Kevin Maney smacks his head: While you’re lusting over a new iPhone, think about this: Why can’t you watch free, regular, over-the-air TV on your phone? Isn’t that what you really want–not these bastardized TV offerings that you have to pay for, like AT&T’s Mobile TV and Sprint’s MobiTV?

I just got off the phone with Reed Hundt, former chairman of the FCC and now an investor and consultant. He’s involved in a number of companies, but he said the one that’s most exciting right now is Telegent. It has been working for three years to figure out how to make chips that would go in cell phones and allow them to pick up regular local TV signals. “It’s very hard to do,” Hundt says.

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Despite the backing of billionaires John Doerr and Ram Shriram, as well as former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale and former FCC commissioner Reed Hundt, ambitious start-up Frontline Wireless is closing up shop. According to the New York Times, the start-up was unable to come up with the $128 million deposit needed to participate in the upcoming wireless spectrum auctions that it did so much to help shape (along with Google). With a tear in our eye, we are putting Frontline into the deadpool.

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