Information Commons

Broadband Transparency

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
01/28/2009 - 3:00pm

As the Internet has evolved -- moving from a relatively small set of networks used by researchers to a worldwide platform used by over a billion people -- its performance has become harder to analyze and understand. Researchers lack access to critical data about the current state of broadband networks, and users can find it difficult or impossible to understand the performance and characteristics of their Internet connections.

Broadband Stimulus

Stephanie Gunter — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:45:00 -0500

A New America Event
01/16/2009 - 12:15pm

Both President-Elect Barack Obama and Congressional leaders have discussed including government support to promote high-speed broadband access as part of the upcoming economic stimulus package. This has prompted a flood of proposals and ideas from advocates of all sides of the broadband debate. Economic stimulus should be timely, temporary and targeted. But who should this stimulus target and how can we spur investments that will create both short-term economic growth and long-term economic prosperity in the 21st century?

iGov

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:29:00 -0500

Barack Obama has said we need a "Google for government." It's a nice line, but what does it mean? Federal agencies have been online since the mid-'90s. Obama's first crack at a Google-for-government law led to USAspending.gov, a budget tracker that looked like everything else the feds had put up on the Web--until I saw one geek-speak phrase on the home page, so small I almost missed it: API Documentation. To understand its significance, let me tell you how I got subway schedules on my iPhone.

Comments of Public Knowledge, et al.

Wireless Future — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:04:00 -0400

COMMENTS
OF
PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, FREE PRESS,
CONSUMER FEDERATION OF AMERICA, CONSUMERS UNION, EDUCAUSE,
MEDIA ACCESS PROJECT, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION, U.S. PIRG,
ASSEMBLYMAN RICHARD L. BRODSKY, CREDO MOBILE, INC.

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.

Comments of Public Interest Spectrum Coalition on Skype Petition

Wireless Future — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:25:00 -0400

Before the
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20554

In the Matter of Skype Communications S.A.R.L.

Petition to Confirm a Consumer’s Right to Use
Internet Communications Software and Attach
Devices To Wireless Networks, RM-11361

COMMENTS
OF THE AD HOC PUBLIC INTEREST SPECTRUM COALITION

EDUCAUSE
Free Press
Media Access Project
New America Foundation
Public Knowledge
U.S. Public Interest Research Group

SUMMARY

Wireless carriers are hampering innovation and raising costs by using market, technical, and contractual barriers to limit consumer choice and reduce competition in communications software and consumer equipment. Some carriers use an embedded phone ID to ensure that every phone connected to the network was purchased from the carrier. Other carriers “lock” the phones they sell, preventing the phone from being used on any other network but the original carrier’s network. U.S. carriers have refused to approve certain handsets for use on their networks, and have repeatedly required handset manufacturers to “cripple” consumer-friendly features on other handsets before offering them for sale.

If consumers could easily switch providers, the above behaviors would likely be corrected by the market. But most carriers employ long-term unilateral services contracts as a typical condition of purchasing a handset / service bundle. These practices deny consumers their choice of equipment, inhibit competition from unaffiliated equipment manufacturers and thus harm consumer welfare.

The Ad Hoc Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) support the Skype Petition’s request to apply the Carterfone principles to wireless services. Under Carterfone, wireline consumers have the right to attach equipment and use applications of their choice. Wireless consumers deserve the same innovation-spawning rights.

We further request that the Commission adopt and enforce non-discrimination requirements for wireless Internet access networks. Wireless carriers actively interfere with consumer access to Internet content and services; therefore, the Commission, under its own reasoning in the 2005 Broadband Access Policy Statement, should prohibit wireless carriers from discriminating against consumer-chosen equipment, applications and content. Just as Carterfone and its progeny have prevented wireline carriers from leveraging their market power to limit consumer choice and competition in adjacent markets, CMRS carriers should not be allowed to leverage exclusive government spectrum licenses to thwart competition and restrict consumer choice in the related and rapidly evolving markets for wireless devices, applications and content.

Because wireless broadband Internet access services are just emerging as a potential competitor and complement to wireline broadband access, it is critical that the Commission move swiftly to establish a level playing field with respect to basic consumer protections. As 4G technologies evolve, Internet access over wireless networks should increasingly serve as both a supplement and as a potential substitute to wireline broadband access. The need to extend basic consumer protections to all competing platforms for broadband Internet access is particularly salient in an oligopoly market where the three largest CMRS carriers are joint ventures with the largest companies that comprise the duopoly for wireline broadband access.

Finally, we urge the Commission to also investigate current practices regarding wireless consumer service agreements. We believe these long-term unilateral agreements harm consumers and prevent market corrections.

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.

Shared Airwaves/Shared Content: Open Spectrum and Digital Rights Management

Communications — Thu, 04 Dec 2003 23:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
12/04/2003 - 12:00pm

Untitled Document

Other Speakers Include:

Kevin KahnIntel Fellow; Director, Intel Communications Technology LabKevin Werbach,Supernova Group; Former FCC Counsel for New Technology PolicyAndrew Moss,Director of Technical Policy, Windows, Microsoft CorporationSandra Aistars,Counsel for Intellectual Property, AOL Time WarnerCory DoctorowElectronic Frontier Foundation Anthony Townsend, Co-Founder & Executive Director, NYCwireless.netEd Felten, Princeton UniversityMike Godwin, Senior Technology Counsel, Public KnowledgeGigi B. Sohn, President and Co-Founder, Public Knowledge more

Should the Public Meeting Enter the Information Age?

Cecille Isidro — Sat, 01 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500