Wireless & Spectrum Policy

M2Z Reborn: Censored, but Free, Broadband is Now Kevin Martin’s Top Priority

by on December 1, 2008 · 11 comments

Back in June, Adam Thierer and I denounced (PDF) Kevin Martin’s plans to create broadband utility to provide censored (and very slow) broadband for free to all Americans.  The WSJ reports that this scheme is now at the top of Martin’s December agenda:

The proposal to allow a no-smut, free wireless Internet service is part of a proposal to auction off a chunk of airwaves. The winning bidder would be required to set aside a quarter of the airwaves for a free Internet service. The winner could establish a paid service that would have a fast wireless Internet connection. The free service could be slower and would be required to filter out pornography and other material not suitable for children. The FCC’s proposal mirrors a plan offered by M2Z Networks Inc., a start-up backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner John Doerr.

Adam’s August follow-up piece is also well worth reading.  

One could speculate as to how big an impact this service would really have.  Having just spent two weeks “wardriving” around Paris, Abu Dhabi and Dubai (looking for open wi-fi hotspots to try to get Internet access on my otherwise non-functional smart phone), I could certainly imagine scenarios in which some people might well use even a slow wireless service at least as a supplement to another provider–if their devices supported it.  But however useful the service might be to some people, and whether any company would actually want to build such a system in the first place if they have to give away such service, I think it’s a safe bet that if this is actually implemented, it will represent a victory for government censorship over content some people don’t like.

If this idea is still alive and kicking when the Obama administration has security escort Martin out of FCC headquarters in January–to hearty applause from nearly all quarters in Washington, no doubt–it will be interesting to see which impulse prevails on the Left, both within the new Administration and in the policy community.  Will the defenders of free expression triumph over those who see ensuring free broadband as a social justice issue?  Or will those on the Left who usually joining us in opposing censorship simply remain silent as the government extends the architecture of censoring the “public airways” onto the Net (where the underlying rationale of traditional broadcast regulation–that parents are powerless–does not apply)?  

Hope springs eternal.

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Will Traditional OTA Broadcast Networks Go Cable-Exclusive?

by on November 23, 2008 · 19 comments

In her latest column, Media Post media market guru Diane Mermigas wonders how long it will be before we see a traditional over-the-air (OTA) broadcast TV network (like ABC, NBC, CBS, or Fox) dump their old broadcast business altogether and just move all their properties to cable and satellite TV. And, in response to Mermigas, Cory Bergman of Lost Remote argues, as I did last week, “the real future of TV is not linear cable, but non-linear video delivered seamlessly via IP to multiple devices, including your TV set. But mass adoption of this approach is still several years away.”

Bergman is right. It would be foolish to think any traditional network is going to rely exclusively on IP-based distribution any time soon; they see it as more of a compliment (or another product window). But Mermigas may be on to something in predicting that broadcast networks may soon be looking to get out of the OTA television business altogether and essentially become “a glorified general entertainment cable network.”

The strain on their dysfunctional paradigm is emanating from a devastating recession and the ongoing digital revolution. Both are permanently altering the rules of play for the networks. A case can be made for at least one of the Big 4 broadcast networks emerging as a glorified general entertainment cable network within the next several years. The economic advantages: more steady ad revenues and consistent subscriber fees as content is distributed cross-platform.

It would be a bold move that a free-spirited company such as News Corp. might already be contemplating for its Fox Broadcast TV Network, or NBC Universal for its peacock network. Industry analysts increasingly wonder how an independent CBS can prattle on under the crumbling old rules. In a world of exploding access and choices, the prime-time ratings (even with Live plus 3 configurations) spell diminishing returns. For Disney, ABC’s general entertainment status is on par with ESPN in sports; the new multi-platform model is in place except for formally moving the ABC TV Network to the cable side of the ledger.

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Book Review: Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis

by on November 18, 2008 · 20 comments

Blown to Bits coverI’ve just finished reading Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, and it’s another title worth adding to your tech policy reading list. The authors survey a broad swath of tech policy territory — privacy, search, encryption, free speech, copyright, spectrum policy — and provide the reader with a wonderful history and technology primer on each topic.

I like the approach and tone they use throughout the book. It is certainly something more than “Internet Policy for Dummies.” It’s more like “Internet Policy for the Educated Layman”: a nice mix of background, policy, and advice. I think Ray Lodato’s Slashdot review gets it generally right in noting that, “Each chapter will alternatively interest you and leave you appalled (and perhaps a little frightened). You will be given the insight to protect yourself a little better, and it provides background for intelligent discussions about the legalities that impact our use of technology.”

Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis aren’t really seeking to be polemical in this book by advancing a single thesis or worldview. To the extent the book’s chapters are guided by any central theme, it comes in the form of the “two basic morals about technology” they outline in Chapter 1:

The first is that information technology is inherently neither good nor bad — it can be used for good or ill, to free us or to shackle us. Second, new technology brings social change, and change comes with both risks and opportunities. All of us, and all of our public agencies and private institutions, have a say in whether technology will be used for good or ill and whether we will fall prey to its risks or prosper from the opportunities it creates. (p. 14)

Mostly, what they aim to show is that digital technology is reshaping society and, whether we like or it not, we better get used to it — and quick!  “The digital explosion is changing the world as much as printing once did — and some of the changes are catching us unaware, blowing to bits our assumptions about the way the world works… The explosion, and the social disruption that it will create, have barely begun.” (p 3)

In that sense, most chapters discuss how technology and technological change can be both a blessing and a curse, but the authors are generally more optimistic than pessimistic about the impact of the Net and digital technology on our society. What follows is a quick summary of some of the major issues covered in Blown to Bits.

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What the U.K. Can Teach the U.S. on Spectrum Reform

by on November 11, 2008 · 6 comments

What’s the right way to allocate the airwaves? For years and years and years, the governing policy of federal communications was that the electro-magnetic spectrum was too “scarce” to be left to the devices of the marketplace. This kind of reasoning has always lacked substance. As I wrote in a piece occoccasioned by the rise of indecency enforcement:

Congress began regulating broadcasters in 1927 on the grounds of scarcity. In return for free and exclusive use of a given wavelength, broadcasters agreed to serve the “public interest, convenience, and necessity” — or at least to do what Congress and the FCC ordered. One element of this agreement was a ban on obscene, indecent and profane language.

This scarcity theory has always lacked substance. Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase’s reputation is based, in part, on a notable paper he wrote in 1959 that criticized the rationale behind the FCC’s command and control regime of licensing broadcasters. “It is a commonplace of economics that almost all resources in the economic system (and not simply radio and television frequencies) are limited in amount and scarce, in that people would like to use more than exists,” Coase argued in his seminal essay.

From Shouldn’t FCC Rules Over Indecency Just Grow Up? Reflections on Free Speech and Converging Media

The FCC eventually came to realize that it could endow electromagnetic frequencies with property rights-like characteristics. In 1993, under Bill Clinton and a Democratic congress, the United States finally moved to such a system — at least in those frequencies used by cell-phone operators. As in so many other ways, broadcasters have remained immune from historical trends.

This backdrop is important to understand our current moment in wireless policy. Tomorrow, on Wednesday, November 12, at 4 p.m., those near Washington will be able to gain insight into how other nations have approached radio frequency regulation. The Information Economy Project at the George Mason University School of Law (Disclosure: I’m the Assistant Director at the Information Economy Project, a part-time position that I currently hold) will host its next “Big Ideas About Information Lecture” featuring an address by Dr. William Webb, a top policy maker at OFCOM, the U.K. telecommunications regulator.

OFCOM’s ambitious liberalization strategy, announced in 2004, permits the large majority of valuable frequencies to be used freely by competitive licensees, offering an exciting and informative experiment in public policy.  Dr. Webb’s lecture, “Spectrum Reform: A U.K. Regulator’s Perspective,” will offer a timely progress report for the American audience.

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Net Neutrality and White Spaces, from the Wireless Communications Association

by on November 7, 2008 · 5 comments

SAN JOSE, Nov. 7 – This morning I’ve posted two articles on BroadbandCensus.com about the Wireless Communications Association’s conference here.

Net Neutrality Advocates: Wireless Carriers’ Network Management Must be ‘Reasonable’

SAN JOSE, November 7 – Emboldened by their summertime victory against Comcast, advocates of network neutrality said Thursday that the next front in battle for the principle would be against wireless carriers who make “unreasonable” network management decisions. read more

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s Incredible Silicon Valley Wi-Fi Adventure

SAN JOSE, November 6 – It was Kevin Martin’s day to suck up praise from Silicon Valley. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission – for about two more months – came to the Wireless Communications Association’s annual conference here on Thursday to be feted by many Googlers, including company co-founder Larry Page. read more

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If the U.S. Goes With ‘White Spaces,’ What of the Rest of the World?

by on November 5, 2008 · 6 comments

With the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to allow “white spaces” devices at its open meeting on Election Day, it may make sense to ask: how are other nations approaching the issue of “white spaces”? Do other countries that make use of flexible and transferable spectrum licensing find that taking the approach that the FCC took on Tuesday — allowing unlicensed wireless devices to share vacant television frequencies — helps or hinders in getting more spectrum available for the “highest and best use”?

As readers of this blog are probably aware, I work part-time at the Information Economy Project at George Mason University School of Law, which sits at the intersection of academic research and telecommunications policy.

IEP is pleased to sponsor one of its “Big Ideas About Information” Lecture next Wednesday, November 12, at the law school in Arlington. The school is conveniently located at the Virginia Square/GMU Metro station, and is a short ride away from downtown Washington.

At 4 p.m. on November 12, William Webb, the head of research and development and the senior technologist at OFCOM, the British telecommunications regulator, will be speaking about this and other subjects. The title of his remarks is: “The Theory, Practice, Politics and Problems of Spectrum Reform: A U.K. Regulator’s Perspective,” and you can learn more about it here, or by clicking on the badge below.

Admission is free, but seating is limited. To reserve your spot, please email me, Drew Clark, at this address: iep.gmu@gmail.com

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Special Election Day Telecom Blog Post and News Report

by on November 4, 2008 · 9 comments

I’ve just posted two new entries over at BroadbandCensus.com (in addtion to the one about FCC v. Fox Televisions Stations) below. Now, I’ve got to go and vote.

The pieces at BroadbandCensus.com include a blog post about the real issue in white spaces: not broadcasters versus techies, but keeping the current Swiss-cheese arrangement in the airwaves versus clearing the broadcasters out of their radio frequencies entirely.

Also, in a special election day news report, myself and Drew Bennett have written about the delay in the vote over the universal service fund and intercarrier compensation overhauls.

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Reform Intercarrier Compensation

by on October 30, 2008 · 5 comments

The Federal Communications Commission began a broad inquiry of intercarrier compensation in 2001 and now it may finally be getting around to acting on it on Nov. 4 while everyone’s thoughts are on something else.

This is about 12 years overdue. Congress in 1996 foresaw that implicit phone subsidies were unsustainable and ordered the FCC to replace them with a competitively-neutral subsidy mechanism. Due to political pressure, regulators have failed to complete the job.

Intercarrier compensation refers to “access charges” for long-distance calls and “reciprocal compensation” for local calls. A long-distance carrier may be forced to pay a local carrier more than 30 cents per minute to deliver a long-distance call, but local carriers receive as little as .0007 cents per minute to deliver calls they receive from other local carriers.

Once upon a time, before fiber optics, there were significant distance related costs. Now distance isn’t a major factor.

The high access charges remain only because the recipients, typically small and mid-size phone companies serving sparsely populated areas, have successfully lobbied regulators and legislators to keep them.

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Reason Magazine on What Obama Means for Tech Policy

by on October 28, 2008 · 5 comments

Jesse Walker has a terrific feature story looking “Beyond the Fairness Doctrine” in this month’s issue of Reason magazine. I highly recommend it. It’s an in-depth exploration of what an Obama Administration means for the future of tech and media policy. Walker rightly opens the piece by noting that “The fairness doctrine is still dead, and it probably will stay dead even if Barack Obama becomes president.” The danger, however, is that an Obama FCC will still pursue a variety of onerous regulatory objectives that could do a great deal of damage to markets and free speech.

Walker touches upon the various issues that will likely be a priority for an Obama Administration and the Left-leaning media reformistas like Free Press, Media Access Project, Public Knowledge, and New America Foundation. Those policy issues include: net neutrality, “localism” mandates and increased “community oversight” regulations, media ownership rules, minority ownership requirements, increased merger meddling, spectrum policy, and other new “public interest” obligations.

Of course, as Walker also correctly points out, it is difficult to see how things could get much worse than they have been under Bush Administration’s FCC and the leadership of Chairman Kevin Martin.  Walker was kind enough to quote my thoughts on this point: “Martin is the most regulatory Republican FCC Chairman in decades,” I told him. “He wants to control speech and will use whatever tools he has to get there.”

I stand by those words, but I am also aware that things could get worse — much worse — under a Democratic FCC influenced by radical Leftist activists like Free Press.  Indeed, in our new book A Manifesto for Media Freedom, Brian Anderson and I inventory the many looming threats to media and technology freedom that exist today and show how most of them arise from the Left.  As Walker notes in his article, however, it is unlikely that a re-empowered Democratic FCC would come right out of the gates with the same sort of command-and-control approaches they’ve employed in the past.  And we’ll still have to worry about some right-of-center lawmakers and regulatory joining some of these misguided campaigns. “The real danger,” Walker concludes in his piece, “is more subtle and more mundane.  It’s a bipartisan bureaucracy slowly, steadily increasing its power.”    Make sure to read Jesse’s entire piece.  Great stuff.

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Leading U.K. Telecom Official to Deliver Major Lecture at George Mason University

by on October 23, 2008 · 5 comments

William Webb, Head of Research and Development at OFCOM, to speak about ‘The Theory, Practice, Politics and Problems of Spectrum Reform’ on November 12

ARLINGTON, VA., October 23 – With the transition to digital television in the United States less than four months away, disputes about the airwaves used by broadcasters are raging here and around the globe.  A world-class expert will soon weigh in on how one country, the United Kingdom, views the challenges of bringing radio spectrum allocation into the 21st Century.

On Wednesday, November 12, 2008, the Information Economy Project at the George Mason University School of Law will host its next Big Ideas About Information Lecture, featuring an address by Dr. William Webb, a top policy maker at OFCOM, the U.K. telecommunications regulator.

OFCOM’s ambitious liberalization strategy, announced in 2004, permits the large majority of valuable frequencies to be used freely by competitive licensees, offering an exciting and informative experiment in public policy.  Dr. Webb’s lecture, “The Theory, Practice, Politics and Problems of Spectrum Reform,” will offer a timely progress report for the American audience.

Webb’s lecture will be the sixth in a prestigious series that has included Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith and noted economist David Porter on how FCC license auctions have worked; Martin Cooper, the “father of the cellphone,” on spectrum allocation; Brian Lamb, founder and CEO of C-SPAN, on the policies that enabled the cable network to launch;  former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Dennis Patrick, on the decision to abolish the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987; and University of Minnesota Professor Andrew Odlyzko, on financial bubbles in high-technology industries.

Dr. Webb’s Lecture will review the century-long history of radio spectrum regulation. For almost all of that century, the policy-maker has micro-managed spectrum use, defining services, technologies and business models deployed by wireless operators. The inefficiencies embedded in this approach have triggered calls for liberalization since the pioneering work of economist Ronald Coase in the 1950s.

While efforts to relax administrative control have generally met great political resistance, some substantial progress has been made with the emergence of mobile telephone networks over the past two decades.  Policy makers in some nations are now seeking to achieve bolder changes. The regulator in the United Kingdom, OFCOM, has emerged as a leader in this campaign.

After the Labour Government commissioned a landmark 2002 study authored by economist Martin Cave, OFCOM moved aggressively to assist the emergence of property rights in frequencies, the institutional switch enabling market allocation of radio spectrum.

This lecture, delivered by a key OFCOM policy official and a noted spectrum technology expert in his own right, dissects the liberalization process in Great Britain and offers lessons learned. This experience promises great insight for the U.S. and other countries struggling to enact pro-consumer policy reforms.

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