Open Spectrum: Policy Papers

Mobile Data Demand and the Need for Increased Spectrum Access

Wireless Future — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:18:00 -0400

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:

The End of Spectrum ‘Scarcity’

Wireless Future — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:50:00 -0400

Wireless is the most cost-effective and rapid means to bring broadband access to under-served rural and urban residents. Even after high-capacity Internet access becomes universal, wireless remains as the complementary infrastructure needed to achieve the larger goal of pervasive connectivity. Within a few short years, most Americans are likely to spend more hours each week on mobile than on wired Internet connections. Demand for spectrum will outpace availability under current spectrum man-management policies. Meanwhile, in every community across the country, large swaths of valuable spectrum lie fallow the majority of the time. This underutilized spectrum represents enormous, untapped, public capacity for high-speed and pervasive broadband connectivity. Therefore it is vital to a national broadband plan to consider policies that will encourage more intensive and efficient use of the nation’s spectrum resources.

A Potential Alliance for World-Wide Dynamic Spectrum Access

Wireless Future — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:58:00 -0400

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) Systems are one of the most promising technologies available to increase the range and efficiency of spectrum dependent services. DSA systems locate unused spectrum, and organize their users to operate within the spectrum they have identified. DSA systems ensure no interference to other users by scanning and sensing the environment, as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) NeXt Generation spectrum sharing field tests have established, or through pre-existing knowledge, such as the geolocation database proposed for unlicensed access to TV band white space, or a combination of both. Reported experimental results to date have shown that the promises from DSA technology are realistic and achievable.

New Approaches to Private Sector Sharing of Federal Government Spectrum

Wireless Future — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:05:00 -0400

As the U.S. economy and society becomes more and more information-centric and mobile, wireless systems are becoming a major factor in the efficient functioning of our society. Radio spectrum is a key economic input into wireless systems that power our information society and economy and enhance public safety and national security. Since the earliest days of radio regulation in the United States; federal government use of spectrum has been handled independently of other users’ access to spectrum. Thus, the FCC controls spectrum use by private parties and states and local governments while the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) controls federal government spectrum use.

Revitalizing the Public Airwaves

Wireless Future — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:45:00 -0400

The time has arrived for the unmet potentials of federal white spaces to receive some well-deserved attention. While many policy analysts have focused on the fate of the 700 MHz auctions, the digital TV transition, and the promise of television white space devices, the best available data suggests that the majority of federal spectrum capacity is left unused (McHenry, 2003; McHenry, 2004) – a situation that has gone largely unexamined. Strategic reuse of this spectrum could help obviate the need for significant additional frequency reallocations while enabling a wide range of creative new uses and social benefits. Based on what little information is publicly available, it is reasonable to assume that the repurposing of government spectrum would go far in addressing a number of access-related communication problems. Repurposing currently unused U.S. government-controlled spectrum for opportunistic unlicensed use would benefit society by dramatically expanding access to high-speed broadband and increasing the pace of wireless technological innovation. This approach to spectrum policy presents a “third way” for reform, drawing from both the commons and property rights models of spectrum management.

The Lobby that Cried Wolf

Wireless Future — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:50:00 -0400

In an October 2007 letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), executives from the four largest TV networks told the Commission that proposals to allow low-power Wi-Fi type devices to operate on vacant TV channels, “could cause permanent damage to over-the-air digital television reception." Such a dire warning would ring alarm bells for policymakers, if not for the fact that similar nightmare scenarios have been predicted before.

There is No Windfall in the White Space

Wireless Future — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:14:00 -0400

Rural Broadband and the TV White Space

Wireless Future — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:57:00 -0400

In 2004, the FCC initiated a proceeding to determine rules to allow the unlicensed operation of wireless communication devices in unused television band spectrum between channels 2 and 51. These vacant and unassigned television channels, known as the TV “white spaces,” would help make affordable wireless broadband in rural America a reality.

White Space Devices & The Battle Over Innovation:

Wireless Future — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:27:00 -0400

I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of a “White Space Device.” And yet, white space devices have the potential to be one of the most revolutionary new technologies to come along in the past twenty years. White space devices will have a greater positive impact than Wi-Fi and spur far more innovation than mobile phones. And yet, the trade press and inside-the-beltway media have been inundated by a massive PR campaign, and congressional offices have been swarmed by hundreds of

Wireless Carterfone

Wireless Future — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:25:00 -0500

Wireless carriers in the United States operate as regulated common carriers when providing basic telecommunications services, such as voice telephone service, text messaging and speed dialing to services and content. Remarkably, stakeholders debate whether this clear cut regulatory status requires wireless carriers to provide service to any compatible handset, subject to a certification process to ensure that such use will not harm carrier networks.

The Philadelphia Story

adminn — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:12:00 -0500

Joshua Breitbart authored this report. Naveen Lakshmipathy compiled the appendixes, while Sascha Meinrath served as editor.

The Philadelphia story told here is an analysis of one city's efforts to build a municipal wireless network. This report examines how Philadelphia's municipal wireless initiative helped shape the national debate regarding the need for public broadband infrastructure and the impact the project's successes and failures had on the local community. The Philadelphia story holds numerous lessons for decision-makers and regulators and is a powerful tool for understanding the interactions between network implementers and the constituencies these networks are supposed to serve.

The Philadelphia case study is presented in chronological order, with recommendations for how to improve community engagement highlighted throughout.

Context

Cities are under pressure to address the "digital divide" in their communities -- that is, the gap between those who have Internet access and those who do not -- an urgent problem that the federal government and most state governments have not addressed. The notion of "spending no tax dollars" in dealing with this problem was a driving principle behind the Philadelphia wireless initiative and shaped many of the project's outcomes. Philadelphia was a pioneer among large cities in using wireless technology to promote broadband adoption, and its actions have influenced how cities and towns design and pursue their municipal broadband projects.

Key Decision-Makers and Decisions

Philadelphia's chief information officer, Dianah Neff, initiated the project.
An executive committee, set up by the mayor's office and tasked to study Philadelphia's options for building a municipal wireless network, assessed the City's situation and solicited input from a wide range of stakeholders. The committee recommended nonprofit ownership of the network as a preferred business model.
Wireless Philadelphia (WP), the nonprofit formed to own the network, disregarded the executive committee's recommendation by accepting EarthLink's bid to own and operate the network. n Having given up ownership of the proposed network, WP was in the conflicting position of having to both promote EarthLink's services and hold the service provider accountable.
In addition to its marketing and oversight roles, Wireless Philadelphia focused on the project's public interest "digital inclusion" goals. However, WP has no capacity to provide direct services to its constituents, and operating expenses and debt service have eaten up its share of revenues. WP's current strategy to address digital inclusion has been to raise additional funding and establish one-to-one partnerships with nonprofit service providers to fulfill its original mandate.

Outcomes

Wireless Philadelphia disregarded the recommendations that grew out of the public process and that supported nonprofit ownership of their wireless network. Instead, WP yielded to political pressure when it accepted EarthLink's bid to own and operate the network.
WP has underperformed because it de-prioritized public input and constituent interests.
WP would have been more effective if it had assumed ownership of the network.
In the absence of substantial public control over the decision-making process, arguments in favor of public ownership of municipal and/or nonprofit networks may be disregarded in favor of a "free lunch" corporate ownership model.

Policy Recommendations

For city officials and decision-makers:

Involve all stakeholders.
Sustain open participation.
Promote horizontal relationships among stakeholders.
Be open with information.
Go offline.
Leverage existing assets.
Seriously consider the benefits of public/nonprofit ownership and open access business models.
Treat connectivity and digital inclusion as basic public rights.

For community members and local organizers:

Organize a coalition.
Get to know the key players and decision-makers.
Be the media and report on the process.
Do your own research and disseminate it within your community.
Start a community wireless project.
Remain actively involved in all steps of the process.

For the full report, please see the PDF attached below.

Unlicensed White Space Devices and Myth of Interference

Wireless Future — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:46:00 -0500

"Smart" wireless devices can use the unassigned frequencies between broadcast TV channels to offer wireless broadband and other innovative services. A rulemaking is pending at the FCC (docket 04-186) to permit unlicensed access to this currently wasted spectrum, subject to technical requirements that will protect television reception from interference. Access to the vacant TV channels in each market has been the subject of intense lobbying, yet far too many of the arguments against "white space" devices rely upon misinformation about the technologies and the FCC process that will prevent harmful interference to DTV reception and other incumbent services.

This policy backgrounder offers a summary analysis, and is an effort to help policymakers strike the appropriate balance between protecting existing services from interference while making the benefits of mobile broadband services available and affordable for all consumers. It provides policymakers with:

a brief historical background to the current FCC proceedings;
a description of White Space Device (WSD) technologies;
a “Myths vs. Facts” section addressing the key concerns raised about WSDs;
an overview of the public benefits of WSDs; and
a concise summary of where we are in the multi-phase process of adopting WSD technologies for consumer use.

For the full document, please see the PDF attached below.

Petition for Reconsideration to FCC on Digital Radio Band White Space

Wireless Future — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 07:09:00 -0400

The FCC should reconsider its decision to allow incumbent radio licensees to expand into neighboring spectrum without imposing additional public interest requirements. The Second Report & Order is premised on the unexamined and unsupported assumption that the Commission is not assigning new spectrum for mutually exclusive commercial uses to incumbent licensees. Because of this erroneous premise, the FCC completely fails to consider a key question of whether the spectrum should be used for alternative purposes, such as noncommercial low power FM (“LPFM”) or unlicensed uses, or auctioned pursuant to Section 309(j).

In addition, the FCC should reconsider its decision because allowing incumbent radio licensees to indefinitely occupy the sidebands surrounding their current signals, without adopting enhanced public interest requirements, unjustly enriches incumbent licensees. This spectrum may be worth billions of dollars, and may allow incumbents to provide additional program streams, engage in datacasting, and provide other types of services. Yet, the FCC neither requires licensees to pay for the use of this additional spectrum nor to provide any additional benefits to the public in return for its use.

For the full document, please see the attached PDF file below.

The Feasibility of Unlicensed Broadband Devices to Operate on TV Band 'White Space' Without Causing Harmful Interference

Wireless Future — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:55:00 -0400

In May 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to allow a new generation of wireless devices to use vacant TV frequencies (so-called “white spaces”) on an unlicensed basis and thereby promote more effective use of the public airwaves. In October 2006, under bipartisan pressure from Congress, the FCC adopted a First Order and Further NPRM that approved unlicensed use of vacant TV channels for “fixed” broadband deployments, but called for further study on the question of whether “personal” and “portable” low-power devices (such as laptops and iPhone-type PDAs) could also use these empty airwaves without causing “harmful interference” to the dwindling number of over-the-air TV viewers (roughly 13 percent of TV households use over-air reception the rest subscribe to cable or satellite TV services).

These white space devices (WSDs) present new opportunities for consumers to efficiently use currently unused spectrum and for America’s technology sector to promote ubiquitous, more affordable broadband deployment -- particularly in underserved rural areas -- as well as stimulate new innovations in consumer products, services, and applications. With the growing use of Wi-Fi and other unlicensed devices in everything from laptops to next-generation PDAs and cell phones, WSDs provide much-needed additional capacity for everything from broadband connectivity to home and community networking. The remaining challenge for the FCC is to define explicit operating rules to govern device certification, so that high-tech industries can embark on the R&D necessary to bring compliant consumer devices to market.

For the full Policy Brief, please see the attached PDF file below.

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 ticket for a lottery for one such license on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The winning ticket holder then sold the ticket ten months later for $41.5 million. Former Governor Mark Warner, a U.S. Senate staffer before the lottery, was among the politically savvy who made millions by acquiring and flipping the licenses granted in the lottery.

The result was widespread outrage because the public could readily perceive that billions of dollars of public assets had been given away to private interests—well-connected, wealthy Americans—without public compensation. As the chairman of the FCC at the time characterized the lottery winners, “They receive a windfall and the public gets no payment.” This outrage led to legislation in 1993 to auction future FCC licenses. Congressional leaders publicly promised that, except for a few services—notably public safety and terrestrial broadcasting—the government would henceforth grant exclusive rights to use spectrum only in return for monetary compensation.

This has not come to pass. According to calculations presented in this paper, since 1993, the government has given to private interests as much as $480 billion in spectrum usage rights without public compensation. That comes to more than 90 percent of the value of spectrum usage rights it has assigned from 1993 through the present.

In addition, the government has warehoused as much as $155 billion of spectrum usage rights in guard bands. The warehousing in itself is not a giveaway to private interests. But, for reasons we shall see, it may position incumbent licensees to acquire the warehoused spectrum without public compensation. Thus, the act of guard band warehousing may be viewed as part of a multi step process that leads to giveaways just like winning a presidential primary election is necessary to winning the presidential general election. For example, since 1997 TV broadcasters have used the digital transition to acquire more than $6 billion worth of guard band spectrum by winning rights to transmit programming across a larger geographic area.

How did this happen? How could the government give away so much in public assets to private interests without public and congressional outrage? A large part of the answer is that the government no longer gives away spectrum usage rights in highly visible ways such as spectrum lotteries. Instead, incumbent licensees and spectrum speculators have perfected strategies that enable them to acquire free spectrum rights below the public radar. Until public policies are implemented to render those low visibility lobbying strategies ineffective—so that spectrum giveaways are once again as visible as they were in the days of spectrum lotteries—spectrum giveaways to private entities will persist. (Of course, when the FCC or Congress grants spectrum to public entities or for unlicensed use, no giveaway in this sense is involved because the public retains full rights to its airwaves.)

This paper deals with what might be considered the third rail of spectrum policy: the rotten, special interest politics that has driven lawmakers to give away the public’s airwaves to private interests without public compensation. In the vast stream of government reports seeking to reform spectrum policy since 1993, one looks in vain for more than a token acknowledgement, let alone a serious and sustained discussion, of this giveaway. Like other politically embarrassing issues, it is an issue that congressional leaders and their proxies—the FCC, GAO, CBO, NTIA, and others—would prefer not to talk about. This, of course, suits the beneficiaries of the giveaway and their army of lobbyists and analysts just fine. For that very reason alone, however, it is an issue that desperately needs a public airing.

This paper is divided into three sections: Part I provides an estimate of the value of the government’s spectrum rights giveaway since 1993, Part II provides a description of the strategies spectrum lobbyists have used to acquire such rights, and Part III provides policy recommendations to ensure that spectrum rights giveaways (which are closely linked to warehousing guard band spectrum) come to an end.

To view the full paper, open the PDF file linked below. The working paper version, which was published in July, is also attached.

Open Access for the 700 MHz Auction

Wireless Future — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:37:00 -0400

In this report, I analyze the competitive effects of recent proposals to reserve a small portion of the upcoming 700 MHz band auction for wholesale, open-access use.[i] Using this license, a wholesale open-access licensee would build out the wireless network, own and operate the cell sites, towers, and radio equipment, and provide transport to the Internet backbone.

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 one that bundles rights to use spectrum with rights of possession to tangible property.

Contrast this world to the wireless narrowband world in which we currently live in, where demand for wireless bandwidth is relatively modest, wireless links correspondingly large, and the most efficient property rights regime for spectrum management is predominantly one that unbundles spectrum and tangible property rights.

The unbundled property rights regime corresponds to the FCC’s current system of licensing spectrumin in which licenses to use spectrum are granted without consideration of tangible property rights. The bundled property rights regime parallels much of the practice--but not the theory--of the FCC’s current system of unlicensed spectrum.

This paper is divided into three parts:

1) Bundled versus Unbundled Property Rights
2) Wireless Links in an Ultrabroadband Network
3) Public Policy Recommendations

To view the full paper, see the PDF document linked below. This paper was adapted as a presentation given at the “Ultrabroadband Networks and the Personal Media Cloud" conference, hosted by Columbia University's Institute for Tele-Information.

Wholesale Open Access and Anonymous Bidding

Wireless Future — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:55:00 -0400

In the coming weeks, the FCC will set the bidding and service rules for the auction of the 700MHz spectrum freed up by the DTV transition—“beachfront” airwaves ideal for the provision of high-speed wireless broadband services. This last big sale of prime spectrum is expected to raise $10 to $20 billion in federal revenue.

Spectrum Auction Breakdown

Wireless Future — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:29:00 -0400

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum auctions can seem arcane and technical, but in fact, auctions for exclusive licenses to use the public airwaves determine the future of American telecommunications. FCC auctions shape the competitive structure of markets and, ultimately, who controls entire industries—from broadcasting, to telephony, to wireless broadband services—that are increasingly central to U.S. productivity growth, consumer welfare, and global competitiveness.

Quantifying the Impact of Unlicensed Devices on Digital TV Receivers

Wireless Future — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:30:00 -0500

ABSTRACT

This report presents the preliminary results from a feasibility study regarding the operation of secondary spectrum users within unused television spectrum. It has been hypothesized that television spectrum is underutilized, making it a candidate for dynamic spectrum access. The feasibility of using this spectrum for enabling secondary transmissions is assessed in this work, with a focus on the possibility of unlicensed devices interfering with digital TV reception. Specifically, we investigate the critical operating parameters for developing the technical rules for device operation in bands adjacent to a digital television transmission.