FCC - Renewed Hope

November 17, 2008

Kevin (not Ken... can't believe they got this wrong, and it still isn't corrected!) Werbach and Susan Crawford have been named by the Administration-Elect as FCC Review Team Leads.

I can't speak much to Susan Crawford, though she's enthusiastically recommended by people I respect, like David Isenberg.

I can speak enthusiastically about Werbach. He's ex-FCC, and one of those rare lawyers who can think out of the box when it comes to wireless issues, and can grasp that the technology can largely eclipse the legalisms and regulation that was needed when we were still using wireless technology of the 19th century (slightly updated throughout most of the 20th century). It bodes well that Werbach will have a hand in initially shaping the FCC under the Obama administration. I think Werbach would make a terrific FCC commissioner and/or chairman.What do I think the agenda of the "Obama" FCC should be? Glad you asked :-)

1) Network Neutrality I'm a reluctant convert to this, as I had hoped that the market would create opportunities for new, wireless-based competitors who could compete on the basis of the total cluelessness of the incumbent carriers screwing around with people's bits in transit. But the carriers are waging war in subtle ways, being open only when forced to after years of litigation. They brought it upon themselves, and I think that the only way to insure that the Internet will continue to be useful and innovative is to craft an ironclad "hands off the bits" regulations.

2) Equivalent of the Rural Electrification Act for Broadband Internet Access We've screwed around with this for far too long. We have the Universal Service Fund, but that's restricted, because of intense lobbying by the telcos, to strictly voice telephony. It needs to be opened up to apply to broadband. I think the fairest and sanest way to do this is to provide the equivalent of monthly coupons for ten years of an amount like $50/month for customers in 20% or so most rural areas - lowest population density. You can give your coupon to the provider of your choice - the one that does the best job of broadband bits to the actual customer. I think BWIA will be the sanest way to do this, but rural power co-ops should be enabled to run fiber networks to their power customers. Unlike telephony services, Internet services are a lot like providing power. Just move the bits, maintain the network and bill the customer. It needs to be restricted to reasonable speeds - say 8 Mbps and faster, and low latency (sorry satellite - we really need low latency for VOIP, telepresence, telehealth, teleeducation, etc.). For this idea to work, the control over where the payments are made must remain firmly in the hands of the customer; else "too cozy" arrangements will develop that the incumbents can game.

3) Extend White Spaces concept to BWIA-compatible spectrum We've got incredible amounts of spectrum available in rural areas... not even all the wireless telephony spectrum is in use! Let alone 2.3 GHz WCS, 2.5 GHz, 1.7/2.3 AWS, 700 MHz , etc. If you (provably) aren't using it in a given area (spectrum surveys by credible independent entities), then others should be able to "stake a claim" on "squatting" on that spectrum for a period of, say, a year. Let 'em license-holders yap - if they aren't using it, no one is being harmed by someone else willing to commit resources to using it.

4) Tom Evslin made a great point in one of his articles - No More Landlines. It's not that there's no inherent future or utility in Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). It's just that the wireline (and wireless) telephony carriers have this sense of entitlement after over a century of a guaranteed rate of return and the ability to hold customers hostage. But increasingly, the math doesn't work with more and more people abandoning landlines in favor of wireless telephones, leaving telephony infrastructure idling. The telephony carriers want to continue to be compensated for their "stranded" investments, but the only way to do that is to soak the remaining customers even more, and a vicious cycle was started years ago with the price of landline service rising, and customers saying "at this price, I really don't need this".

The trouble is... the infrastructure that businesses rely on - T-1 lines, are largely paid for out of revenues by the customers that are abandoning landlines. So, the FCC has a hell of a mess on its hands dealing with the inevitable transition to wireline infrastructure that isn't supported by voice revenues.

5) I'll take Evslin's observation one step further to make the same observation that a lot of customers are going to make the same calculation with cable television services... for the same $50/month or so that they're paying for cable, they can "rent" Netflix on-demand movies, rent television episodes from iTunes, watch free downloadable content from YouTube or the networks, etc. The cable companies are going to find their infrastructure investments largely stranded as people abandon video services and voice services in favor of broadband-only. Expect the cable television industry to come crying to the FCC about "customer abandonment" issues right behind the wireline telephony companies.

6) The US Government wants a national, interoperable, two way radio system that will integrate local, state, federal, all manner of public safety agencies. That's easily done:

• Buy Nextel - there's the US terrestrial network.
• Buy Iridium - there's the US extended-area / worldwide network.
• Buy the iDen and Iridium intellectual property (both from Motorola?) and "open source" it for the purpose of incentivizing other vendors to make access devices to US Government requirements.
• Sunset all the commercial users.
• After the sunset, operate Nextel and Iridium's networks as federally-operated public safety communications systems and very selectively grant access to commercial users that have a good reason to be on them - Red Cross, Salvation Army, tugboat companies, etc. Add an encryption system with a smart card that has to receive an authorizion signal every so often so that stolen / compromised devices are "aged out" of the system. Both systems already have this, but it's probably not that robust and is designed around the requirements of "creating billable events" - the Government's requirements are a bit different.
• Invest the money that you would have spend building yet another two-way radio and satellite communications system into hardening, improving the coverage, improving the reliability, growing the user base, etc.

Do the math and the timeline, FCC. There is no conceivable way the nationwide emergency network the US Goverment wants and needs is going to happen "organically", "incentivized", partnerized, etc. If you do it the way currently envisioned, it will take decades, cost tens of $Billions, and at best will be loosely coupled and never in sync between factions because they're sections of the network are being built piecemeal. Over time, migrate it to P25 standards if that's desired... but it's arguable that P25 scales to nationwide, and Nextel's already figured out how to do that with iDen.

Nextel and Iridium aren't broadband-capable, and can't really evolve to be. If you want / need that, pay Clearwire to put up Mobile WiMAX gear in parallel with developing their network, but the government gear is on a government-only band. Or the government could just buy back all the 2.3 GHz licenses.

Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX News: FCC - Renewed Hope

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