On the rural side, just outside of San Diego is Tribal Digital Village. They are a federation of indian tribes using unlicensed wifi to cover their reservation in a wireless cloud. Before, they lacked basic phone service. Now, they have a 21st century grid that lets them share their culture and their heritage, and produces tech jobs. That brings up the next point. It will let people become their own media. Tribal Digital Village does webcasts in their own language.
In the Southlawndale area of Chicago, a wireless network is allowing them to create their own internet radio station. Finally, from a wonky policy perspective, this establishes once again that the television spectrum is the common property of all of us. We should be able to access it whenever we want -- whether that is unused "white spaces" or television and radio licenses that are legally held in trust by broadcasters for the benefit of their local communities.
Matt Stoller: So are you seeing or do you expect the development of significant media outlets that could challenge local broadcast and newspaper monopolies?
Harold Feld: We are seeing in the early stages some partnerships that are expanding community input. In Southlawndale, for example, the community wireless network there has a deal with a local paper to partner on local news. More broadly, I don;t think we can just expect technology to solve the problems of local news monopolies. The current incumbents have lots of economic advantages, and are very good at gaming the system. We need to take strong active steps to both create new opportunities AND to limit market power.
Matt Stoller: That's true of cable companies and telecom oligopolies as well. Just deregulating some spectrum isn't going to level the playing field.
Harold Feld: Exactly. Let's pretend I want to offer competition to cable over broadband right now. How would it work? Well, a company called VDC tried it. They went bankrupt because the cable companies refused to sell them "must have" programming. Also, white spaces -- and even broadband -- is a promise of the future. Cable controls the playing field today. When you control the playing field, it is a heck of a lot easier to keep potentially disruptive new guys out. That includes making it impossible to connect internet devices to your television/cable system, denying access to needed programming predatory pricing and bundling. Lots of fun economic tricks.
Matt Stoller: Right, so there's a lock-in problem.
Harold Feld: Exactly. I cannot help but put in a plug for a white paper I wrote back in 2006 that explains this. It's called The Switching Equation and Cable Market Power. (Or, as I call it, cable market power for beginners)
Matt Stoller: So what do you think of Obama and Congress using some of that infrastructure investment money to build out neutral fiber to the home?
Harold Feld: I think thats an excellent idea on so many levels. Right now, one of the biggest costs is buiilding out a network. You need to do that before you can attract any customers. If we had a fiber strand running to every home, it would totally change the equation. You could buy whatever services you wanted, from the total bundled package with all the tech support and hand holding, to a plain vanilla connection that put you totally in charge. We could see telemedicine really take off. Imagine a world where you could get the initial assesment of whether to come in to the doctor's office done before you left the house? Research from countries like Japan and South Korea, which are waaaay ahead of us on broadband, shows that once you give people a huge pipe they come up with amazing things to do with it.
Matt Stoller: So basically Epcot Center would become reality. Will it be as creepy as Epcot? You don't have to answer that.
Harold Feld: Actually I will answer that. Every technology has its dark side. A fiber strand in every home is also the perfect way for the government to have a spy in every house. As we build this, we need to keep that in mind. We need to make sure we put in safeguards -- both legal and technological. I don't know if folks reading this have followed behavioral advertising closely, but it creates some huge problems. As always, it's a balance. Most folks would like companies to stop sending them ads for stuff they don't want, and may even want recommendations on stuff they might like. But we need to make sure it doesn't turn us into a nation of consumer cows or voyeurs.
Matt Stoller: Also, that geolocation database in the White Spaces decision freaks me out. Sure it is stated that it is meant to prevent interference among devices and with broadcast channels, but it's a perfect spying system as well. Do you think the ACLU should get involved in rule-making such that the database is not allowed to store certain types of data about users?
Harold Feld: The geolocation database is only supposed to work in one direction. The device knows where it is, and finds out if this is a safe place to operate. The database does not know where the device is. It is only the (relatively) more powerful "fixed" devices, the equivalent of white spaces cell towers, that will go into a public database so that their locations are known. But this is definitely an issue going forward. We at MAP have worked with privacy organizations and folks concerned about stalkers and others who don't want their every move watched.
Matt Stoller: Well I'd like to make sure that the database only works in one direction, though to be fair Verizon or AT&T can probably track my movements now.
Harold Feld: When the FCC publishes final rules, we'll see if this aspect is properly covered.
