August 17, 2004
A delay in the white space proceeding?
The comment deadline is approaching in the important FCC proceeding to open up the un-used "white spaces" around broadcast licenses. Last week, however, a technical advisory committee of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) filed a request for a six-month extension of the comment period.
I filed an opposition, as did Intel.
A bit of extra time for technical analysis and industry negotiation isn't a terrible idea, given how hard it is to get things done over the summer months. Half a year, however, seemed totally excessive. There is momentum behind this proceeding, and interested parties are working on the comments they will file in about two weeks. Putting off the comments until next year, when there will likely be a completely new FCC membership, risks derailing the whole proceeding.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 03:26 PM
July 01, 2004
Whitepapers Now Available
We've posted some whitepapers written by the contributors to this site, providing various perspectives on unlicensed wireless. You can find summaries (and a few older papers) in the articles section.
Clay Shirky, The Possibility of Spectrum as a Public Good
David Isenberg, Four Scenarios for the Future of the Network
Andrew Odlyzko, Telecom Dogmas and Spectrum Allocations
Kevin Werbach, Beyond Broadcast
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 02:02 PM | Comments (3)
June 30, 2004
Sounds vaguely familiar
This is from a recent John Kerry white paper:
Kerry's getting in front of this parade and waving the flag as if he's the leader. But it's better than the silence of the current
The Kerry plan will complete the transition to digital television, and accelerate the return of valuable spectrum that is currently being used for broadcasting the “analog” television signal, while ensuring that Americans continue to enjoy free, over-the-air television, including subsidies to ensure all Americans can make the transition. The plan will also provide shared access to unassigned TV channels where this will not interfere with television reception.
Posted by David Isenberg at 12:11 PM | Comments (2)
June 28, 2004
FCC rules that landlords can't control uses of unlicensed spectrum
From Computer Weekly:
Airlines won a key battle in their fight with airports over control of the Wi-Fi spectrum when the US Federal Communications Commission ruled that it has 'exclusive jurisdiction' over the use of unlicensed spectrum.Airports such as Logan International in Boston, which is run by the Massachusetts Port Authority, contended they had the right to manage spectrum within their boundaries to eliminate interference.
Massport and Denver International Airport have installed shared-use Wi-Fi networks offering paid public internet access, as well as access for the airlines.
But the airport operators wanted to require the airlines to pay to use the networks for wireless bag scans, check-in systems and other applications.
Good news for the continued buildout of user-capitalized networks...
Posted by Clay Shirky at 10:27 PM | Comments (1)
June 25, 2004
Innovative Wireless Architectures
In the near-term, say the next three years, I think wireless network architectures will yield some of the biggest technological surprises. Absence of license will unleash constraints on licentious innovation.
For example, Dewayne Hendricks just got back from Europe raving about this little open-source device called MeshCube, a 5cm x 5cm x 7cm computer with lotsa gosintas and gosoutas, both wired and (802.11) wireless, designed for roll-your-own multiple-access-point networks, for sale for 200 Euros as a kit or 240 Euros assembeled. Dewayne has some reservations about the device, but not about the community that has self-organized around it. Dewayne writes that not only does this community have momentum to build "viable wireless user provided telecommunications infrastructure, and deal with any problems that they encountered along the way."
The 2.4 GHz learning experience -- each one teach one -- will not be lost when <1GHz unlicensed wireless arrives. But the main action is in new network architectures, not spectrum.
Posted by David Isenberg at 10:41 AM | Comments (5)
June 21, 2004
Coming Changes in Broadcast Industry
The unspoken secret, the elephant in the room, of WirelessUnleashed is that broadcast as we know it is circling the drain. In my humble opinion. And more capable, more powerful Internet access will amplify that sucking sound.
Doc Searls and Jeff Jarvis have been having a visionary dialog (blogalog?) about how post-broadcast TV and radio look.
Doc says that radio & tv stations should
send out RSS notifications with every single program they put on. Hell, every advertisement too. Might even create some demand for appropriate messages. RSS can be really, really huge for the industry. It might make the damn industry not only interactive, but accountable. Meaning, for example, you can count, and account for, your listeners. If you're an NPR station, maybe you can get the listeners to buy the "content" that only 10% are paying for right now.
Doc has more to say here, and Jarvis takes it to the next level here.
Posted by David Isenberg at 11:17 AM | Comments (1)
June 18, 2004
Killer apps with zero revenues
I agree completely with Clay Shirky (in the "Voice as the app killer" posting) that voice revenues
are going to decline drastically. Voice is the killer app, but that does not imply it is going to continue
generating bountiful revenues for long. It will become just another application riding on top of a
broadband connection (wireless or wireline, mostly wireless).
There will nothing unusual about this evolution. Just think about email, which is still the "killer app"
of the Internet. It comes for free with your Internet account, paid for by your subscription fee, and Yahoo and now also Google are eager to offer it to you totally for free. But nobody dares neglect
email, and attempts are made constantly to enhance it. And that is the main lesson for voice.
Service providers should not neglect opportunities to do more with it, for example by offering
higher quality voice and other associated services.
Posted by Andrew Odlyzko at 09:11 PM
Mobile Services on Super-Hotspots
OK, so maybe this insight won't win any no-Bell prizes, but here goes:
Not only would wireless services on unlicensed TV spectrum break the telco/cableco duopoly and cause prices for them to fall another notch, but they would host a new generation of mobile, or at least untethered, services, to be discovered.
And what do you call a hotspot that has a radius of a mile? With a tip of the hat to the coiner of the term "super-commons" and the instigator of "SuperNova," I suggest that "Super-Hotspot" works for me.
Posted by David Isenberg at 04:13 PM | Comments (4)
June 16, 2004
Voice as the app killer
I should have my head examined for writing about the economics of voice on a blog I share with Odlyzko (The history of communications and its implicatoins for the internet is one of the best things ever written on internet economics), but I can't resist following up to when Andrew says "In the U.S., at least 70 percent of telecommunications revenues come from voice services (including cellular)" and "Voice is and will continue to be important not just because it is the traditional telecom cash cow."
I think this overestimates the connection between the value of voice and voice revenues. Voice is clearly valuable, and that value is, as Andrew notes, much higher than netheads often understand. However, we are now at a point where that value actually threatens voice revenues. Voice has so much value, in fact, that people are putting it in products that have little or no relationship to the traditional phone, leading to potentially enormous displacement.
Continue reading "Voice as the app killer"Posted by Clay Shirky at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2004
Short Summary of TV Spectrum Situation
This one-page document from the NTIA is excellent in its brevity and completeness.
Posted by David Isenberg at 09:02 AM | Comments (1)