Pervasive Connectivity Conference

How Unlicensed Spectrum Will Help The World Go Wireless

What do hundreds of truck stops, thousands of public schools, millions of residences and countless businesses have in common? They all rely on a commonly owned, public resource to receive and distribute broadband connectivity to citizens, employees, industry processes, and innumerable future applications.

The unlicensed spectrum bands are no longer the sole domain of radio hobbyists -- nor are they the "junk bands" for scores of everyday, consumer devices. They are now the preferred spectrum of local governments providing high-speed access to residents and public safety agencies -- They are the chosen bands for local-area industry applications (such as RFID in Wal-Mart's inventory management) -- They are the only affordable option for many rural and underserved communities in need of last-mile, broadband Internet access -- And, they are the source of astounding innovations in a previously stagnant telecom industry. Not since the birth of the Internet has there been such an explosion of entrepreneurial innovation.

So what are policymakers to learn from all of this innovation in the air? Should the lessons of unlicensed spectrum regulation (spectrum sharing under low-power limits) be applied to the dead air bands held by low-frequency Television incumbents? Should emerging intelligent radios (laptops, PDAs, cell phones, and next-generation 802.x devices) operating on the expanding edges of the wireless world be allowed to use their smarts to manage and share bandwidth dynamically? Or should last-century's technologies be granted rights to treat spectrum like property and dole out access to citizens for a fee?

Expert Panels of:

Industry & Commercial Users of Unlicensed Spectrum
WISPs & Broadband Equipment Manufacturers
Community & Municipal Broadband Providers
Policymakers & Telecom Economists

Location

National Guard Association of the United States

One Massachusetts Ave, NW

Washington, DC

See map: Google Maps

Agenda

8:30 AM REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

8:55 WELCOME & INTRODUCTIONS
Michael Calabrese, Director, New America Foundation Spectrum Policy Program

9:00 – 9:40 KEYNOTE ADDRESS (Q&A)
Eli Noam, Director, Columbia University Institute for Tele-Information

9:40 – 10:00 INTRODUCTORY PRESENTATION
Kevin Werbach, Founder, Supernova Group (presentation)
“Rethinking Wireless Communication: The Radio Revolution”

10:00 – 11:15 PANEL 1: UNLICENSED USERS: SUCCESSES WITH UNLICENSED SPECTRUM

Leadoff Presentation:
Kenneth Carter, Counsel for Business and Economics, Office of Strategic Planning, FCC (presentation)
“Unlicensed and Unshackled: Past, Present and Future”

Industry Presentations:
Patrick Leary, Assistant VP, Alvarion (presentation)
“Unlicensed Wireless Broadband: Statistics and Snapshots from the Trenches”
Ron Sege, Tropos Networks President and CEO (presentation)
“A Fine Mesh: What Happens When the Community Becomes the Network Infrastructure?”
Lev Gonick, CIO, Case Western Reserve University; President, OneCleveland.org (presentation)
“OneCleveland: Connecting, Enabling and Transforming our Community”
Kathleen Ham, Government Relations, T-Mobile (presentation)
“Friend or Foe? Does Wi-Fi Mesh with Traditional Cellular Services?…”

11:15 BREAK

11:30 – 12:45 PANEL 2: CLOSING THE GAP: COMMUNITY INITIATIVES TO PERVASIVE CONNECTIVITY

Leadoff Presentation:
Hui Zhang, Associate Professor, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University (presentation)
“The Role of Unlicensed Spectrum in the Last-Mile, Next-Generation Broadband Network”

Lessons from the Last-Mile:
Mayor Bill Graham, Scottsburg, IN
“A Local Government Becomes a WISP: Story of a Wireless Municipal Deployment”
Matthew R. Rantanen, Director of Technology, Southern California Tribal Digital Village (presentation)
“Re-connecting The Divided Nations, Tribal Digital Village”
David Young, Engineer, Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (presentation)
“Creating the Meshed Community: A Sustainable Wireless Community Network”
Esme Vos, Founder, MuniWireless.com (presentation)
“Putting Municipal Wireless Networks in a Global Perspective”
Jim Baller, Founder, The Baller Herbst Law Group
"Political and Legal Issues Affecting Wireless Broadband"

12:45 – 1:45 LUNCHEON SPEAKER
Ed Thomas, Chief FCC Office of Engineering & Technology (20 min plus Q&A coffee) (presentation)

1:45 – 3:00 PANEL 3: WHY UNLICENSED MATTERS: THE ECONOMICS OF PERVASIVE CONNECTIVITY

Leadoff Presentation:
William Lehr, Associate Director, MIT Program on Internet & Telecommunications (presentation)
“Economic Case for Dedicated Unlicensed below 3GHz”

Unlicensed Economics:
Bill Krenik, Wireless Advanced Architectures Manager, Texas Instruments (presentation)
Gerald R. Faulhaber, Professor of Public Policy and Business Management, Wharton School
Diane Cornell, VP Regulatory Policy, CTIA (presentation)

3:00 – 4:15 DEBATE: THE REALLOCATION OF BROADCAST TV BANDS TO BROADBAND

Leadoff Presentation:
Preston Marshall, Program Manager, DARPA Advanced Technology Office (presentation)
"Automated Policy Definition of Spectrum Sharing Opportunities"

White Space Approaches:
J.H. Snider, Senior Research Fellow, New America Foundation (presentation)
“The Trillion Dollar Giveaway of White Space”
Thomas Hazlett, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
“Does Unlicensed Spectrum Improve the Case for Central Planning?”
Adam Krinsky, Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP
“Licensee Rights to Licensed Spectrum”
Harold Feld, Associate Director, Media Access Project
“It Belongs to the Public: Jumpstart Wireless Broadband with Unlicensed Sharing…”

4:15 CLOSING REMARKS

4:30 ADJOURN

PDF Agenda

Issues: