Rep. Chip Pickering, Republican from Mississippi, asked the telecom representatives who are opposed to Open Access and Wireless Carterfone on the new 700 MHz spectrum that's coming up for auction, what's wrong with letting that spectrum have those restrictions? He asked, "You do not have to do Carterfone on 700, you don't have to bid on that spectrum if it's conditioned in that way. You don't have to change your business model... But if there are those who want to invest in a new business model that will create more dynamic vibrant healthy competitive wireless sector, what's wrong with that?"

We know the real answer. Verizon and the other telecom companies want to buy the spectrum so they can prevent any new competitors, just as Google's Rick Whitt warned. That's good for Verizon and bad for consumers. And at one point, Ed Evans, CEO of Stelera Wireless and board member of the CTIA, let that slip:

Pickering: Are you concerned that if you do allow openness in the upper bands that it will intensify competition in the lower bands, in the lower markets, and drive your price at the auction up?

Evans: I believe you would actually shut down capital investment into rural markets by doing that... Then I've acquires spectrum under a certain set of rules, and now under a different set of rules there's a new piece of spectrum that is out there, whereby we don't know what they're going to do with it, we don't know what they're going to deploy, we don't know what type of technology, but we know that it is open and therefore you've substantially lowered the barrier to entry for any competitor to come in, literally anybody in the world who wanted to walk in and try to turn on a wireless network.

Pickering: I think you've captured the issue. Do you want more competition or less competition?

Evans goes on to argue that the technology for open access doesn't exist, and so the FCC is wasting spectrum and should instead only use it for the same technology we have today. At least we know where the CTIA stands on innovation: if it's not already out there, the FCC shouldn't allow it.