A very important political story snuck by us last week. I blame John Kerry for it.

The story is the new push by Intel for 802.16 WiMax spectrum.

While there are lots of high frequency bands in which WiMax could live, the inescapable fact is that the lower your frequency the farther your waves can travel. That's why AM stations can be heard across the country (when conditions are right) while FM stations have trouble being heard across town.

Intel executive vice president Sean Maloney (above, from the Intel site) is lobbying China, the UK and the U.S. to open up space in the 700 MHz band, frequencies UHF TV stations will be abandoning as they move to digital broadcasting, for unlicensed use as WiMax transmission bands.

This is, as they say in the Guinness commercials, "brilliant."

It's brilliant in terms of science, it's brilliant in terms of spectrum policy, and it's also brilliant politics. The fact is that TV broadcasters were given huge slices of scarce spectrum by government, and TV broadcasting is no longer the optimal use of all that specturm.

It's just a fact.

Maloney's simultaneous push on three fronts is also an impressive political move. If China clears the frequency, in order to connect cities without wires (which would be very efficient) it also puts its manufacturers in a position to create and define a worldwide market.

That should stimulate U.S. and European regulators to get off their assets, now, and to ignore the special pleading of the broadcasters. We either get behind the new market or we're going to get rolled by the Chinese in it.

Forget John Kerry's salute. This was the Political Play of the Week.