Three Solutions for a Better National Telecommunications Infrastructure

by: Sascha Meinrath

Thu Jul 26, 2007 at 14:28

Thanks to everyone who has been participating these past few days -- your input, feedback, and commentary have been quite inspiring and have helped me to formulate the ideas I lay out below.  As an Illinois resident, I'm also quite proud to know that Senator Durbin is leading the charge to reform broadband service provision to maximize the public benefits of this vital communications resource.

I wear several different telecom and wireless hats and I have been involved in numerous grassroots media and technology initiatives.  I'm also the founder and Executive Director of the CUWiN Foundation, the country's foremost open source mesh wireless R&D group, and have coordinated the COMMONS Project as Director of Municipal and Community Networking for the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis.  Most recently, I joined the New America Foundation, a DC-based think tank, as the Director of Research for their Wireless Futures Program.  I also blog regularly on issues relating to telecom policy, broadband, digital inclusion, etc. at www.saschameinrath.com.

The history of telecommunications is rife with "free market" disasters -- eras when systemic corporate malfeasance went unaddressed and directly harmed customers and the general public.  The breakup of AT&T in 1984 may have been one of the more memorable corrections, but numerous other precedents where the public has been harmed exist: the anti-competitive practices of Western Union's telegraph company in the 1850-60s (which they also used to control newspaper media content through their exclusive licensing with the Associated Press); the telephone patent battles from the 1870s onward (where the Bell system stymied competition and innovation in an attempt to hold onto their technological lead, particularly following the expiration of their initial patents); the destruction of the home-rule movement around 1910 and the Kingsbury Commitment (most people don't know that over 40% of the national phone system was run by independent operators at one time); the elimination of diversity on the radio with the radical spectrum reallocations in 1927 and 1934... or jumping ahead, the privatization of NSFnet in 1995 (which eliminated much of the data collection opportunities for network researchers) or the Brand X Supreme Court decision of 2005 (which was a de facto elimination of common carriage and creates basically the same market conditions where AT&T first ran amok and led to the Kingsbury Commitment mentioned above).  What is clear is that without constant vigilance, telecommunications corporations have consistently placed profits before the public good for the past 150 years.

While some commentators may want to spin the Internet era as something entirely new and unprecedented, what's clear is that the history of telecommunications provides ample caution for those of working in the public interest.

(More in 'there's more'...)

1. Structural Separation & Common Carriage:  I remember reading a tirade against structural separation on the Cato Institute website posted a few years back. The US did not institute structural separation in 2001 and since that time, we've seen a half-decade's worth of unprecedented telecommunications conglomerization. On the other hand, other major global economies have kept a very close eye on this issue and threatened telecom incumbents with structural separation intervention if anticompetitive behaviors continue.  Interestingly enough, since 2001, while the United States has fallen dramatically in our international broadband rankings and "competition" has become a duopoly, EU countries have greatly improved their status and fostered competition (and even sued offending companies who've failed to maintain open access).  Here in the U.S. structural separation is already being tried out in major metropolitan areas like Boston and rural regions like Utah's Utopia Network.

2. Open Technology & Open Architecture:  We forget that the Internet itself is built on open protocols and an open architecture.  This fact and the massive successes we've seen are being ignored in the wireless medium and by telecom corporations wanting to create walled gardens and privileged services.  In the wireless realm, I propose we create the National Wireless Research Institute (download the NWRI 1-pager here) -- a national effort to research, develop, and implement wireless broadband technologies that expand digital inclusion.  In the wired realm, we need to foster data acquisition for Internet researchers and broadband connectivity for underserved communities.

The COMMONS Project helps accomplishes both goals (download the COMMONS Project 1-pager here).  Taken together, these initiatives take us one giant leap forward in attaining universal affordable broadband, increasing innovation, and fostering a more socially and economically just society.

3. Open Spectrum & Licensure Innovation:  The future of communications is wireless -- not that we'll replace wirelines, but that individuals will connect wirelessly to their communications medium of choice.  Yet the licensing of electromagnetic spectrum has barely changed since the 1930s -- in fact, it's predicated on technological assumptions from the era of vacuum tubes and analog transmission.  It seems that every battle at the FCC sees the same sides facing off in an innovators vs. incumbency shootout.  Technological stagnation is being fostered by policies that fail to support "radical" new licensure that takes advantage of "radical" new technologies (e.g., computers).  We can't rely on accidents like the 2.4GHz "junk band" as the basis for the future of spectrum use.  Likewise, we need diversity of spectrum uses to maximize the public benefits derived from the public's airwaves.  With software defined and cognitive radio technologies coming within the next decade, our failure to prepare for their arrival is particularly egregious.

I hope this information proves both useful and inspiring and look forward to the discussion.