Harold Feld says STOP THE WIFI TAX RUMOR.
This is, bluntly, a misreading of the plain language of the President’s budget proposal. Lord knows there’s plenty there not too like, but there’s no “wifi tax.” My analysis (and a little historic context) below. O.K., here is what the President’s 2007 budget actually says about spectrum user fees. I have put the critical words (skipped by the industry press) in bold. “Ensuring Public Resources Are Used Effectively”
Um, “maybe” not? Seems to me you ought to be a bit less ambiguous about it, considering that your original announcement http://gigaom.com/2006/02/06/bush-lets-tax-wifi/) was both unambiguous and alarmist.
This post is the equivalent of a page A34 retraction of a front-page story.
It seems to me that only talking about a rumor such as a WiFi tax will actually make people think “Hey, that sounds like a good idea.” They talk about it. It causes uproar. A company with a big blue logo decides to get involved. Governments (country and business) look at numbers and see how more can be squeezed out of John Q. We end up paying more for something we shouldn’t.
Getting Feds involved? ..not a good idea.
I mean look at Cingular and their ATT buyout.
Feds: “Umm…we will only allow your ATT Wireless buyout if you sell off some of their markets to local companies so you will not become a monopoly.”
Cingular: “OK. You got it!”
[a few months pass]
Cingular: “Hey everybody..want a new plan? Well we’ve decided to raise our rates right along with the bar. …and we can do that because the Feds said that we are not a monopoly.”
I happen to live in one of those markets that Cingular had to sell off to a local provider, and I got screwed. The contract was passed on, my data plan was dropped, m2m calling to ATT/Cingular was gone, and I went through H-E-double-hockey-sticks for them to let me out of the contract with no termination fee. So now I’m with Cingular and I’m paying the more expensive rate.
So the best option here is to silence the hype and leave any Fed talk out…otherwise people will start thinking and I’ll have to move to Spain and denounce every living in the backasswards ASU.