Net Neutrality Update: Al Franken and Wifi on Steroids

by: Matt Stoller

Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 17:24

I just got an email from Andy Barr at the Franken campaign. Franken is strongly for net neutrality, having talked about it on his radio show, and he’s putting up a position on his website to that effect.

Out of 15 major Democratic candidates for Senate, 8 favor net neutrality, 1 is conflicted, and 6 don’t have positions.

Two other notes on net neutrality:

Mathematician and IL-17 State House candidate Daniel Biss sent me this email about his experience door-knocking.
conversation at a door today (talking to a 25-ish man)
Me: Hi, I’m running for State Rep and I wanted to introduce myself. [brief bio redacted] What issue is most important to you?
Other guy: Well, I’m not really all that into politics. None of this matters to me. Except for net neutrality.
—
Daniel Biss

Biss is awesome. Learn more at his site.
Wifi on Steroids: The fight over freeing the airwaves is going to heat up later this summer, based around something called ‘White Spaces’. Basically, white spaces are parts of the public airwaves that are going unused but could be a mobile broadband network unregulated by any telecom or cable company. It would be wifi on steroids and let you use any phone with any network, or even design your own phone. It means jobs, innovation, and a mobile economy. The broadcasters and telecom giants are fighting tooth and nail against it, the major tech companies are beginning to get serious about engaging.
Alliances are beginning to form around open internet issues, the progressive base with the technology space. For politicians, white spaces means jobs jobs jobs, for us, white spaces means unlocked iphones and cheap neutral internet access, and for the telecom and media companies, it means that they lose their cartel status.

Update: The Kleeb and Noriega campaigns have written in to say they are both for net neutrality and will have statements up soon.

Matt Stoller :: Net Neutrality Update: Al Franken and Wifi on Steroids

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Tags: Daniel Biss, net neutrality, Al Franken, (All Tags)

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Net Neutrality Update: Al Franken and Wifi on Steroids | 4 comments

Number 2. (4.00 / 2)

The Democrats need to adopt this as a campaign issue pronto. This would be an incredible issue to beat Republicans over and if Democrats woudl start talking about it more and making it a back deal it may even help bring out to the polls some of this tech kids who don’t usually even vote (I personally know tons of them). Obviously we are not off to a good start, this would be a perfect issue for Obama to champion.

There is virtually no risk politicially. Nearly the entire public favors efforts like freeing white space and net neutrality. The only risk is possible telecom campaign money and running the risk of pissing off the media moguls (you know the guys who own all the news papers/stations).

What you are saying about the white spaces is also true about a lot of the spectrum that was just auctioned off. The FCC could have chosen to have made any of that public and simply not auctioned it off and used it for free wireless internet for the entire country. They chose to sell it for money (and unfortunately it looks like they sold it to the same companies who currently have monopolies in the ISPs). The phone thing isn’t as important as you can already make your own phone and use it on whatever ect.

I keep trying to explain to people that all this talk of spectrum has nothing to do with hardware, it has nothing to do with whether the Iphone or Google Phone would run on different networks. All that matters is the hardware and software within the phone itself. The Iphone has a software lock that prevents it from working on networks other than ATT, otherwise you could use it on any GSM network worldwide.

End this war. Stop John McCain. Cindy McCain is filthy rich.

by: wiretapp @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 16:34:28 PM CDT

white spaces (0.00 / 0)

I attended the same panel Matt did on “white spaces” and other issues regarding freeing up the spectrum and networks at PDF last week. There’s a lot about this technology I still need to understand, but, wow, what an opportunity. Just thinking about using UHF bands for broadband…

by: Adam B. @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 17:14:16 PM CDT

The National Association of Broadcasters (4.00 / 1)

is working hard to stop our communities from using white spaces. They have messaging that convinces folks who don’t want to dig too deeply — they call the white spaces bands ‘interference zones’ and bring everyone from broadcasters to theatre operators in to legislators’ offices, talking about the terrible static that television stations and live music events will suffer if we get access to our own airwaves.

Access to communications is a human right — a life or death issue, not a luxury or convenience. In my prior work organizing around low power FM radio, it has been the consistent stress that communities have put on how building radio stations gives them the power to speak for themselves, and to build infrastructure that corporations won’t provide them, that has put Republicans like Chip Pickering as well as Democrats like Mike Doyle in favor of bucking the NAB for their constituents.

Major technology companies can and will profit off of nationwide wireless internet, and the innovation that comes from an open, ubiquitous platform. But they, and we, shouldn’t be afraid to say that the telecom companies are too complacent and lazy to provide internet to urban neighborhoods and rural areas that are too poor to line their pockets.

by: Hannah_Sassaman @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 22:46:58 PM CDT

I still don't get why the phone manufacturers aren't majorly on board (0.00 / 0)

They have to hate so much about the way that our locked out cellphone service functions, from how they completely disable great existing Asian and European phones to how it makes it prohibitively expensive to sell a phone without a contract, to how marketing directly to the consumer is a convoluted mess.

I guess they don’t want to piss off the telecoms by coming into public too aggressively, but at the same time, this is so blatantly in their interest, and that woudl be some big money on our side on this one.

by: Valatan @ Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 23:55:27 PM CDT