Wireless Future Program: Latest Articles

Municipal Wireless Success Demands Public Involvement, Experts Say

Ron Tang — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:00:00 -0400

Most media have it wrong. Municipal wireless networks across the United States didn't stumble in 2007 -- high-profile cities where deals fell apart, such as Chicago, San Francisco and Houston, were not going to finance, own or operate their respective networks. These weren't municipal networks at all. The business model that faltered in 2007 was the "private corporate franchise" model based on the deal that Philadelphia and EarthLink agreed to in 2006. It was, in fact, the free market that failed last year -- not governments in their traditional role as the builders and maintainers of critical infrastructure.

How we… more

Broadcast to Broadband

Ron Tang — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Although much public attention has focused on the US digital TV transition -- and the resulting reallocation of analog TV channels by auction to wireless carriers -- the US Federal Communications Commission will decide how to reallocate an even larger swath of prime TV band spectrum this year: the unused “white space” between occupied DTV channels. This reallocation of unused spectrum from broadcasting to broadband permits unlicensed access for both fixed and mobile applications.

In 2002, the FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force recommended that spectrum efficiency and innovation could be enhanced by reallocating unused and underutilized spectrum for both flexible-use… more

The New Network Neutrality: Criteria for Internet Freedom

Ron Tang — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The past year witnessed an event unprecedented in modern U.S. telecommunications history. A relatively obscure telecommunications policy debate spilled outside the rarefied airs of Congressional Committees and the Federal Communications Commission’s eighth floor to rage across the Blogosphere, major newspapers, YouTube and episodes of The Daily Show. This contentious discussion centers on an issue known as “network neutrality,” defined broadly as the non-discriminatory interconnectedness among data communication networks that allows users to access the content, and run the services, applications, and devices of their choice. Timothy Wu coined the term “network neutrality” in his seminal 2003 work, “Network Neutrality, Broadband… more

New Television, Old Politics

Articles — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 02:27:00 -0500

When the definitive history of the 20th century is written, America’s transition to digital TV (DTV) may come to be viewed as the classic illustration of what can go wrong with a high tech industrial policy. For more than 20 years this transition has been taking place. It has already been the subject of half a dozen books and countless popular articles, let alone thousands of pages of Congressional Testimony and tens of thousands of pages of FCC comments. Hernan Galperin, an assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communications, University of Southern California, brings this story into the 21st… more

Public Needs to Know How Government Runs Its Airwaves

Articles — Wed, 10 May 2006 03:00:00 -0400

Popularly known as the "public airwaves," spectrum is becoming to the information era what land was to the agricultural era and energy to the industrial era: its defining and most valuable natural resource.

Spectrum allows people and machines to communicate without being connected to wires. Most households have dozens of spectrum using devices, including cordless phones, cellular telephones, garage door remotes, FM radios, satellite TVs, wireless car keys, Bluetooth headphones, invisible fences, and WiFi broadband connections.

Most spectrum is reserved for the federal government, and not for private use. The federal government allocates spectrum, and not unsurprisingly, allocated most for its own… more

Which is More Important for Spectrum Policy: FCC or DOT?

Articles — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 04:00:00 -0500

Which has more influence on spectrum policy: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or the various federal, state, and local departments of transportation? Conventional wisdom would place the FCC as the hands down winner. Surely, that continues to be the case. But if current technological trends continue, the departments of transportation, especially the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), could end up a strong second. We're all familiar with the growing importance of municipal Wi-Fi. But why not highway Wi-Fi? Why should Wi-Fi stop at city boundaries?

That's where the USDOT's planned Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) could come… more

Spectrum Reform an Urgent U.S. Priority

Articles — Wed, 04 Feb 2004 04:00:00 -0500

At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, one of the hottest topics was WiFi, the technology that uses license-exempt (unlicensed) spectrum to share high-speed wireless Internet connections. In the United States, wireless networking is the fastest-growing segment in telecommunications, while in less developed countries it is seen as the means to leapfrog the lack of a wired infrastructure.

While the WiFi boom has been about short-range mobility, roughly 1,500 wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) already are using unlicensed spectrum to offer high-speed broadband to homes and businesses up to 30 miles from the Internet backbone. This is particularly… more

Intel's Tiny Hope for the Future

Articles — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 04:00:00 -0500

As a department head at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon's R&D arm, David Tennenhouse spent the late 1990s approving or denying funding for hundreds of far-out military programs. One proposal he reviewed, from a research team at UC Berkeley, outlined a concept called smart dust -- fleck-sized wireless sensors intelligent enough to organize themselves into autonomous networks. Dropped from a passing helicopter, the sensors could spy on enemy movements or detect a hidden stash of mustard gas. Tennenhouse was intrigued enough to authorize several hundred thousand dollars in funding. Then he moved on to the next bizarre… more

Should the Public Meeting Enter the Information Age?

Articles — Sat, 01 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

To Whom May I Direct Your Free Call?

Articles — Sun, 12 Oct 2003 06:00:00 -0400

In the fall of 2000, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis had not yet earned any powerful enemies, at least so far as they were aware. They were just two obscure Swedish entrepreneurs who had worked with three Estonian programmers to write a file-sharing application called Kazaa. At the time, the free program was merely one of Napster's several weak stepsisters, lumped together in news reports with the likes of Snarfzilla and ToadNode.

But a few months later, the record industry and its lawyers swatted down Napster. And Kazaa, with its easy-to-use interface and reliable technology, quickly began scooping up users.… more

Up in the Air

Articles — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 03:00:00 -0400

Each economic era has a resource that drives wealth creation. In the agricultural era it was land. In the industrial era it was energy. Today it may be the airwaves, also known as the radio-frequency spectrum -- the most valuable resource of the emerging information economy. Economists estimate that in the United States alone the commercial value of access to it could be more than $750 billion. But it's a resource that's being managed wastefully and inequitably, and what's at stake is the future of technologies that can enable the tremendous economic and social potential… more

A Private Windfall for Public Property

Articles — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 03:00:00 -0400

We're no fans of the attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to relax ownership requirements for TV stations and newspapers, but it would be a shame if the battle between FCC Chairman Michael Powell and Congress on this issue distracted attention from another harmful move being contemplated by the commission.

We're talking about the privatization of the airwaves, a public resource worth hundreds of billions of dollars in both market value and future federal revenue. The contemplated FCC action could result in the biggest special interest windfall at the expense of American taxpayers in history.

The… more

Your Cellphone is a Homing Device

Articles — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 03:00:00 -0400

If you purchased a new cellphone over the past 18 months or so, odds are that one of the features listed in small print on the side of the box was "E911 capable." Or, as in the case of my latest Motorola, "Location technology for piece [sic] of mind." Perhaps you asked the salesman to explain the feature, and he replied that it means that cops can home in on your phone in case of an emergency, a potentially important perk should you ever find your hand pinned beneath an immovable boulder in rural Utah, as Aron Ralston did recently.… more

Hollywood and Whine

Articles — Sat, 01 Feb 2003 04:00:00 -0500

It's a political tale as old as Capitol Hill: A lumbering industry selects a certain corporate-friendly party to be its Beltway patsy. In exchange for the requisite campaign donations and other perks, members of said party use their clout to push through the industry's legislative agenda--an agenda that would rip off consumers and harm the overall economy but enrich the corporate string-pullers immensely. Pundits and public-interest types grumble over the bald-faced cronyism, but as long as the money keeps flowing, the beneficiaries don't seem to care a whit.

Sounds like the buddy-buddy relationship between Republicans and the… more

Sky Dayton's Long Road to Internet Nirvana

Articles — Tue, 01 Oct 2002 06:00:00 -0400

Fresh from a morning surf off the coast of Malibu, the maharishi of the wireless Internet shows up at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons sporting a rumpled T-shirt and Mayan sandals. It's an outfit more popular among aging head shop owners than youthful tech moguls, but Sky Dylan Dayton likes to live up to his Age of Aquarius name.

Besides, the Wavy Gravy getup is crucial to Dayton's offbeat allure. His man-of-the-people sales patter could seem corny coming from a member of the Brooks Brothers set. But those sandals. The puppy-dog eyes. The nervous throat clearing. Dayton's a master at… more

Fill Potholes on America's Info Highway

Articles — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 03:00:00 -0400

The Bush administration has largely ignored the nation's $700-billion telecommunications industry's free fall, a costly mistake for the U.S. economy. Stock prices are down 75%, and telecom companies are expected to reduce their capital spending for the second year in a row.

President Bush should use today's White House high-tech industry forum to announce a national broadband strategy.

U.S. broadband usage--the number of households that use high-speed Internet connections--is stalled at less than 10%. This delays the productivity-enhancing new applications that require faster connections and puts us well behind South Korea, where more than 50% of households use broadband. The… more

Book Review of David Bollier's Silent Theft

Articles — Mon, 10 Jun 2002 03:00:00 -0400

It's almost human nature: if you're allowed the use of something for enough time, you begin to think you have a right to it, even that you own it. Take broadcast television. Its signals travel by means of the electromagnetic spectrum, specifically that segment known colloquially as the airwaves. The spectrum is a fact of the physical universe. Capital didn't create it. It can't be improved by way of adding value. It's inherently a public resource.

Yet broadcasters treat it like a birthright. When in 1996 they won new frequencies for high-definition television -- at no charge -- they were… more

FCC Lets the Telecom Giants Steal from You

Articles — Sun, 07 Apr 2002 05:00:00 -0400

As Congress finalizes its budget resolution for next year, there is one item you won't see: the taking, via eminent domain, of tens of billions of dollars worth of your airwaves rights.

You know what eminent domain is. The government comes and takes away your property for the sake of the "greater good." Usually, citizens fight such takings of their property kicking and screaming. And even if they lose, at least individuals have a constitutional right to compensation.

But there is one big exception: the airwaves. Citizens have not only granted the government free reign to appropriate, via eminent domain,… more

Calling Plan

Articles — Tue, 26 Feb 2002 04:00:00 -0500

The so-called Tauzin-Dingell Act, slated for a House vote this Wednesday, has seemingly spawned more drive-time radio ads than "Hooked on Phonics." The bill would allow the "Baby Bell" phone companies to offer long-distance data services without first abandoning their local monopolies, thus nixing a key regulatory provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Because interstate broadband is worth billions, the four titans of regional telecom -- Verizon, SBC, Qwest, and BellSouth -- have spent months saturating the airwaves with gooey messages about how Tauzin-Dingell will launch, say, North Dakota wheat farmers into the Internet Era.

But the Bells… more

Tech Bubble Redux

Articles — Sun, 17 Feb 2002 04:00:00 -0500

Even as the Enron and Global Crossing bankruptcies further expose the spectacular waste fostered by the 1990s' Information Age bubble, an army of lobbyists in Washington is fighting to secure government support for broadband communications, the "next wave" of the "new economy." Subsidizing an ultra-fast Internet, it's said, will energize everything, from the stock market to our democracy itself. But if the unbalanced, profligate economy of the '90s has taught us anything, it should be the danger of granting any one sector, no matter how appealing, special political favor.

To a remarkable extent, broadband boosters are recycling promises unfulfilled… more