Chairman Pai doesn't currently have the votes to pass this. The two Democratic commissioners oppose it, and Republican Commissioner Mike O'Rielly opposes it--and is being replaced due to that fact. Until O'Rielly's replacement is confirmed, this is headed for /dev/null.

The FCC extended the comment deadline, allowing comments to be filed until midnight Friday, July 18. https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub... (Needless to say, this will result in a thrash about whether that's the midnight at the beginning or the end of Friday, July 18.)

The author of the Washington Post article apparently did a clueless mashup of three different things and got virtually every fact wrong.

First, the FCC isn't going to create nationwide free Wi-Fi. It is trying to make some more radio spectrum available for unlicensed uses, some of which may ultimately be part of the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard or something like it. The FCC isn't building networks itself; it's just making spectrum available for users and entrepreneurs.

Second, the article seems to be referring to three very different unlicensed spectrum blocks. One is the so-called TV White Spaces, which in the past has been predicted to become "Wi-Fi on steroids," however unlikely that may be. White Spaces is simply TV channels that are unoccupied. The FCC limits which channels can be used, and it requires a database dip to determine whether the channel is truly unoccupied. This hasn't really gotten off the ground yet, and it's going to get a lot harder soon, due to the second item.

Item two is the Congressionally mandated "Incentive Auction" that will cause TV stations to sell off some UHF TV channels and repack the stations into fewer channels. The resulting freed-up spectrum will mostly be auctioned to commercial mobile wireless companies. Some portion of the freed-up spectrum may also be set aside for unlicensed use, but it isn't going to be large new blocks of spectrum that will allow for "super Wi-Fi," and the repacking of TV stations will also result in fewer TV White Spaces that can be used for unlicensed wireless. This auctioning and repacking process was set forth in the "Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act" from early 2012, and the FCC is now conducting a rulemaking to figure out how to make it work. Thousands of pages of comments were filed with the FCC on every aspect of this plan on January 25, so the concept has recently been in the news.

The third item that the Post reporter mashed together with TV White Spaces and Incentive Auctions also comes from the 2012 tax relief bill -- a reallocation of spectrum in the 5 GHz band from federal government to non-government use. The Commerce Department has determined that this spectrum can be reallocated, and the FCC is going to consider a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding this in February. In early January, the FCC chairman announced this as a plan to free up as much as 195 MHz of spectrum for "Gigabit Wi-Fi." His speech is available here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-318326A1.pdf.