Broadband Developments

The white space debate, for all its technical complexity, is otherwise
very simple to judge.  So many frequencies remain unused or
dramatically underutilized – either in space, or in time, or both.  A
cognitive radio should therefore be able to fill in these blanks with
useful stuff, such as Internet access akin to WiFi, WiMax, HSPA, EV-DO
and LTE.

Most of these frequencies are between 150 and 850 MHz.  This makes
them particularly complementary to most of the cellular frequencies,
who start at 850 MHz in the US (soon 700 MHz) and at 450 MHz in some
other European countries (although mostly 900 MHz).  Most other
cellular frequencies reside between 1700 and 2200 MHz, while WiFi and
most mobile WiMax launches are between 2300 and 2700 MHz.

These lower frequencies are used for things such as old-fashioned
broadcast television and military applications.  Some of those
military applications have limited geographic scope, and many of the
allocated television channels are also not used in most areas.  Those
are cases where this spectrum ought to be privatized outright, under
any circumstance.  At a minimum, this spectrum can be repurposed for
as long as no interference is proven.  Basically, there is no downside
to trying.  In this respect, the advocates of white space use
legalization are 100% correct.

However, the white space argument is even stronger and ought to be
taken at least one full step further.  Over 90% of American households
have cable TV, satellite TV, or some other form of non-terrestrial
broadcast TV such as wired TV from a telco (Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse
etc.).  This percentage has also been increasing.  With only a few
remaining households taking up this valuable real estate in the air,
it’s beginning to look like the “bridge to nowhere.”  Basically, we
are foregoing an untold billion dollars (perhaps trillions) in
consumer welfare just so that a tiny single-digit percentage of
households can get to watch a handful of channels without paying for
TV from cable/satellite/telco.  This is a shameful exploitation of
government property, at a huge expense.

The solution is of course very simple:  The government a long time ago
should have told the TV broadcasters that the game is up.  No more any
free ride.  No more exploitation at the public trough.  This is
valuable real estate, which, just like almost all government property,
should be sold to the highest bidders as soon as possible.  Just this
February, the sale of a few tiny thin slices of the 700 MHz spectrum
fetched $20 billion.  Imagine what the spectrum all the way down to
below 200 MHz would fetch?

This idea isn’t new; I have been proposing it for years.  The rebuttal
has always been that this is somehow politically impossible.  I have
never understood this argument, because we talking about less than 10%
of households who are exploiting the other 90%+.  Any politician worth
his salt ought to be able to explain that the only thing standing in
the way of vastly more available, capable and lower-priced wireless
broadband are a bunch of people who refuse to get
cable/satellite/telco TV, just like the rest of us.

Some say those 10% are unusually poor, and need access to free TV.  To
this I say: If they are that poor, they are probably watching too much
TV, and working too few hours.  Daytime TV is also a bad influence,
culturally.  Besides, those same people who insist on watching free
TV, are also the same people who smoke and drink for a lot more money
than it would cost them to pay for the same kind of
cable/satellite/telco TV subscription that the rest of us do.  People
shouldn’t have to run around and pay for each other’s entertainment
habits.  What’s next – government-subsidized movie tickets, opera
passes or ballpark games?  Wait – don’t give the new Congress any
ideas…

Robert McDowell wrote a piece for the Washington Post about the Internet Crisis. It worth reposting the story here. I’ve added some color of my own.

The year was 1987 and the Internet had a problem. It was growing (aka broken). What to do?

The loosely knit Internet engineering community rallied to improve an automated data “traffic cop” that prioritized applications and content needing “real time” delivery over those that would not suffer from delay. Their efforts unclogged the Internet and laid the foundation for what has become the greatest deregulatory success story of all time. (Of course the building blocks for the Web and other great networks).

The Internet has since weathered several such crises. Each time, engineers, academics, software developers, Web infrastructure builders and others have worked together to fix the problems. They have remained largely self-governing, self-funded and nonprofit, with volunteers acting on their own and not on behalf of their employers. No government owns or regulates them.

The Internet has flourished because it has operated under the principle that engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.

Today, a new challenge is upon us. Pipes are filling rapidly with “peer-to-peer” (”P2P”) file-sharing applications that crowd out other content and slow speeds for millions. Just as Napster produced an explosion of shared (largely pirated) music files in 1999, today’s P2P applications allow consumers to share movies. P2P providers store movies on users’ home and office computers to avoid building huge “server farms” of giant computers for this bandwidth-intensive data. When consumers download these videos, they call on thousands of computers across the Web to upload each of their small pieces. As a result, some consumers’ “last-mile” connections, especially connections over cable and wireless networks, get clogged. These electronic traffic jams slow the Internet for most consumers, a majority of whom do not use P2P software to watch videos or surf the Web.

At peak times, 5 percent of Internet consumers are using 90 percent of the available bandwidth because of the P2P explosion. This flood of data has created a tyranny by a minority. Slower speeds degrade the quality of the service that consumers have paid for and ultimately diminish America’s competitiveness globally.

While the Federal Communications Commission are trying to spur more competitive build-out of vital “last mile” facilities, especially fiber and wireless platforms, this congestion will not be resolved merely by building fatter and faster pipes.

Last summer, a new nongovernmental organization, the P4P Working Group, was formed to find a solution. The group has already field-tested dramatically increased delivery speeds of P2P content over cable networks (up 235 percent) and other networks (up 898 percent in some cases). It is working with industry and consumers to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”

Such dynamic work is progressing without a government mandate or regulatory framework. Soon, however, that could change.

Since the fall, the FCC has been considering allegations filed by public interest groups that cable operator Comcast violated FCC rules by “managing” or “interfering with” the upstream flow of certain P2P video applications, namely those of a company called BitTorrent. The allegations boil down to a suspicion that Comcast was motivated not by a need to manage its network but by a desire to discriminate against BitTorrent for anticompetitive reasons. Comcast maintains that any interference was imperceptible to consumers, occurred in minuscule amounts of time, and was limited to peak congestion periods and areas. Comcast and BitTorrent settled their dispute in March; in fact, they issued a statement saying in part that “these technical issues can be worked out through private business discussions without the need for government intervention.”

Despite this settlement, some are calling for the FCC to rule that Comcast’s actions were illegal and should be punished. Others contend that the FCC has no enforceable rules that apply to such situations and that the issue should be addressed through a rule-making proceeding, with an opportunity for public comment, or through congressional legislation. We have examined the arguments on both sides and are poised to decide the matter this week. But regardless of what that ruling stipulates, the issue of what constitutes appropriate Internet network management will be debated for some time.

Our Internet economy is the strongest in the world (debatable but not the fastest). It got that way not by government fiat but because interested parties worked together toward a common goal. As a worldwide network of networks, the Internet is the ultimate “wiki” environment — one that we all share, build, pay for and shape. Millions endeavor each day to keep it open and free. Since its early days as a government creation, it has migrated away from government regulation.

If we choose regulation over collaboration, we will be setting a precedent by thrusting politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions. Another concern is that as an institution, the FCC is incapable of deciding any issue in the nanoseconds that make up Internet time. And asking government to make these decisions could mean that every few years the ground rules would change based on election results. The Internet might grind to a halt in such a climate. It would certainly die of clogged arteries if network owners had to seek government permission before serving their customers by managing surges of information flow.

A better model would allow collaborative groups to continue to do what they have done for years. If they can’t reach an agreement, — which has never happened — then government could examine the situation and act accordingly. Sometimes shining sunlight on issues produces amazingly beneficial effects, and the public interest groups that raised the BitTorrent matter should be praised for doing so. Yet before venturing into the unknown, we should remember something President Bill Clinton said in 1997: “Governments should encourage industry self-regulation wherever appropriate and support the efforts of private-sector organizations to . . . facilitate the successful operation of the Internet.” What we do, or don’t do, will affect tomorrow’s networks. Let’s stick with what works and encourage collaboration over regulation.

Editors Note: we need more broadband and we need faster access. With advances at the computing power and HD like video it’s a matter of time that the US advantage diminishes (at all levels).