Obama Adviser Eyes Government-Built Broadband System

Tuesday, May 26, 2009
by David Hatch
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/cd_20090202_7042.php>

Officials have released an historic government plan to spend tens of billions of dollars constructing a nationwide, state-of-the-art broadband network featuring speeds 100 times faster than today’s technology.

The new infrastructure would reach every citizen, delivering affordable connections at taxpayer-subsidized rates, boosting access to education and telemedicine. Proponents promise myriad opportunities for online businesses and enhancements to energy efficiency, media distribution and public safety.

Haven’t heard about this yet? That’s because the announcement was made last month in Australia.

Before you dismiss the approach as a radical idea that could never be implemented here, consider this: it’s being touted by a high-level White House official who reports directly to President Obama.

Susan Crawford, special assistant to the president for science, technology and innovation policy and a member of the National Economic Council, recently said she is “personally intrigued” by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s ambitious goal.

Even with this year’s $7.2 billion cash infusion from Congress to stimulate domestic broadband investment, experts acknowledge that gaps in availability and bandwidth will remain, with pockets of the United States left with no service or antiquated technology.

While a public broadband network in all or part of the nation could help bridge the divide, the thought of Uncle Sam so heavily involved with the Internet has some telecommunications industry representatives worried.

“No company can compete with the federal government or city hall in a commercial enterprise,” warned Scott Cleland, chairman of NetCompetition.org, whose members include AT&T, Comcast, Qwest, Sprint, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. “The federal government has unlimited resources and regulatory control.”

As the FCC prepares a national broadband strategy to be presented to Congress by Feb. 17, 2010, there’s already speculation that the agency — at the prodding of the White House — will give serious thought to adapting Australia’s model for the U.S.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from reader Randall. DLH]

From: Randall <rvh40@insightbb.com>
Date: May 11, 2009 9:13:24 AM PDT
To: johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Details, schmetails …

[[How much land that is currently producing corn would have to produce switchgrass in order to make the Middle East unnecessary?]]

Mascoma Corporation today announced that the company has made major research advances in consolidated bioprocessing, or CBP, a low-cost processing strategy for production of biofuels from cellulosic biomass. CBP avoids the need for the costly production of cellulase enzymes by using engineered microorganisms that produce cellulases and ethanol at high yield in a single step.

“This is a true breakthrough that takes us much, much closer to billions of gallons of low cost cellulosic biofuels,” said Michigan State University’s Dr. Bruce Dale, who is also Editor of the journal Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefineries. “Many had thought that CBP was years or even decades away, but the future just arrived. Mascoma has permanently changed the biofuels landscape from here on.”

In a recent Forbes article, biofuels expert Helena Chum of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, commented on CBP, saying “This is the golden dream. All of the processes in one super-organism. That would be the lowest cost possible.” A prominent DOE/USDA research agenda states that “CBP is widely considered to be the ultimate low-cost configuration for cellulose hydrolysis and fermentation.”

Multiple research advances presented by Mascoma Chief Technology Officer Dr. Mike Ladisch at the 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals in San Francisco provide proof of concept for CBP. These include advances with both bacteria that grow at high temperatures, called thermophiles, and recombinant cellulolytic yeasts such as:

Thermophilic Bacteria

Production of nearly 6% wt/vol ethanol by an engineered thermophilie, an increase of 60% over what was reported just a year ago;
The first report of targeted metabolic engineering of a cellulose-fermenting thermophile, Clostridium thermocellum, leading to a reduced production of unwanted organic acid byproducts; and

[snip]

<http://www.azom.com/news.asp?newsID=17018>

[Note: This comment comes from reader Randall. DLH]

From: Randall Webmail <rvh40@insightbb.com>
Date: May 10, 2009 10:05:42 AM PDT
To: dewayne@warpspeed.com
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Building the Tools to Legalize P2P Video-Sharing

Building the Tools to Legalize P2P Video-Sharing

Would you be willing to pay your ISP five bucks a month to be

allowed

to download as much as you want from torrent sites and other

file-

sharing hubs? The idea of legalizing P2P through such a flat-

rate

licensing scheme has been getting more and more traction within

the

music industry in recent months. Noank Media CTO Devon Copley

believes

his company can be an essential part of such a flat-rate model.

For several years now, Synacor has been licensing music from all the major labels (and several minors). They have a deal with Charter and probably other ISPs where subscribers to Charter Music Service pay an additional five bucks a month to get all the music they can handle, either streaming or downloaded. For a couple bucks more they can get Charter Music-to-Go, where the downloaded files can be burned to portable music devices (though not, last I heard, to iPods).

This music is in DRM-laden WMA format, and when people stop subscribing to the service, the music refuses to play.

Of course there are tools like tunebite and such that break WMA’s DRM.

Charter Music customers are not told about tunebite.

I do not know how much if any above the $5 fee is paid by Charter – they see it as a tool to lower churn, on the idea that Joe Customer is less likely to switch to DSL if he knows that three thousand of “his” songs will stop playing when he does.

RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>

Building the Tools to Legalize P2P Video-Sharing

Written by Janko Roettgers

Posted Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 12:00 AM PT
<http://newteevee.com/2009/05/09/building-the-tools-to-legalize-p2p-video-sharing/>

Building the Tools to Legalize P2P Video-Sharing
Would you be willing to pay your ISP five bucks a month to be allowed to download as much as you want from torrent sites and other file-sharing hubs? The idea of legalizing P2P through such a flat-rate licensing scheme has been getting more and more traction within the music industry in recent months. Noank Media CTO Devon Copley believes his company can be an essential part of such a flat-rate model.

Noank, which demonstrated some of its technology at the DCIA’s P2P Media Summit in Los Angeles this week, builds tools that help to measure what kind of files users consume in flat-rate licensing environments. However, there’s something particularly intriguing about Noank’s solution: It works for video as well. Even the most vocal proponents of legal P2P rarely dare to suggest that Hollywood’s movies should be paid for by an ISP fee, but Copley believes such a development is inevitable.

Faced with years of brutal sales declines, the music industry has started to embrace the idea of legalizing P2P file-sharing through an ISP fee. Warner Musichired music industry veteran Jim Griffin last year to create a licensing organization called Choruss that’s currently signing up campuses for flat-rate licensing field tests. The Isle of Man, a small tax haven located between the UK and Ireland, is working on its own flat-rate model. Canadian songwriters recentlythrew their support behind a flat-rate model, and most major labels seem to beat least open to discussions.

[snip]

[Note: This comment comes from friend Tom Hazlett. DLH]

From: Thomas Hazlett <twhazlett@gmail.com>
Date: May 8, 2009 8:43:11 AM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Re: Shovel-ready broadband stimulus

Hi Dewayne-

Thanks for posting my FT.com piece.

A quick response to Bob, if you’d care to distribute:

In fact, economists are well aware of the fact that not all problems are best suited to resolution by auction. Ronald Coase wrote a famous 1937 paper which launched a general inquiry as to why some activities are undertaken more efficiently within the firm than via use of “the price system” — i.e., auctions. Many others have investigated how property rights are efficiently awarded and, in many cases, show competitive bidding to not be the superior system. My research (“The Rationality of U.S. Regulation of the Broadcast Spectrum,” J Law & Econ [April 1990]) specifically criticizes Coase’s paper on the FCC where he argued that auctions should have been used in the 1920s to distribute radio broadcasting rights. That ignored the more efficient path that had actually been adopted (and was then pre-empted in the 1927 Radio Act), priority-in-use rights.

But auctions are highly socially advantageous across a large class of cases. The reason why reverse auctions make eminent sense in spending so-called broadband stimulus monies is that they force performance criteria to be explicitly established and then generate information as to the most economical path. The former imposes transparency, reducing political gamesmanship; the latter saves taxpayer funds.

What’s not to like?

Thomas Hazlett

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com> wrote:

[Note: This comment comes from friend Bob Frankston. DLH]

From: “Bob Frankston” <Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com>

Date: May 7, 2009 9:08:55 AM PDT

To: <dave@farber.net>

Cc: “‘Dewayne Hendricks’” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: RE: [IP] Shovel-ready broadband stimulus

Why am I not surprised that economists claim that they can solve any problem by holding an auction according to rules they define? And bureaucrats say they can act as soon as they get measurements (even if they are meaningless)? And same-old business just see another revenue source. We’ve seen this show before and we’re in reruns.

I’d like to shift the focus to liberating the value in the infrastructure rather than leaving it locked into the same-old “value chain” we call telecom services.

RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>

[Note: This comment comes from friend Bob Frankston. DLH]

From: “Bob Frankston” <Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com>
Date: May 10, 2009 10:21:17 AM PDT
To: “‘Dewayne Hendricks’” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Cc: “‘Thomas Hazlett’” <twhazlett@gmail.com>, “Prof. David J. J Farber” <dave@farber.net>
Subject: The problem is not the auctions but in what we auction — spectrum as dirt

Looking at the idea of spectrum auctions is a good starting point for challenging the defining assumptions of today’s concept of telecom. The problem is not in the idea of an auction but in what we auction – as in the “40 acres and a mule” model of spectrum allocation. We should be asking for bids on contracts to maintain common facilities rather than auctioning off our ability to communicate to service providers. More like roads than railroads.

Even if we accept the idea that spectrum allocation makes technical sense (not that it does) the power of the auction comes from normalizing the market into fungible dollars rather than having each sliver be limited to a single purpose.

Why not normalize the wireless space into bits or what I’m calling the Bit Commons. With bits we go beyond the spectrum because we no longer need to distinguish between wired and wireless bits. This means that we don’t have to reserve exclusive paths between two points but can take advantage of any available path and simply hop onto the nearest fiber or copper path or whatever.

I agree that auctions are a mechanism but before we assume that an auction is the answer we must understand the question. I may be unfair in saying that economists are all-too-ready to accept an arbitrary statement of the problem and go from there. But the fascination with spectrum allocation is an example of where the givens are accepted. To be fair to Tom – he has observed that the spectrum allocation gets perverse with OTA (Over The Air) broadcast rights merely being tokens to get access to cable paths.

But the very idea of “performance criteria” presumes we have locked down the market to backward-looking metrics – the givens. We’ve now had enough experience with the Internet and the power of decoupling of applications from best-efforts transport to have a better approach in a market that decouples the physical facilities from the applications. Aligning incentives is more effective that locking people into an arbitrary measure. Look at the damage done in 1934 by over-defining the solution based on the givens of the day. I argue that decoupling works because it leverages market forces and not just because it is an imposed solution that requires constant intervention.

There are also many ways to increase effective capacity by giving application designers direct access to bits so they are no longer choosing among services but instead availing themselves of opportunities to create new solutions rather than being stuck with same-old solutions to same-old problems. (This a deep topic in its own right).

I know the word “commons” is often completed with “tragedy” but this isn’t about cows consuming grass – we’re merely communicating or talking. And thanks to the large numbers of bits acting like flows and our statistical portion of the allocation is huge even if we are competing for the capacity. Furthermore this is a market in which supply grows with demand – the more pie you eat the more pie there is!

How can an auction work if we have super-abundant capacity? As noted in http://frankston.com/?name=AssureScarcity the wireless industry would rather spend billions of dollars on auctions than risk the threat of abundance.

High stakes auctions have serious problems in creating all-or-nothing high-risk bets and leaving “breakage” (unused portions of allocations). With bits we no longer have exclusive allocations but instead a shared commons. One can argue that we can avoid breakage in the auctioned bands by subleasing portions of “broad bands of spectrum”. Bits facilitate this but in doing so they make nonsense of the idea that the first allocation need go exclusively to a first bidder. You can think of a spectrum auction as merely moving the old idea of application-specific allocations one step off — why stop there?

There is nothing entirely novel here. We’ve had the example of private pikes becoming public roadways.

The current system has many disadvantages and creates laws that treat community owned infrastructure as unfair competition to companies who use their exclusive control of our rights-of-way to force us to buy their services. The financing models for these private paths means that the costs are amortized over a long period of time and we find ourselves forced to subscribe to use our local facilities.

If you go to cablecos and say that they no longer need to pay franchise fees but can instead can use the public infrastructure or bit commons you will find that they get upset. Their very business model is premised on violating antitrust principles by using their control of the physical infrastructure to their advantage. Why does the FCC aid and abet such policies?

The “company store” model has a direct and devastating effect on the economy and public safety by leaving us unable to take advantage of the essentially zero marginal cost of using our infrastructure. Instead we are stuck with an E911 system that costs lives because it is brittle and for emergencies only. It’s like having a medical system without the concept of preventative medicine or even ongoing care. We also create a price barrier to our very ability to communicate and to create new businesses. You have to negotiate with all those along the path. It’s like driving across country paying an toll each town (often in the form of congestion) with each burb maximizing its local revenue at the expense of all others.

I can understand people having a trouble with some of what I’ve said. One problem is that without technical understanding it seems necessary for networking to be a service. With the bit commons we’d have people facilitating transport of bits. Finding a path from one end point to another is more like driving using the common physical infrastructure than like being forced to buy a ride. When I say facilitating – I mean that operators are rewarded for providing capacity but not paid for the transport of content because that would and does reward scarcity.

We are so used to presuming a fixed pie that we have not noticed that the telecom industry has violated Moore’s law openly and wantonly – we simply don’t expect abundance. Why have we not had another fiber bubble collapse? The gun it not only smoking but it keeps shooting. If we learn the lessons of the amazingly growing capacity of the cellular phone system we ‘d notice that you can increase wireless capacity arbitrarily by hopping on the nearest wired path instead competing for “spectrum” over a large footprint. This is what you’d get if you’d make all the existing access points transit points and then improve the technology. http://www.bnettv.com/player.php?id=2536 is interesting in seeing how the cellular industry manages to create scarcity by entangling itself in the Regulatorium and thus finding refuge from the threat of abundance.

So let’s take lesson of the auction to heart but instead of normalizing to dollars, normalize to bits and then the whole thing becomes moot.

More detail:

http://frankston.com/?name=AssuringScarcity
http://frankston.com/?name=Railroads
http://frankston.com/?Name=BroadbandInternet
http://frankston.com/?name=TelecomPrison
http://frankston.com/?Name=IPTelecomCosts
http://frankston.com/?Name=eComm2008
http://frankston.com/?name=SATNSHS

—–Original Message—–

From: dewayne-net [mailto:dewayne-net@warpspeed.com] On Behalf Of Dewayne Hendricks

Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2009 10:18

To: Dewayne-Net Technology List

Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Re: Shovel-ready broadband stimulus

[Note: This comment comes from friend Tom Hazlett. DLH]

From: Thomas Hazlett <twhazlett@gmail.com>

Date: May 8, 2009 8:43:11 AM PDT

To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Re: Shovel-ready broadband stimulus

Hi Dewayne-

Thanks for posting my FT.com piece.

A quick response to Bob, if you’d care to distribute:

In fact, economists are well aware of the fact that not all problems

are best suited to resolution by auction. Ronald Coase wrote a famous

1937 paper which launched a general inquiry as to why some activities

are undertaken more efficiently within the firm than via use of “the

price system” — i.e., auctions. Many others have investigated how

property rights are efficiently awarded and, in many cases, show

competitive bidding to not be the superior system. My research (“The

Rationality of U.S. Regulation of the Broadcast Spectrum,” J Law &

Econ [April 1990]) specifically criticizes Coase’s paper on the FCC

where he argued that auctions should have been used in the 1920s to

distribute radio broadcasting rights. That ignored the more efficient

path that had actually been adopted (and was then pre-empted in the

1927 Radio Act), priority-in-use rights.

But auctions are highly socially advantageous across a large class of

cases. The reason why reverse auctions make eminent sense in spending

so-called broadband stimulus monies is that they force performance

criteria to be explicitly established and then generate information as

to the most economical path. The former imposes transparency,

reducing political gamesmanship; the latter saves taxpayer funds.

What’s not to like?

Thomas Hazlett

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com

wrote:

[Note: This comment comes from friend Bob Frankston. DLH]

From: “Bob Frankston” <Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com>

Date: May 7, 2009 9:08:55 AM PDT

To: <dave@farber.net>

Cc: “‘Dewayne Hendricks’” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: RE: [IP] Shovel-ready broadband stimulus

Why am I not surprised that economists claim that they can solve any

problem by holding an auction according to rules they define? And

bureaucrats say they can act as soon as they get measurements (even

if they are meaningless)? And same-old business just see another

revenue source. We’ve seen this show before and we’re in reruns.

I’d like to shift the focus to liberating the value in the

infrastructure rather than leaving it locked into the same-old

“value chain” we call telecom services.

RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>

The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All

By David Weinberger
May 8, 2009 11:57 am
<http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/the-grid-our-cars-and-the-internet-one-idea-to-link-them-all/>
Editor’s note: Robin Chase thinks a lot about transportation and the internet, and how to link them. She connected them when she founded Zipcar, and she wants to do it again by making our electric grid and our cars smarter. Time magazine recently named her one of the 100 most influential people of the year. David Weinberger sat down with Chase to discuss her idea.

Robin Chase considers the future of electricity, the future of cars and the internet three terms in a single equation, even if most of us don’t yet realize they’re on the same chalkboard. Solve the equation correctly, she says, and we create a greener future where innovation thrives. Get it wrong, and our grandchildren will curse our names.

Chase thinks big, and she’s got the cred to back it up. She created an improbable network of automobiles called Zipcar. Getting it off the ground required not only buying a fleet of cars, but convincing cities to dedicate precious parking spaces to them. It was a crazy idea, and it worked. Zipcar now has 6,000 cars and 250,000 users in 50 towns.

Now she’s moving on to the bigger challenge of integrating a smart grid with our cars – and then everything else. The kicker is how they come together. You can sum it up as a Tweet: The intelligent network we need for electricity can also turn cars into nodes. Interoperability is a multiplier. Get it right!

Chase starts by explaining the smart grid. There’s broad consensus that our electrical system should do more than carry electricity. It should carry information. That would allow a more intelligent, and efficient, use of power.

“Our electric infrastructure is designed for the rare peak of usage,” Chase says. “That’s expensive and wasteful.”

Changing that requires a smart grid. What we have is a dumb one. We ask for electricity and the grid provides it, no questions asked. A smart grid asks questions and answers them. It makes the meter on your wall a sensor that links you to a network that knows how much power you’re using, when you’re using it and how to reduce your energy needs – and costs.

Such a system will grow more important as we become energy producers, not just consumers. Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will return power to the grid. Rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines will, at times, produce more energy than we can store. A smart grid generates what we need and lets us use what we generate. That’s why the Obama Administration allocated $4.5 billion in the stimulus bill for smart grid R&D.

This pleases Chase, but it also makes her nervous. The smart grid must be an information network, but we have a tradition of getting such things wrong. Chase is among those trying to convince the government that the safest and most robust network will use open internet protocols and standards. For once the government seems inclined to listen.

[snip]

[Note: Worth reading! DLH]

Posted May 8, 2009 | 03:53 PM (EST)
Europeans Are Eating Our Lunch; Our Broadband Plan Is Toast
by Art Brodsky, Communications Director, Public Knowledge
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-brodsky/europeans-are-eating-our_b_200258.html>
For a couple of hours yesterday (May 7), there appeared a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, someone in the U.S. Senate was serious about a broadband policy. Everyone seems to agree that we need one. President Obama campaigned on one. The idea that the Internet is a necessity more than a luxury is rapidly taking hold. Yesterday at a discussion here in Washington, I heard a story about a man in rural Vermont who fixes engines. He needs a broadband Internet connection to order parts, to view diagrams and to download manuals – the kind of tasks you can’t do on dial-up and which don’t have materials available in print.

That glimmer was that the Senate Commerce Committee announced a confirmation hearing for May 12 for Julius Genachowski, the pick to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

But the glimmer, much like a buffer copy, was only transitory. A couple of hours later, the hearing was postponed until after Memorial Day. Why? The Republicans now have to pick not one, but possibly two nominees for the FCC, and haven’t decided on a package. It would be horrible, just horrible, for the Senate at least to proceed on the Democratic nominees, Genachowski and perhaps Mignon Clyburn, daughter of House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) to fill out the Commission while the Republicans hash it out. Or not. It would be nice if all parties grew up and let the Commission get a chairman already. Not happening.

The result is that the agency continues to drift while the Senate Republicans are trying to work the angles on Texas politics for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R-TX), and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) ponders. It’s not even clear whether the Republicans need one nominee, to replace FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, or two, if current Republican Commissioner Rob McDowell is to be jettisoned when his term expired in June. Hutchison, the senior Republican on the committee who is running for governor, has reportedly selected Meredith Atwell Baker, former administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), who is also by happenstance the daughter-in-law of Texas Republican major domo James Baker.

That’s a view of the short term. The pessimistic view of the longer term is – who cares? The Europeans and the rest of the world are going to continue to eat our lunch on broadband anyway, so it really doesn’t matter whether it’s another six weeks or whenever for the FCC to get fully kitted out with commissioners.

What the Europeans Are Doing

Earlier this week, the European Parliament came within a few votes of passing another major broadband/telecommunications policy. Only the continuing greed of Hollywood kept the matter from passing. The Parliamentarians, to their credit, voted that a judicial order is needed before someone’s Internet service can be taken away. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was backing his “three strikes” law to allow Internet Service Providers to kick a customer off of the Internet if there are three accusations of copyright infringement.

(Note to the Freedom Fries crowd: Did you know that le baseball was such a French passion that they adopted “three strikes”? Who knew? Pas moi.)

Instead, the Parliament voted overwhelmingly, 407-57 for an amendment which provided: “that no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities.” The result of the popular rebellion is that approval of the European plan will be pushed back until next year.

Here on our side of the pond, the FCC is due to come up with a broadband plan by February and submit it to Congress. The Notice of Inquiry the FCC issued April 8 is 59 pages of question about what policy should be put in place to help bring back America’s broadband penetration.

Meanwhile, the Europeans were ready to pass a 12-point program. Here are some highlights from the European Commission summary:

“Functional separation as a means to overcome competition problems: National telecoms regulators will gain the additional tool of being able to oblige telecoms operators to separate communication networks from their service branches, as a last-resort remedy. This new remedy was advocated in 2007 by the 27 national regulators in a unanimous opinion. Functional separation can rapidly improve competition in markets while maintaining incentives for investment in new networks. Functional separation has already been implemented in the UK since January 2006 where it triggered a surge in broadband connections (from 100.000 unbundled lines in December 2005 to 5.5 million 3 years later). The new EU rules on functional separation will also add legal certainty for countries currently moving towards different forms of separation, such as Sweden, Poland and Italy, while ensuring overall consistency for the benefit of the single market.”

[snip]

[Note: This comment comes from friend Charles Brown. DLH]

From: Charles Brown <cbrown@flyingcircuit.com>
Date: May 6, 2009 2:43:36 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Cc: Charles Brown <cbrown@flyingcircuit.com>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Smart Grid Debate: Licensed vs. Unlicensed Wireless Spectrum

Dewayne,

Here we go again; the usual “spectrum as land” metaphor. This looks like another ploy for spectrum via backroom deals in Congress and the FCC, or “public-private partnerships.”   And we have the press covering the” licensed vs unlicensed debate”, yet again. The utilities are doing what everyone else does in their position at this point: “Hey, let’s use this to go get our own spectrum. Our shareholders will love us!”

How about a debate called “technical ignorance and economic corruption vs. science and free markets.”

What if we referred to spectrum as “dark matter” or “electric air” or “green sky” instead of real estate. How many times have you heard auctionable spectrum referred to as “beach front property”, as the 700MHz spectrum was referred to in the press. However, we can’t contain it, divide it up, measure it, nor do we understand its true capacity, notwithstanding Shannon. But we can put a deed on it! We can measure Eb/No but that’s beside the point here.   And putting a price tag on spectrum inhibits services, increases costs, facilitates corruption and stifles innovation and employment in the wireless industry.   Look at the US: Motorola has become a commodity company whose longevity is questionable and Qualcomm has morphed into a chip company reliant on its IP lawyers. So where is the innovation in the US? At all of those new WiMax companies?

Instead of arguing about licensed vs unlicensed, wouldn’t it be better to take the money they are going to waste and invest it in new technology development that would change the nature of the discussion? This is the way to get out in front again.   The commercial vendors don’t have much in the way of advanced wireless technology for the “smart grid”, however it is being subjectively defined. The smart grid is reading and controlling meters? You may remember a company called “Cellnet” that was doing AMR (automated meter reading) 20 years ago in the 900MHz band using spread spectrum modulation; yes, that was 20 years ago, and these guys are doing the same thing.

Take a utility company with low bandwidth application requirements. With the right know-how and off-the-shelf components, a knowledgeable group could create a scalable, low cost network, and get an open, product reference platform in the nature of a Software Defined Radio in the bargain. In fact, the utilities should be careful because it’s just a matter of time, money and need before the “beach front property” gets hit by a tsunami. And then what might their shareholders say?

This article might be retitled, “WiMax vendors looking for a free beer, at the beach.”

Charlie

[Note: This comment comes from reader Joshua Tinnin. DLH]

From: Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig@gmail.com>
Date: May 6, 2009 12:59:48 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Smart Grid Debate: Licensed vs. Unlicensed Wireless Spectrum

Are government entities required to purchase licenses for spectrum? IOW,
if the utility is a public or public/private entity (such as PG&E), where
the state owns the grid, who pays to license the spectrum? Does CA
license it from the fed? And does the answer to this question vary
depending on the owner? I can see how licensed spectrum would be a can
of worms for something like this, but if they were to use unlicensed
2.4GHz, for instance, they’d be in a pretty crowded space. I know very
little about how the regs work when it comes to this stuff, so genuinely
curious.

- jt