The would-be proprietors of a national, smut free broadband network say they won't take legal action against the Federal Communications Commission for denying them spectrum, at least not yet.

M2Z Chair Milo Medin wrote to FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate today, informing her that the company will wait a "reasonable interval" before deciding whether to sue the agency.

"I make this commitment . . . principally upon the hope that it will provide a useful path forward to bring the benefits of our proposed new service to the millions of Americans who are waiting for free, family-friendly broadband," Medin wrote to Tate.

Over the last year M2Z has run a veritable crusade, backed by hundreds of organizations, to win a big chunk of spectrum to create a free, advertising based national broadband service. Endorsed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, the operation would include a "compulsory setting that will utilize state of the art network filtering technology to take every reasonable and available step to block access to sites purveying pornographic, obscene or indecent content."

M2Z says that it wants to roll out the network to 95% of the population of the United States within ten years of receiving a license.

But the proposal has run afoul of one detail: the FCC plans to put the spectrum that M2Z wants up for auction. Almost two weeks ago M2Z announced that the company had learned that the Commission would reject their plan, and that M2Z would sue in response.

The group argues that Section 7 of the Communications Act "requires a public interest determination on an application for new services or new technologies within one year of filing." M2Z's application has been on hold since early May of 2006.

But now Medin says that he will wait, conceding that the Commission may not have had time to analyze the M2Z application and supporting filings, now over 2100 in number, and that Section 7 decisions "rarely have been sought from the Commission."

"This dearth of precedent may understandably necessitate additional review and reflection," Medin's letter concedes.