In Jefferson City, Mo., the local cable operator during the 1980s was Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI). It had acquired the franchise in the city by buying out the original provider in the late 1970s. TCI had been buying a lot of smaller cable operators around the country under the direction of then CEO John Malone. By 1981, it had grown to the largest cable operator in the country, and few dared confront the well-heeled operator, which had a legal budget greater than the operating budgets of some communities TCI served. TCI was later acquired by AT&T Cable, which in turn sold its cable systems to Comcast, which continues to operate them to this day.

In 1980, Jefferson City officials decided it would be prudent to make sure they were getting the best cable service possible, so as TCI’s franchise agreement reached expiration, the city issued a “request for proposals” offering other cable companies a chance to bid for the right to serve the community of around 38,000. For TCI, this was tantamount to a declaration of war, and the cable company meant business. Malone equated anything threatening a permanent cable franchise for TCI as something like an act of government theft. In books later written about the events in Jefferson City, even some TCI executives admitted they were “horrified by the sleaziness” of the kind of hardball tactics involved, comparing them to a “B-movie.”

TCI revealed it would stop at nothing to keep competitors away from their territories and drag out years of litigation. Central Telecommunications, Inc., v. TCI Cablevision, Inc., revealed exactly how far TCI was willing to go:

From: Cutthroat: High Stakes & Killer Moves on the Electronic Frontier, By Stephen Keating

Cajole the mayor into canceling competitive bidding. In early 1980, after Jefferson City made it known TCI might get some competition, the company quickly met with the mayor hoping to persuade him to renew TCI’s franchise without a competitive bid process, so as to avoid a “frontal attack” by competitors.

Threaten the independent consultant. In December, 1980 the city hired Elmer Smalling, an industry consultant, to independently evaluate various bids from cable operators willing to serve Jefferson City. TCI immediately began publicly attacking his qualifications in a way the court later found to be defamatory. The court case documents Paul Alden, TCI’s vice president and national director of franchising, making personal threats against Smalling.  A sample:

“We know where you live, where your office is and who you owe money to. We are having your house watched and we are going to use this information to destroy you. You made a big mistake messing with T.C.I. We are the largest cable company around[.] We are going to see that you are ruined professionally.”

It got worse for Smalling. At this same time, Warner-Amex (another large cable company now known as Time Warner Cable) was a client of Smalling’s. Alden contacted Warner-Amex about Smalling. Following the threats, Smalling lost Warner-Amex as a client.

City Attorney Thomas Utterback later wrote a memo to the City Council in which he described TCI as a “relentless corporate bully.”

Threaten would-be competitors. On several occasions, from January of 1981 to the summer of 1981, Alden repeatedly telephoned Robert Brooks, chief operating officer of Teltran, a company which submitted a bid for the city’s franchise, and threatened him that unless Teltran withdrew from the bidding process, TCI would make trouble for Teltran in Columbia, Missouri, where it operated a cable television franchise. Teltran subsequently dropped out of the bidding process on the ground there was a “distasteful environment” in Jefferson City.

Another competitor, Central Telecommunications, became a defendant in a TCI lawsuit challenging the city’s right to request proposals from other cable companies. TCI argued it now had a 1st Amendment right of free speech to serve Jefferson City residents regardless of the wishes of city officials. In a wide ranging series of subpoenas, TCI demanded the bank handling Central’s financing turn over a “very wide range of potentially confidential records,” which according to Central was an effort to destroy its financing agreement with the bank.

Malone

Threaten customers. TCI warned customers that unless it won the cable franchise for Jefferson City, it would immediately shut off its cable system and leave customers without service, potentially for years, until Central built its own system from scratch. TCI officials said “it would not sell ‘one bolt’ of its system to whoever received the new franchise and that it would ‘rather have [its system] rot on the pole’ than sell it to a competitor at any cost.”

TCI’s system manager in Jefferson City told elderly residents of a senior citizens’ home that TCI would cut off service if denied a franchise, and the residents would be without television for two years pending construction of a new system because the concrete walls of their residence would not allow reception of over-the-air stations.

Lie, Lie, and Lie Some More. In one City Council meeting, Alden wildly claimed that TCI was the nation’s largest distributor of satellite dish antennas, with “an exclusive” right to sell in the state of Missouri. TCI promised that if the city renewed its franchise agreement, it would keep satellite dishes out of Jefferson City. If the franchise was not renewed, Alden promised to “flood the city with satellite dishes,” denying the city franchise fees. Alden later admitted both statements were untrue.

Threaten the mayor’s office. Although the mayor has never disclosed exactly what TCI threatened him with, the public record shows in March 1981, Alden called the mayor and threatened to turn the system off unless TCI’s franchise was renewed. TCI also filed an expensive lawsuit against Jefferson City regarding the way it handled its request for proposals.

By the fall of that year, TCI was meeting with city attorney Utterback in secret negotiations to renew its cable franchise, in direct violation of the city’s request for proposals  which required all negotiations to be open, as well as Missouri’s “sunshine laws.” By next spring, the mayor had privately notified council members he would veto any franchise renewal awarded to anyone other than TCI, which he later admitted was a condition imposed by TCI during its secret negotiations.

On January 25, 1982, the City Council provisionally awarded the franchise to… Central Telecommunications. TCI immediately refused to pay the city the prior year’s franchise fees, in excess of $60,000. It also reminded the mayor of his obligations to TCI as part of the secret franchise renewal negotiations held the prior fall. On April 20, 1982, the City Council passed the ordinance awarding a franchise to Central. The vote was six in favor and four against. The mayor vetoed the ordinance. The council then deadlocked five-to-five on awarding a franchise to TCI and the mayor cast the deciding vote in favor of that company. The next day, TCI dismissed its lawsuit against the city and paid the withheld franchise fees.

In the end, several courts upheld tens of millions in damages for Central Telecommunications, TCI’s lawsuit was dismissed at the company’s request, Mr. Alden was summarily dismissed by TCI after Malone referred to him as a “loose cannon,” and Jefferson City was stuck with several additional years of lousy service from TCI.

But TCI’s “bad corporate citizen” practices would come back to haunt the cable juggernaut, eventually failing to win assignments for two $800 million orbital slots for a direct broadcast satellite service the company proposed. After the Jefferson City experience, even the FCC could not, in good conscience, reward TCI with satellite slots it wanted for a “competing satellite service” it would sell through its own cable companies.

The memories of FCC officials are evidently short. Giving cable operators an inch has historically bought them a mile, paid for by consumers. Mandating easy to understand rules requiring cable operators sell programming to competitors on fair and reasonable terms is sound policy whether there is competition or not. Removing those rules or watering them down only promotes the kind of mischief that, when unchecked, leads to these kinds of horror stories. History need not repeat itself.

The Federal Cable-Protection Commission

Problem: Solved?

The Federal Communications Commission last Friday unanimously voted to free cable operators from their obligation to sell cable channels they own to rival satellite and phone companies.

In a bizarre justification, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said ending the unambiguous rules would prevent anti-competitive activity in the market because the FCC would retain the right to review industry abuses on a case-by-case basis. Lawmakers called that an invitation for endless, time consuming litigation that will deprive consumers of competitive choice and favor the still-dominant cable television industry.

“The sunset of the program access rules could lead to a new dawn of less choice and higher prices for consumers,” said Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), one of the original authors of the rules. “If we do not extend the program access rules, the largest cable companies could withhold popular sports and entertainment programming from their competitors, reducing the competition and choice that has benefited consumers. I urge Chairman Genachowski and the FCC commissioners to extend the program access rules that have helped to level the playing field in the paid television marketplace.”

The FCC’s decision could have profound implications on would-be competitors, particularly start-ups like Google Fiber that could find itself without access to popular cable networks at any price.

At a time when cable companies and programmers are constantly pitted against each other in contract/carriage disputes, the deregulatory spirit at the FCC is likely to irritate consumers even more.

Phillip “How nice of the FCC to think about poor cable companies” Dampier

The FCC claims it will continue to protect sports programming from exclusive carriage agreements — a potentially critical concession considering the history of “exclusive, only on cable” programming contracts was largely focused on regional sports channel PRISM.

Comcast successfully kept the popular Philadelphia-based network (today known as Comcast SportsNet Philadephia) off competing satellite services and cable operators by only distributing the network terrestrially. A controversial FCC rule (known as the “terrestrial exception”) states that a television channel does not have to make its shows available to satellite companies if it does not use satellites to transmit its programs. Cox Cable has its own implementation of that loophole running in San Diego.

Derek Chang, executive vice-president of DirecTV, says Comcast’s local market share dominance is a direct consequence of SportsNet. More importantly, Chang believes even if Comcast says it will sell the network to competitors, it is free to set prices for SportsNet as high as it wants.

“They win either way,” Chang said. “They’re either going to gouge our customers, or they’re going to withhold it from our customers.”

Verizon FiOS has secured the right to carry the channel on its system, but won’t say how much it pays.

The PRISM case is today’s best evidence that exclusive agreements do hamper competition — Philadelphia is hardly a hotbed of satellite dishes, with a 40-50% reduced satellite subscriber rate attributable to the lack of popular regional sports on satellite.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s cowardly lion act is back. Will anyone at the FCC stand up to Big Telecom companies while busy watering down pro-competitive policies?

Historically, satellite dish owners and wireless cable customers were the most likely victims of exclusive or predatory programming contracts, with some cable networks refusing to sell their programming to competing technologies at any price.  Others charged enormous, unjustified mark-ups that made the technology non-competitive. Today, wireless cable television is mostly defunct and home satellite dish service has largely been replaced with direct broadcast satellite providers DirecTV and Dish.

Today’s programming landscape is more complicated. The FCC would argue that unlike in the 1980s, most cable programmers are no longer directly controlled by yesteryear’s Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) and Time Warner (Time Warner Cable was spun off into an independent, unaffiliated entity in March, 2009), which collectively controlled dozens of popular cable networks. But programmers’ know their best customers remain cable operators which maintain a dominant market share in every major American city.

Friday’s ruling has implications for telco-TV providers and satellite dish companies that may find programming negotiations more complicated than ever. AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS may find access to cable-owned programming difficult or even impossible to obtain if cable operators decide their unwanted competition is harmful to their business interests.

But an even larger challenge looms for the next generation of video competition: Google Fiber TV and “over the top” online video.

Nobody is complaining about Google’s robust gigabit broadband offering, but Kansas City residents originally expressed concern about the company’s proposed television lineup. As originally announced, Google Fiber TV was missing HBO and ESPN.

A competing cable system without ESPN is dead in the water for sports enthusiasts.

Google has since managed to sign agreements that expand their channel lineup (although it is still missing HBO). But nothing prevents channel owners from dramatically raising the price at renewal. That is a concern for smaller cable operators as well, who want protection from discriminatory pricing that awards the best prices to giant multi-system operators like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

The most important impact of the FCC’s decision may be for those waiting to launch virtual cable systems delivering online programming to customers who want to pick and choose from a list of networks.

The FCC’s “new rules” give programmers who depend on tens of millions of cable subscribers even more ammunition to kill competing distribution models like over the top video. Start-up providers who cannot obtain reasonable and fair access to cable programming will have to depend on the vague policies the FCC claims it will enforce to prevent egregious abuse. But the FCC is not known for its speed and start-up companies may face enormous legal fees fighting for fair access that is now open to subjective interpretation.

Phillip “You Guys Need a Timeout” Dampier

AT&T and Time Warner Cable are complaining they have gotten a raw deal from Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Ks., in comparison to the incentives Google was granted to wire both cities with gigabit fiber broadband.

“It’s time to modernize our industry’s rules and regulations…so all consumers benefit from fair and equal competition,” read a statement from AT&T.

“There are certain portions of the agreement between Google and Kansas City, Kan., that put them at a competitive advantage compared with not just us but also the other competitors in the field,” said Alex Dudley, a Time Warner Cable spokesman. “We’re happy to compete with Google, but we’d just like an even playing field.”

The Wall Street Journal seemed to suggest Google was getting the keys to both cities, with grants of free office space and free power for Google’s equipment, according to the agreement on file with the cities. The company also gets the use of all the cities’ “assets and infrastructure”—including fiber, buildings, land and computer tools, for no charge. Both cities are even providing Google a team of government employees “dedicated to the project,” says the Journal.

The Google Fiber project was so desired that the local governments rolled out the red carpet. In Kansas City, Mo., for instance, the city is allowing Google to construct “fiberhuts,” small buildings that house equipment on city land at no cost, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The cities are discounting other services, as well. For the right to attach its cables to city utility poles, Google is paying Kansas City, Kan., only $10 per pole per year—compared with the $18.95 Time Warner Cable pays. Both cities have also waived permit and inspection fees for Google.

The cities are even helping Google market its fiber build-out. And both are implementing city-managed marketing and education programs about the gigabit network that will, among other things, include direct mailings and community meetings.

Several cable executives complain that the cities also gave Google the unusual right to start its fiber project only in neighborhoods guaranteeing high demand for the service through pre-registrations. Most cable and phone companies were required by franchise agreements with regional governments to build out most of the markets they entered, regardless of demand.

But the Journal missed two key points:

1. Time Warner Cable has been granted the same concessions given to Google on the Missouri side, and AT&T presumably will also get them when it completes negotiations with city officials on the matter.
2. Both cable and phone companies have the benefit of incumbency, and the article ignores concessions each had secured when their operations first got started.

The Bell System enjoyed a monopoly on phone service for decades, with concessions on rights-of-way, telephone poles and placement. AT&T was a major beneficiary, and although the AT&T of today is not the same corporation that older Americans once knew, the company continues a century-long tradition of winning the benefit of the doubt in both the state and federal legislature. AT&T has won statewide video franchise agreements that give the company the power to determine where it will roll out its more advanced U-verse platform, and enjoys carefully crafted federal tax policies that helped them not only avoid paying any federal tax in 2011 — the company actually secured a $420 million “refund” subsidized by taxpayers.

Cable operators also won major concessions from local governments under pressure from citizens eager to buy cable television. At the time, cable companies were granted exclusive franchises — a cable monopoly — to operate, an important distinction for investors concerned about the value of their early investments. Local zoning and pole attachment matters were either negotiated or dealt with legislatively to allow cable companies the right to hang their wires on existing utility poles. Franchise agreements permitted the gradual roll-out of cable service in each franchise area, often allowing two, three, or more years to introduce service. It was not uncommon for neighborhoods on one side of town to have cable two years before the other side could sign up. That sounds awfully familiar to AT&T U-verse today.

Google’s proposal to build a revolutionary broadband network delivering 1Gbps deserved and got the same type of treatment then-revolutionary phone and cable service won back in the day.

Time Warner Cable also won much the same treatment Google is now getting, and the cable operator has gotten $27,000 in fees refunded and will avoid another $100,000 in permit fees going forward. Time Warner Cable and Google will both receive free traffic control services during network construction — not that Time Warner Cable plans much of a change for customers in either Missouri or Kansas.

AT&T will likely also receive the same treatment, although it would be hypocritical of them to complain that Google gets to pick and choose where it provides service. Large swaths of Kansas City and suburbs are still waiting for U-verse to arrive, and many areas will never get the service. Cable operators had to wire a little further, but also benefited from years of monopoly status and network construction expenses paid off years ago when there literally was no competition.

Those paragons of virtue at Goldman Sachs are appalled Google has such a good relationship with Kansas City officials more than happy to have the gigabit speeds neither AT&T or Time Warner Cable would even consider providing.

Google’s rights “appear to be significantly more favorable than those cable, Verizon or any other fiber overbuilders achieved when striking deals with local governments in the past,” Goldman Sachs analyst Jason Armstrong told the Journal. “We’re surprised Time Warner Cable hasn’t been more vocal in its opposition.”

But then the cable company has secured most of the same benefits Google has, so why complain at all?

In fact, city officials had to browbeat Time Warner to modernize its network in ways it would have not done otherwise without the new agreement.

Both AT&T and Time Warner have every right to be concerned. Their substandard networks and high prices (along with a lousy history of customer service, according to national surveys) put them at a competitive disadvantage if Google does not make any major mistakes. Neither cable or phone company has made any noise about upgrading service to compete, and should customers begin to leave in droves, then both companies may actually have something to cry about.

The Wall Street Journal’s report on the concessions granted to Google wanders off into the Net Neutrality debate for some reason, and misses several important facts reviewed above.  (3 minutes)

Copps

Americans need to stand up and say “no” to more telecom mergers and lobbying efforts that push for additional deregulation and corporate protectionism in the telecommunications sector. Unfortunately, we are in for a fight, thanks to Washington’s problem disappointing a multi-billion industry that lavishly finances political campaigns, conventions, and vacation outings.

Michael Copps, former commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from 2001-2011 and acting chairman for the first six months of the Obama Administration ought to know.

“The consolidated world of telecom broadband did not evolve from the hand of God, the mysterious workings of natural law, or the inevitability of market-based dynamics,” Copps wrote in his essay, “Why Give Up on Competition?” “It was enabled by conscious decision-making at the federal level, largely through the abdication of its oversight responsibilities by the Federal Communications Commission over the better part of 30 years.”

In short, it did not have to turn out this way, no matter what the telecom industry and their astroturf friends have to say.

“Go to just about any telecom conference these days, and some industry maven will make the case that restoring competition to the telecom world is so 1990s,” Copps writes. “Why don’t we all just recognize the inevitable, they ask: telecom is a natural monopoly, competition is a chimera, and the sooner we flash a steady green light for more industry consolidation and less government oversight, the better off we’ll all be.”

Provider-backed ALEC advocates for the corporate interests that fund its operations.

Too many in Washington are already true believers, according to Copps, and the result is two companies controlling over 2/3rds of the wireless marketplace and a broadband duopoly for most Americans. This did not happen overnight. Enormous and expensive lobbying campaigns run for over a decade have convinced lawmakers that less is more when it comes to telecom regulation and oversight. Regulators ringing alarm bells about deregulation without sufficient competition have been picked off, says Copps, by the telecom industry-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has convinced at least 19 state legislatures to wipe away authority from state public service commissions that for years have been trying to protect consumers and preserve competition.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was originally designed to open the telecommunications marketplace to increased competition, but also ensure a level playing field for competitors by charging the FCC to implement and enforce strong rules to keep incumbent telecommunications companies from steamrolling new competitors.

No surprises here: Michael Powell was FCC chairman during the deregulation frenzy of the first term of George W. Bush. Today, he’s the president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the largest cable industry lobbying group in the country.

With the arrival of President George W. Bush, the new Republican majority at the FCC promptly began obliterating checks and balances at the behest of some of the nation’s largest phone and cable companies. The results:

• Reselling rights and wholesale leasing of facilities to competitors were wiped away, guaranteeing monopoly control of already-established networks;
• Opening up the long distance and local market to Baby Bell competition with their promise they would compete nationwide failed. Like Big Cable, the Baby Bells sold local and long distance only to their own customers, not to those located in another Baby Bell’s service area;
• Instead of competing, phone companies simply bought each other. “As soon as one transaction was approved, another one came through the door,” Copps reported. “Sometimes it seemed like the merger approval business was our only business.”;
• ” The FCC voted, over the strenuous objections of Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein and me, to remove advanced telecommunications (broadband) from the purview of Title II of the Telecommunications Act—where consumer protections, competition, privacy, and public safety are clearly mandated—and placed them instead in the nebulous and uncharted land of Title I, where regulatory authority is uncertain, consumer protections are virtually non-existent, and where the huge companies are better positioned to wreak havoc on the promise of competition,” Copps said.

To right the wrongs, Copps wants some major changes to reignite competition and return to telecom innovation, eliminating the stagnation we have from today’s cozy, barely competitive marketplace:

1. Learn to say “no” to more industry mergers. Consolidation has not brought communications nirvana for consumers, just higher prices and fewer choices, often from a monopoly provider;
2. Encourage innovative approaches like municipal broadband. Copps: “‘My way or nothing’ may be the mantra of the big guys, but that means no broadband in places they don’t wish to serve.” Copps wants to see the federal government pre-empt state bans on public broadband laws provider-backed ALEC has gotten through legislatures across the country;
3. Smarter stewardship of wireless spectrum, including unlicensed spectrum use, shared spectrum, smarter technology, and a “use it or lose it” policy that pulls back unused/warehoused spectrum held by some of the nation’s largest wireless carriers.