J.H. Snider: All Publications, Events and Press

The Art of Spectrum Lobbying

Wireless Future — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:36:00 -0400

Introduction

In the late 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) conducted a series of lotteries to allocate electromagnetic spectrum (popularly known as the “public airwaves”) for mobile telephone service. More than 320,000 lottery tickets were acquired by spectrum speculators, including dentists, lawyers, accountants, and anyone else willing to devote the time and hire the legal talent necessary to fill out the complicated form to acquire a lottery ticket. Many of the lottery tickets were purchased as part of partnerships, whose members would collectively enter lottery tickets for hundreds of different licenses. For example, in December 1989, the FCC selected the winning… more

Ars Technica Reports on J.H. Snider's Spectrum Working Paper

Communications — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:42:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Critics of US spectrum policy will have plenty of ammunition for their howitzers after reading the new working paper (PDF) from J.H. Snider of the New America Foundation. Snider heads up the Wireless Future Program at New America, and his paper offers an inside look at the sometimes-dirty world of spectrum lobbying, which Snider characterizes as responsible for a $480 billion giveaway from the public treasury.

The giveaway in question comes after Congress passed legislation in 1993 requiring the FCC to hold auctions for future spectrum licenses, a move that was itself prompted by a massive giveaway of prime spectrum in the late 1980s. Using the high end of his estimate (which ranges from $140 to $480 billion), Snider observes that the giveaway in question amounted to "more than 90 percent of the value of spectrum usage rights [the government] has assigned from 1993 through the present."

The giveaway that Snider's talking about isn't a massive grant of free spectrum to corporate interests; instead, it's something much more subtle and far more difficult for the public to understand. To understand why Snider considers this a "giveaway," let's first look at the difference between the amount of money the government has actually received for licenses since 1993 and the amount of money that such licenses are worth...

For the complete article, please visit the Ars Technica website.

For more information on the working paper event, please click here.

Communications Daily Quotes J.H. Snider on Spectrum Licenses

Communications — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:14:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Spectrum value is lost when incumbents get the FCC to modify their licenses at no charge, said J.H. Snider, research director of New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program. To protect spectrum value, the FCC should charge for license revisions, Snider, author of a paper on spectrum "giveaway," told a Tuesday panel. Another participant estimated that the U.S. loses out on $10 billion yearly in potential fees.

Changing the parameters of a license changes the value of the spectrum involved, according Snider. An example of "free" modification is the change from site-based to geographic-based licensing and digital rights for cellular. Without such modifications, licenses now held by cellphone companies in the 800 MHz band would be worth far less, Snider said. After next year, when the FCC completes the auction of the 700 MHz band spectrum, nearly all spectrum below 3 GHz will have been assigned. This means "the name of the game going forward will be the license modification," said Snider. License changes are popular with incumbents because they "can be done quietly, under the radar," he said.

"You have to have a Ph.D. in spectrum technology to know what is going on," Snider said. Former Rep. Bob Edgar, D- Pa., president of Common Cause, agreed. People will not get excited about this issue unless they understand it, he said...

For the complete article, please visit the Communications Daily website.

InfoWorld Highlights New America Spectrum Event

Communications — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:42:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The U.S. government has given away between $140 billion and $480 billion worth of radio spectrum to wireless providers and broadcasters since 1993, according to a study released Tuesday.

The New America Foundation, a think tank calling for new ways to manage U.S. spectrum, said most of the giveaway has come not through underperforming auctions but through "below the radar" lobbying tactics by spectrum holders. Much of the spectrum giveaway comes through strategies like case-by-case waivers for flexible spectrum use granted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), poorly defined spectrum boundaries, and spectrum holders polluting neighboring spectrum, said J.H. Snider, author of the study.

In many cases, the FCC has automatically renewed spectrum licenses even through spectrum law allows for licensing for "limited periods of time," he added.

The U.S. government raised about $40 billion in more than 80 spectrum auctions since 1993, Snider said at a forum in Washington, D.C. But wireless providers and broadcasters, in financial reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, have given that spectrum a value of about $180 billion, he said.

The spectrum is likely worth much more than those estimates, he added. Using past auction figures, the value of the spectrum could be more than $520 billion, he said...

For the complete article, please visit the InfoWorld website.

To learn more about this New America event and to read the report, please click here.

The Baltimore Sun Highlights J.H. Snider

Communications — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:51:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Before he could begin to lead the fifth-largest school district in Maryland, Eric J. Smith was told he needed to make time to speak with one Severna Park family: the Sniders.

Smith sat across the dining table from Terra Ziporyn and Jim H. Snider, parents of three school-age children, and got an earful about the value of the arts and the need for new algebra textbooks and greater transparency in the district's decision making.

"They cared very much about the quality of education in Anne Arundel, and they were never shy about sharing their thoughts on what could be done to improve things," said Smith, who served as superintendent from 2002 to 2005. "They -- their participation -- was crucial."

Since moving to the county five years ago, the Sniders and their children have emerged as arguably the most influencial family in the system that educates 74,000 students each year.

The family's middle child, Sage, 17, sat at her first school board meeting yesterday, serving as a student representative two years after her sister Pallas held the same post. They are believed to be the only siblings in the state to serve nearly back-to-back stints on their school board, the only one in the country that gives a student full voting rights.

Jim Snider made an unsucessful bid for school board in 2002. These days, he writes a blog critical of the school board selection process and recently helped the Severna Park High parents' group with suggestions for an honor code to help the school heal from a cheating scandal...

For the complete article, please visit The Baltimore Sun website.

America's $480 Billion Spectrum Giveaway

Communications — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:59:00 -0400

A New America Event
07/17/2007 - 12:30pm

Spectrum has become one of the most valuable natural resources of the Information Age. Unlike other comparably valuable natural resources such as land and oil, it is owned by the public and allocated exclusively by the federal government. Also, unlike those resources, it is invisible both literally and figuratively: the general public does not understand—and consequently does not care about—its allocation. This combination of huge amounts of money at stake and public ignorance creates the classic conditions for special interest politics.

J.H. Snider, Research Director of the New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program, describes the causes and consequences of this special interest politics in his new report, The Art of Spectrum Lobbying: America's $480 Billion Spectrum Giveaway, How it Happened, and How to Prevent it from Recurring. At this brownbag lunch forum, Dr. Snider will present the findings of his study. This will be followed by a discussion by a distinguished panel of experts on natural resources, good government, and spectrum policy. The report is timely, as the FCC is currently considering auction reform in the 700 MHz band and numerous “minor” modifications worth tens of billions of dollars in the broadcast and satellite bands.

Spectrum Policy for the Emerging Ultrabroadband World

Wireless Future — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:51:00 -0400

Spectrum Policy for the Emerging Ultrabroadband World

Wireless Future — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:22:00 -0400

Imagine a world with finite spectrum but infinite demand for wireless bandwidth. In such a world, which we shall call the ―wireless ultrabroadband world, what would the wireless telecommunications architecture look like? And what type of property rights regime would accompany it?

No telecommunications architecture following known laws of nature could provide infinite wireless bandwidth. But this paper argues that the architecture that would get closest would be one with very short wireless end user links attached to a wired backbone. It further argues that in such a world the most efficient property rights regime for spectrum management would be… more

Defense News Quotes J.H. Snider on Shared Spectrum, DARPA

Communications — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:40:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The warnings are dire: The number of available radio frequencies is declining, say U.S. government officials, and with it the Pentagon’s ability to introduce new communications technology...

But a seven-year-old firm a stone’s throw from the Capital Beltway says it can harness “white space” in the spectrum to provide interoperable communications. The 30-employee firm, Shared Spectrum, had 2006 revenues of “about $8 million to $9 million” and expects about the same this year...

In a test last summer by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at the U.S. Army’s Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, Shared Spectrum demonstrated that it could send data on frequencies being used by other nearby radios without interference...

Shared Spectrum is developing a follow-on radio with partner M/A-COM, a unit of Tyco Electronics and a provider of wireless radio, microwave and millimeter-wave components. They are working together on DARPA’s “Wireless After Next” project, which seeks a radio for less than $500...

One wireless policy observer, J.H. Snider, who directs research at the Washington-based New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program, has criticized other attempts by commercial interests to use spectrum white space. But in an e-mail, he was positive about what Shared Spectrum is doing for DARPA.

“DARPA’s XG is to wireless networks what DARPA’s Internet was to wired networks. XG is a government-funded, state-of-the-art network design that could have a huge impact on the design of wireless networks going out a few decades,” Snider wrote.

“Its short-term impact, except for military applications, is likely to be much less,” he added. “Shared Spectrum’s greatest contribution, from my standpoint, is to demonstrate how big a deal XG-type technology really is. Shared Spectrum has done this by demonstrating that there is a huge amount of white space that could be put into productive use with the right combination of technology and policy...”

For the complete article, please visit the Defense News website.

J.H. Snider on Spectrum Auction, Nextel in GigaOm

Communications — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:25:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Like a fresh spring breeze, new radio-frequency spectrum is in the air. It is so close that you can almost smell it -- and seek to keep others away from it.

The next big spectrum land grab is over 700 Megahertz (MHz.) It’s the promised land of “beachfront property” that broadcasters are set to vacate on February 19, 2009, when the transition to digital television is supposed to be complete. Lots of folks are jockeying now to lock up these airwaves...

With the February 2006 passage of the DTV legislation, 60 of those 108 megahertz will be opened at auction by January 2008...

But if you don’t want to actually pay for the best frequencies, there’s always the good old-fashioned way: convince politicians to give it to you. Morgan O’Brien has perfected this strategy. He used it in 1990 to convert his radio-dispatcher frequencies into cell-phone licenses and jump start cellular carrier FleetCall...

“If there were a Nobel Prize for lobbying, I would give it to Nextel and Morgan O’Brien,” said J.H. Snider, research director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program...

For the complete article, please visit the GigaOm website.

RCR Wireless Quotes J.H. Snider on IWN

Communications — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:57:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog revealed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, overseer of a Bush administration plan to foster improved spectrum use by federal agencies, state governments and private-sector firms, granted more than 23,000 waivers over two years to allow law enforcement officials to continue operating wireless systems in a less efficient manner than mandated by NTIA in 1993.

The finding is included in a new DoJ inspector general’s report that warns plans to deploy a new nationwide wireless network for secure government communications is at risk of failing due to funding and management problems, a prospect that could hurt federal response to the next terrorist attack or natural disaster...

J.H. Snider, research director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program, said the NTIA’s handling of the matter leaves much to be desired and that he suspects the Justice Department is posturing for more congressional funding. Snider said he regards the IWN as a dinosaur. “The whole system is incredibly inefficient except by 1993 standards...”

For the complete article, please visit the RCR Wireless website.

J.H. Snider on White Space Spectrum in Broadcast Engineering

Communications — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:05:00 -0400

New America in the News:

A coalition of major technology companies continue to aggressively lobby federal officials to use the white space spectrum between television broadcast channels, for wireless consumer devices as well as new Internet access. Now, with critical technology beginning to be tested by the FCC, the stakes are raised for broadcasters, production companies and Internet service providers...

Using unlicensed white space spectrum is a politically charged issue in Washington because of the perceived threat of competition it holds for the powerful telecom and cable television companies. Broadcasters are worried about interference with their transmissions, and production companies fear their wireless mics and other equipment will be stepped on...

"The telephone companies are terrified they'll lose 40 percent of their wireless minutes, because you'll be able to connect from work or home and bypass their wireless networks," J.H. Snider told MarketWatch. Snider is research director of the wireless future program at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based policy institute that has long advocated allowing use of white spaces...

For the complete article, please visit the Broadcast Engineering website.

J.H. Snider on Microsoft's Wireless Prototype in Dow Jones Marketwatch

Communications — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:51:00 -0500

New America in the News:

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- When Microsoft Corp. delivers a mysterious prototype for government testing this coming week, it will mark a crucial juncture for a high-stakes bid to change the way consumers get their Internet access.

That bid has cast Microsoft and a group of powerful allies from Silicon Valley in the relatively unfamiliar role of Washington policy players.

Microsoft's (MSFT) prototype, delivered on behalf of the group, is a wireless device that could provide the public with free and more widespread access to the Web instead of relying on networks owned by big telecom and cable firms.

That breakthrough, tapping into an unused part of the nation's airwaves, is politically charged because it threatens to shift the Internet-access business away from telecom and cable companies that are historically well-connected in Washington, throwing open the field to a brand new batch of competitors.

It all hinges on how well the prototype performs in tests by the Federal Communications Commission. Microsoft and allies must prove that such devices, which can connect users via unlicensed portions of the nation's wireless spectrum known as white spaces, won't interfere with airwaves that major license holders acquired for large sums. While the FCC is obligated to protect license holders from such interference, several "white spaces" bills introduced in Congress have placed added pressure on the commission to wrap up the tests in a hurry.

But along the way, a host of big guns in the telecom industry hope Microsoft and its white-space cohorts will fail. The group includes Google Inc. (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), Dell Inc. (DELL) and Intel Corp. (INTC).

"The telephone companies are terrified they'll lose 40% of their wireless minutes, because you'll be able to connect from work or home and bypass their wireless networks," said J.H. Snider, research director of the wireless future program at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based policy institute that has long advocated to allow use of white spaces...

For the complete article, please visit the Dow Jones Marketwatch website.

Michael Calabrese, J.H. Snider on Community Wireless Networks in Communications Daily

Communications — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 04:37:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The U.S. needs a wireless broadband policy as community networks "pop up everywhere," said Sascha Meinrath, exec. dir.-Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless. Speaking at the Freedom to Connect conference near D.C., he and others said before the feds can act, they need better information...

The U.S. needs to "explicitly pursue federal policy" to stop telcos from getting states to preempt local govts. from doing it, said Michael Calabrese, Dir.-New America Foundation Wireless Future Program. Lack of broad wireless broadband adoption isn't the only problem, he said: "It's also about quality, connection speeds, cost and mobility and ubiquity." Verizon FIOS is "at least bringing some speed" but AT&T's goal of providing up to 6 Mbps to 40% of its service territory in 5 years" is "pathetic," he said. Opening TV white spaces will free 80-200 MHz of spectrum but "we need to open up other white spaces" too, he said.

Calabrese's New America Foundation colleague Jim Snider agreed: "I don't think there's been enough attention paid to spectrum inputs."

For the complete article, please visit the Communications Daily website.

J.H. Snider on In-Band-On-Channel Broadcasting in East Bay Express

Communications — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:59:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Driving across the Bay Area every day, you can't help but hear the great news: HD Radio has arrived! There are now secret stations hiding between the stations you can hear. All you have to do is go out and buy a new HD Radio and you'll hear your old stations in crystal-clear digital, plus secret ones that you've never even heard before. All with no subscription!

But after an investigation of HD Radio units, the stations playing HD, and the company that owns the technology; and some interviews with the wonks in DC, it looks like HD Radio is a high-level corporate scam, a huge carny shill...

These local stations multicast using a technique known as In-Band On-Channel broadcasting, whose patents are held by a fifteen-year-old private corporation called iBiquity. CEO Bob Struble says iBiquity arose from next-gen radio research at corporations such as Lucent. These big boys figured out how to squeeze four channels into each existing one, and have poured more than $200 million into controlling them all with help from the FCC. The esteemed commissioners responded by granting iBiquity exclusive rights to digital radio.

Struble says nobody owns the rights to analogue radio, but everyone who wants to broadcast in digital or make a receiver has to pay iBiquity. Fees start at $10,000 per new digital channel...All the major radio players, such as Clear Channel Communications, are iBiquity investors...

Radio spectrum analyst JH Snider is research director for the Wireless Future Program of the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan DC think tank. He affirms that a public broadcasting license is virtually a license to print money, and the FCC's fourfold expansion of Big Radio's mints offers no public payback. "There's nothing special about the technology except that the broadcasters control it and basically they took technology that others invented," Snider says. "They should've opened it up to competition."

FCC sources claim the path to digital audio broadcasting has been open and inclusive...

Snider, however, says the whole way the United States doles out the spectrum favors broadcasters over common sense. "Just look at free satellite radio," he says. "North America is the only continent on Earth besides Antarctica that doesn't have free satellite radio stations. That's the power of the provincial US broadcaster..."

For the complete article, please visit the East Bay Express website.

Economic/Legal Reply Comments to FCC on TV White Spaces NPRM

Wireless Future — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 06:09:00 -0500

ISP Planet Cites New America's WISP Response to the FCC

Communications — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:06:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The FCC has some spectrum and everyone wants a piece of it. As part of the migration of TV broadcast from analog to digital, spectrum previously allocated to UHF and VHF broadcast (and little used) might be opened to other users, depending on the outcome of the FCC's latest inquiry, FCC proceeding 04-186 ("In the Matter of Unlicensed Operation in the TV Broadcast Bands: Additional Spectrum for Unlicensed Devices Below 900 MHz and in the 3 GHz Band").

The spectrum under discussion (according to the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, dated May 13, 2004, p. 28) is 76 to 88 MHz, 174 to 216 MHz, 470 to 608 MHz, and 614 to 698 MHz. For WISPs, what's important about this spectrum is that it's better than what's available now.

The spectrum currently available to WISPs is the worst possible spectrum. In their (89 page) response to the FCC, J.H. Snider and Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation along with their Media Access Project lawyers Harold Feld and Andrew Jay Schwartzmann point out that WISPs have achieved an astonishing amount in this awful spectrum...

WISPs know well that a further disadvantage of the 2.4 GHz band (and the reason it's used by microwave ovens) is that it interacts with water, making trees and other water-filled objects a barrier to signals (see Up Hill and Down Dale)...

In the conclusion of his policy paper, Spectrum Policy Wonderland: A Critique of Convention Property Rights and Commons Theory in a World of Low Power Wireless Devices (.pdf), the New America Foundation's J.H. Snider writes:

Licensed property rights to spectrum are hugely valuable. To paraphrase a former FCC Media Bureau Chief, most spectrum licensees would rather kill their mothers than give back their spectrum. They will thus fight unlicensed property rights tooth and nail. The fact that the public barely understands the nature of spectrum and shows almost every sign that it could care less is equally problematical. The combination of special interest zeal and public apathy is an explosive political combination that, as long as it lasts, will inevitably result in special interest spectrum politics that unduly favors the licensed over the unlicensed property rights model. To the extent that law and economics are not on the side of licensed property rights holders, there may be hope that these political dynamics will one day change.

For the complete article, please visit the ISP-Planet website.

Economic/Legal Comments on Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Unlicensed Access to TV White Spaces

Wireless Future — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:00:00 -0500

Communications Daily Quotes J.H. Snider on Multicasting Stations

Communications — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 20:47:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Talks on the 8th floor about an oft-delayed digital radio order include consideration of whether the FCC should issue a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on multicast reporting obligations, said an agency official and activists involved in the issue. An order to permit FM multicasting and nighttime digital AM broadcasts already has the backing of Chmn. Martin and the other 2 Republican commissioners (CD Aug 14 p3). At stake now is what compromises might bring Comrs. Adelstein and Copps aboard.

Concurrent with a vote on the multicast order, the FCC likely would start an inquiry on what types of data radio stations should report to the agency, said the official. Martin favors a notice of inquiry (NOI) asking such questions, the staffer said, adding that the Democrats have indicated they’ll vote for such an item if the chairman agrees to issue an NPRM. An NPRM would send industry a stronger message that the FCC wants to hear annually of what programming is multicast, said the official...The multicast order, said by an industry source to have been drafted in April 2005, was pulled from the July agenda meeting...

Broadcasters appear not to be suffering from the order’s state of suspended animation; many stations are multicasting already, New America Foundation’s Jim Snider, also a Nov. call participant, said: “It’s languishing in a de jure sense, but not a de facto sense... It’s sort of irreversible when you have all that equipment out there and more than 500 stations already multicasting.” Broadcasters should be asked to pay for the extra spectrum they’re using, he said...

For the complete article, please visit the Communications Daily website. (subscription required)

America’s Million-Dollar Superintendents

Articles — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:49:00 -0500

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the financial statements of public companies, has rigorous rules requiring the disclosure of compensation for senior executives. These rules should serve as a model for the disclosure of compensation for public school employees, especially superintendents.

The SEC’s rules were gradually built up in response to frequently recurring scandals revealing that, absent forced government disclosure, corporate CEOs, often with the tacit approval of their boards of directors, have strong incentives to secretly pay themselves above market compensation at shareholder expense. For each of the top five highest-paid executives in a public company, the SEC… more