This is a continuation of my IM interview with progressive media policy expert Harold Feld of Wetmachine and the Media Access Project. In the first part of the interview, we went over the FCC's white spaces decision, universal broadband builout, and local media. In this second part, we discuss government spectrum, the possibility of a 'Skype Phone' as part of the white spaces decision and universal wireless broadband, and the way you actually develop competition with broadcast monopolies.
Matt Stoller: Could this white spaces decision open up cheap mobile skype phones or devices to compete or add a supplement to the current mobile environment?
Harold Feld: Absolutely.
Matt Stoller: Wow.
Harold Feld: One of the possibilities here is more public networks and open wifi spots. You may remember there was huge interest around this a few years ago, but many of the big projects died because it turned out to be harder to set up the networks. White spaces will make this much easier and less expensive to do -- especially in urban areas. There's a reason "edge" companies and hardware manufacturers like Google and Philips and MS invested so much money and effort building prototypes and lobbying. It wasn't to solve rural broadband or the digital divide (that's why we were involved). It was to sell products to consumers.
I've been blogging about media policy for a few years, so I have pretty good sources on net neutrality, the FCC and media policy. Whenever I have a really tough question, I'm usually referred to Harold Feld, a brilliant lawyer at the Media Access Project who blogs about communications policy and politics at his incomparably great site, Wetmachine. His work and knowledge has been essentially to the media reform movement that has successfully placed openness and the protection of the internet in an important position in the Obama administration's priority list. This is part one of an interview I did with him on IM, on the future of media policy. I'll put up part two tomorrow. Hopefully, for those of you who haven't followed these issues but are interested, this interview will set the context for major media and internet policy disputes over the next few years, which are an ongoing set of fights dating back to the early part of the last century.
Matt Stoller: On Tuesday, the big news at the FCC, which was somewhat overshadowed by other events, was the groundbreaking deregulation of a chunk of the TV spectrum. How significant is this decision?
Harold Feld: This is huge for a couple of reasons. First, it has the potential to totally reshape how we get broadband access. This band has excellent physics, if you will, for using low power to create lots of bandwidth. This means that people in rural areas or in underserved urban areas will be able to create their own access. Let me give you one example. In 2005, I saw a project in San Diego where one low-income building shared a single commercial T-1 line with all the residents via unlicensed wifi. It transformed people's lives. I heard from one single mother who was now taking adult education cases that were impossible before because of childcare and transportation issues. White space access will make it much cheaper and easier to do projects like this.
Full archives of Legislation 2.0 on a national broadband strategy are available here.
Welcome back! Last night's conversation was wild, with the AT&T-backed Hands off the Internet representative Chris Wolf and the Verizon and AT&T-backed Latino Coalition representative Robert Deposada unexpectedly showing up to debate. Ben Scott of Free Press, Mark Rotenberg of EPIC, Adam Green of Moveon, and many others were in the comment area advocating their positions on net neutrality and open internet architecture. This sprawling, transparent, and open conversation with multiple stakeholders is exactly what we are aiming for with Legislation 2.0 (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch picked up the project here)
Tonight is another conversation with a spirited group on internet access and the public airwaves. This is perhaps the most timely of the discussions, since the FCC is about to set rules to auction off the '700' band of spectrum. A core element of the next internet infrastructure will be wireless, as Senator Durbin notes in his introductory video. Media Access Project Senior Vice President Harold Feld, Wharton Professor and former FCC Chief Economist Gerald Faulhauber, New America wireless program director Sascha Meinrath, and North Carolina-based Mountain Area Information Network operator Wally Bowen join us tonight (and possibly some exciting other guests). They are going to mix it up with our own resident telecom expert commenter, mitchipd. Senator Durbin may even show up depending on quorum calls (the Senate doesn't operate according to our schedule, apparently).
Two themes keep weaving among the various posts on the public airwaves. The first is how wifi situates itself within the so called 'junk band' of spectrum, and was an unexpected innovation due to an unlicensed regulatory regime in that band. The second theme is how a huge amount of spectrum is going unused. Feld can be classified as a person who subscribes to the 'commons' notion of spectrum, and wants to do away with auctions all together. Faulhaber wants spectrum treated as property, and dislikes the storehouse that is kept off the market by the government. But both believe that we need to use our public airwaves much more efficiently than is currently the case. The 700 band of spectrum is on all of our minds as we move forward in thinking about national broadband policy. And Bowen adds a sense of urgency to the question with his personal experience running a Wireless ISP (or 'WISP').
Our WISP curently operates in the 900 MHz unlicensed bands. Our service is managed, secure and can reach out to 20 miles. Our tech suport is local. The signal can punch through heavy leafcover, but it cannot penetrate buildings and it requires "near line-of-sight."
Despite high demand for our services, we can only reach a fraction of the market due to the limitations of 900 MHz.
We desperately need access to unlicensed spectrum in the lower frequencies.
Given the industry opposition to municipal wireless, our nonprofit business model appears to be the only viable alternative to the cable/telco duopoly. If we are to rely on market forces to enforce "net neutrality" -- and bridge the Digital Divide -- broad access to lower-frequency unlicensed spectrum is absolutely essential.
I'm hoping tonight's discussion can be as lively as the other two have been. Please allow about 15 minutes before you post a comment, so Feld, Faulhauber, and Meinrath can kick off tonight's conversation.
STATE BLOGS
