No further details of BattleChat.  Just a snippet of what is going on in the telecommunications field with the FCC.  Something some may not have seen coming.  As you know, on February 2009 – a year from now, the FCC is forcing Digital Television to free the transmission space of current analog TV Channels for National Emergency communication after the 9-11 (2001) events.

But where is all the other Television frequency channels going?  … Online.  Keep in mind two things: Blizzard games use AT&T and ActivisionBlizzard is to acquire Neuf Cegetel (France).

The licenses have yet to be handed out, but Google (GOOG) already won the FCC auction.

In case you haven’t heard, television is going all-digital in 2009, and the Federal Communication Commission is selling off the bandwidth dropped by the TV industry to cellphone companies.

Yep, I’m afraid the FCC has officially declared rabbit ears an extinct species, and the cellphone carriers are going to use the airwaves of the old “broadcast networks” (all those stations you can currently bring in without cable) to provide faster downloads and more content to their subscribers.

Like any good American government body, the FCC is giving all U.S. cellphone carriers a fair chance to buy segments of the 62-megahertz band of spectrum, which is why the contenders for the most delectable chunk (six licenses on a 20-MHz swath that can be combined into one continuous band) were quickly confined by price to the two largest carriers, Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T), and, interestingly enough, Google itself.

Google (and Skype (EBAY) and a few consumer advocacy groups who just want to play World of Warcraft on their phones, no matter which phone company they have) says that, just like the old-fashioned landline phone industry, cellphone companies shouldn’t be able to dictate which phones use their services or where those phones go using that service. And the FCC listened to Google’s petition.