Reuters reports the FCC will rule in favor of Continental Airlines in a dispute over the right to use unlicensed spectrum at Boston-Logan International Airport: The dispute is now well over a year old, and stems from Continental choosing to offer free Wi-Fi in its membership lounge rather than sign on to Boston-Logan's airport-wide system, which is a for-fee network. Massport, which operates the airport and other transportation infrastructure, said that interference would occur and security would be compromised, and that Continental was violating its lease.

As I have written several times in covering this ongoing matter, the FCC has maintained--and one could reasonably maintain--that spectrum regulation is rightly the domain of the feds and that the FCC is the only body that can control spectrum's use. They issued an order to this effect in June 2004 that could hardly be clearer. A landlord usurping that role acts against the federal interest, especially in unlicensed bands, which have requirements for certification and operating parameters, but no restrictions on the party operating services in that band as long as they are within legal guidelines.

Reuters says an order is written and approved by the FCC chair Kevin Martin, and is awaiting likely approval from at least two of the four other commissioners.

Massport's contentions have rested at times on two different grounds. First, Continental was causing interference. That's problematic for a band in which interference is an expected part of operation, and not a cause for shutdown of offending transmitters unless they act outside the legal signal limits. Second, introduced as a later argument, was that vital security purposes would be subverted by having a non-Massport-controlled network in operation. Quite specious given that one would hope that a band that could be disrupted by a balky cordless 2.4 GHz phone wouldn't be the basis of our airport safety. And that hundreds of other airports have no such restrictions or concerns.