Digital Future of Public Media: Policy Papers

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.

Digital Future Initiative Final Report

Wireless Future — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:00:00 -0500

Links to PDF versions of the full report (133 pp.), as well as the Executive Summary (11 pp.), are below.

The Digital Opportunity Investment Trust and America's Global Leadership

Wireless Future — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:00:00 -0500

The digital age has drastically reshaped the world that we live in—making communication faster, information more accessible, and our knowledge more expansive than ever before. With even more information at our fingertips, it has become increasingly difficult to keep up with the pace of information output. Knowledge is now the principal source of wealth creation and new jobs in the United States. Ensuring that the United States and its populace keep up with the fast pace of knowledge dissemination and continuously evolving technology is crucial to maintaining a vibrant economy as well as remaining secure at home.

With a similar purpose and governance structure, the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DO IT) proposes to do for education and training what National Science Foundation (NSF) has done – and continues to do – for science. This paper will explore some of the parallels between the NSF and DO IT, as well as explain why DO IT is not only a desirable investment, but also a necessary investment for America.

For the complete document, please see the attached PDF version below.

The Cost to the Nation of Underinvestment in Educational R&D

Wireless Future — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 08:00:00 -0500

Over the past thirty years, by many measures, U.S. student educational performance has not improved. Some measures of educational achievement have actually decreased. This development is coupled with a dramatic decline in the productivity of educational spending: As a nation, we spend more and more to obtain the same level of educational achievement. Other industrialized countries do much better than the U.S. when comparing educational performance and the productivity of educational spending. With respect to educational achievement, the position of the U.S. relative to other countries is deteriorating. While the U.S. ranked 22nd among 27 industrialized countries in the 2000 PISA math study, it ranks 24th of 29 countries in the 2003 study.

Despite the decline in educational performance, federal educational research and development (R&D) expenditures are very low. Over time, these educational R&D expenditures have become a smaller and smaller fraction of total R&D expenditures. Educational R&D comprises only 0.01 percent of total R&D expenditures.

For the complete document, please see the attached PDF version.

An Information Commons for E-Learning

Wireless Future — Sat, 01 Jun 2002 06:00:00 -0400

Even amidst the burst of the "dot com" bubble, many believe that new information technologies are having a dramatic impact on the way we live, work, learn, and communicate with each other. One of the applications of information technology that has attracted the most attention is "e-learning." Technology has the potential to transform education and lifelong learning. In the future, learners of all ages will be able to tap in to vast digital libraries and online museums, use powerful simulations and games to "learn by doing," and collaborate on projects with peers who are located half way around the world. In pursuit of this vision, the U.S. has made a significant investment in expanding access to the Internet by wiring schools, libraries, and community technology centers through the E-Rate program. However, this investment in hardware and network connectivity is necessary but not sufficient. We will not realize the potential benefits of widespread access to information technology without also creating cutting-edge content and applications that have the potential to significantly enhance education, training, and lifelong learning.

This paper focuses on the potential for an e-learning "commons" to improve and enhance education and lifelong learning for all Americans. Additionally, this paper explores the proposals made to create such a commons, such as the Grossman-Minow proposal for a Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DOIT) and the Public Telecommunications Service (PTS). The DOIT proposal has been introduced recently as legislation in both the Senate (Dodd-Jeffords) and the House (Markey). The paper identifies important institutional and policy issues related to implementing DOIT, including the opportunity to pay for these new compelling new public investments by earmarking auction and rental fee revenues paid by commercial licensees of the public airwaves.

For the complete document, please see the attached PDF version.