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China has opened up the prospect of private sector competition in its national mobile telecoms market, with a consultation about whether major state-controlled carriers should be allowed to sell some of their spectrum holdings to other groups.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that it was looking for views on proposals to allow the three state-backed groups to begin reselling spectrum that could be used for rival telecoms services. The mobile market in the country, the biggest in the world by subscribers, is divided up into three groups – China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile . China Telecom and China Unicom also operate fixed-line businesses. In a statement, the ministry said that this was part of the state council’s desire to “encourage and guide the healthy development of private investment”, which could be the first step towards a wider liberalization. The ministry said that it would solicit public opinion until February 6. If the trial were to proceed, private companies would be allowed to buy spectrum and offer services under their own brands to consumers.

Attorney General Eric Holder, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki will stay in their positions in President Obama’s second term. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is resigning.

Sec Solis was a four-term congresswoman representing southern California, and was the first Hispanic woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. Sec Solis becomes the fifth member of the Cabinet to announce that she intends to leave in Obama's second term, joining Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Environmental Protection Agency Director Lisa Jackson. Her resignation will likely intensify pressure on the White House to consider diversity in the remainder of its Cabinet appointments. Obama's last two appointments — Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) — are white men. And Obama is expected to nominate White House chief of staff Jack Lew to be Treasury secretary as soon as this week.

[Commentary] Surrounded by next generation flexible displays and the next big tech toys at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show, former President Bill Clinton made this observation: South Korea is now number one in the world for computer download speeds, and the U.S. has fallen to number 15. “Our speeds are one-fourth of theirs, and we have fallen off the map,” Clinton said.

But just announced a plan to bring gigabit service to a dozen of its neighborhoods. Over 100,000 Seattle residents, as well as health care and educational institutions, will have access to world-leading speeds. Not only is the scale of Seattle’s effort impressive, the path it took — smart policies involving rights of way management and dark fiber — can be replicated by other communities that wish to control their own bandwidth destiny. Not every community has Seattle’s assets, particularly the strong information, communications, apps development economy and committed local leaders like Mayor McGinn. But Seattle has created a model that every community can follow in improving the environment for the private investment necessary to create a new generation of American broadband leadership. Mr. Friedman proposed a $20 billion fund to bring gigabit connectivity to 200 American cities, arguing that these networks would lead to “a ‘melt-up’ in the United States economy.” While, unfortunately in our view, such a program may not be in the realm of the politically achievable, ironically, it might be the actions of individual cities to catalyze such networks that leads to the kind of growth, debt reduction, and surplus that could enable the federal government to once again consider big programs to drive growth and American economic leadership. And this is the kind of policy innovation America deserves.

Should broadband Internet service be treated as a basic utility in the United States, like electricity, water, and traditional telephone service? That’s the question at the heart of an important and provocative new book by Susan Crawford, a tech policy expert and professor at Cardozo Law School. In Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly in the New Guilded Age, released by Yale University Press, Crawford argues that the Internet has replaced traditional phone service as the most essential communications utility in the country, and is now as important as electricity was 100 years ago.

“Truly high-speed wired Internet access is as basic to innovation, economic growth, social communication, and the country’s competitiveness as electricity was a century ago,” Crawford writes, “but a limited number of Americans have access to it, many can’t afford it, and the country has handed control of it over to Comcast and a few other companies.” Because the U.S. government has allowed a small group of giant, highly profitable companies to dominate the broadband market, Crawford argues, American consumers have fewer choices for broadband service, at higher prices but lower speeds, compared to dozens of other developed countries, including throughout Europe and Asia. “In Seoul, when you move into an apartment, you have a choice of three or four providers selling you symmetric fiber access for $30 per month, and installation happens in one day,” Crawford said. “That’s unthinkable in the United States. And the idea that the country that invented the Internet can’t get online is beyond my imagination.”