WASHINGTON, DC — The Federal Communications Commission appears poised to move ahead with a plan to auction a portion of the wireless spectrum to a broadband service provider that would be tasked with covering 50-percent of the U.S. within four years and 95-percent of the country within 10 years.Twenty-five percent of the wireless broadband service would be free to consumers, and the winning bidder would be required to filter out pornography.

The spectrum auction may happen as early as 2009, despite fierce objections from T-Mobile, which has protested the arrangement because its 3G network resides in the adjacent spectrum. T-Mobile in 2006 paid $4.2 billion for its section of the spectrum, and the company is worried a new service next door could interfere with its operations.

A just-completed FCC engineering study, however, indicated interference is not likely. The study’s results were released October 11th.

“The analysis shows that … [a] device operating in close proximity does not necessarily result in interference,” according to the FCC report. “And when factoring in actual operation under non-static conditions, the situation only improves.”

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin proposed the idea in May but ran into stiff opposition from incumbent wireless carriers, the wireless industry trade association CTIA and Republican leaders in Congress. While the FCC report may not allay everyone’s fears, it does give Martin’s plan support. In a nutshell, the auction would encompass 25MHz in the 2155-2175MHz band. The winning bidder would be required to provide free basic services to which any device or software could connect. The provider could support itself by selling advertising and offering enhanced speeds for a fee. Only the free service would require filtering.

Silicon Valley startup M2Z Networks set the plan in motion in 2005 when it offered to provide free wireless internet access nationwide if the FCC would give it the spectrum in exchange for 5-percent of any profit the company made. The FCC rejected the idea of giving away the spectrum, but liked the idea of free wireless broadband service.

M2Z said it is ready to bid on the spectrum now and will do so when the auction occurs.

“All of the policy and technical benchmarks have now been met and all that is needed is an affirmative vote by the FCC commissioners so that this spectrum can be auctioned and be put into productive use as quickly as possible,” M2Z founder and chief executive officer John Muleta told eWeek.

The service is not a done deal, however. The content-filtering component still faces heavy opposition from free-speech advocates. The Center for Democracy and Technology, which leads a coalition of free-speech organizations that oppose the plan, has called the move part of a political agenda that seeks to shrink the so-called digital divide at the expense of consumers’ constitutional rights.

According to the FCC’s current plan, the 25-percent of the network that is free would be required to maintain “an ‘always-on’ network-based filtering system” that would “filter or block images and text that constitute obscenity or pornography and, in context, as measured by contemporary community standards and existing law, any images or text that otherwise would be harmful to” children aged five to 17.

“This proposal does indicate that the FCC is trying to find new ways to get more involved in internet content regulation,” CDT General Counsel John B. Morris Jr. told Sci-TechToday.com. “This proposal wouldn’t by itself, but it is a major first step in that direction. Congress in its wisdom has managed to keep the FCC out of internet filtering, and the internet has been successful in large part because of that.

“There’s no doubt that Martin has long shown a willingness to censor content, and in the process, he has taken the FCC across several legal and constitutional boundaries,” Morris continued. “The breadth of the proposal that the FCC has issued is astounding. It goes beyond any legal standard that any court in this country has ever announced.”