You Always Wanted a Cell Tower in Your Backyard, Right?

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While disappointing carriers by reiterating the FCC is all about net neutrality, chairman Julius Genachowski also offered them some consolation: To get more 4G goodness in the air, the FCC's going to a "shot clock" style rollout for cell towers.

That means when a new cell tower site is proposed, there's just a short period for a community to protest it—the idea being more towers going up even faster will help speed up the rollout of crazyfast 4G wireless. The FCC's also working to free up more spectrum for carriers to use for 4G, though that's not exactly easy, since wireless spectrum, while invisible, is a pretty limited resource. (It's why Verizon paid a kabillion dollars for a chunk of it.)

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Even if you're not happy about the shot clock timing for towers, on the upside, the FCC's committed to having net neutrality apply to mobile internets as well as the stuff your cable company provides, the wireless carriers won't be able to terribly restrict what you do with all of that mobile broadband, beyond very basic network management to keep it all running. [Cnet]

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