Wireless Future Program: Latest Publications

While many policy analysts have focused on the fate of the 700 MHz auctions, the digital TV transition, and the promise of white space devices, a more vast and underutilized resource has gone largely unnoticed: government spectrum. The best available data suggests that the majority of federal spectrum capacity is left unused. Strategic reuse of this spectrum could help obviate the need for significant additional reallocation while enabling a wide range of creative new uses and social benefits.

As digital communications and the Internet become increasingly pervasive, Native Americans continue to lack access to this digital revolution.  Native Americans are among the last citizens to gain access to the Internet, with access to broadband often unavailable or overly expensive in Native communities.  Beyond that challenge, there is a fundamental lack of qualitative or quantitative empirical research on Native American Internet use, adoption, and access, stifling the Native voice in broadband and media policy.

Application bias, the practice by network operators of placing applications into tiers of low and high priority and enforcing this prioritization through mechanisms in the middle of the network, poses hidden harms for the Internet that substantially outweigh its uncertain benefits.  Application bias degrades low priority applications, decreases overall network performance, and locks the Internet into typical usage patterns of 2009, frustrating both consumer choice and Internet innovation.  At the same time, the biggest hurdle to offering more powerful services… more

The current national discussion to expand access and use of broadband occurring in Washington has created an ideal time for foundations to become engaged in the issue. The current economic recession, combined with an unprecedented effort by government to directly invest in the deployment and adoption of broadband, provides an enormous opportunity for community foundations to help support beneficial projects and initiatives in communities across the country. 

There is no doubt that consumer demand for mobile data applications is exploding worldwide. As Smartphones with PC capabilities and broadband aircards gain access to faster 4G networks beginning next year, total wireless data consumption will increase geometrically. Cisco’s annual projection of global Internet traffic predicts a 129% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for mobile data over the next five years in North America (through 2013).

Meeting consumer demand for mobile data will require some combination of four strategies: