100 megabit per second connections to 100 million homes.
No question that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out an ambitious goal this week for nationwide, affordable broadband. Leaving the details aside for the moment, the underlying concept is important: As Mobile Futureconsistently has repeated in this blog, all who care about mobility in the US should agree with Chairman Genachowski, about the urgent need to expand wireless capacity so that mobile users continue to have a good quality of service.
As he said only two months ago:
“There may be no greater spur to America's global competitiveness than getting this right. The record contains powerful evidence that the demand on our commercial mobile spectrum is on a course to outstrip the supply.”
Julius’ pledge, though ambitious, is vitally important. But its implementation also will be very expensive.
To effectively walk his talk, the National Broadband Plan he will be submitting shortly to Congress will need to include coherent and practical policies that actually encourage America’s wireless build-out, and enable the considerable private sector investment needed to support it.
The numbers speak for themselves: More than $300 billion invested in wireless during the past 25 years. And according to NY Times tech columnist Randall Stross, even in an urban setting, a typical wi-fi deployment cost in an urban area runs $75,000 to $125,000 per square mile just to install the equipment. The FCC itself as estimated that some $350 billion in new investment will be required to achieve our nation’s broadband goals.
The Chairman has identified a crucial need, and has offered a bold vision for meeting it. Now the pressure’s on for the FCC – and all of us who care about our mobile future -- to work together in creating innovative policies that will help solve that problem rather than exacerbate it.
A House Energy and Commerce panel recently approved legislation calling for an inventory of the nation’s airwaves, in an effort to identify how airwaves are being used, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article.
This is an important step toward identifying unused spectrum, which may be freed up or auctioned off to increase wireless spectrum.
"Additional spectrum for wireless services will be needed and will be needed soon," said Rep. Rick Boucher (D., Va.), chairman of the House subcommittee. An inventory of the nation's airwaves would be helpful in "revealing areas where relocations could occur or where spectrum sharing could be feasible," he said.
We are encouraged by these efforts to begin addressing our nation’s looming spectrum crisis and hope that Congress will continue to work quickly in passing this important bi-partisan legislation.
Today, Mobile Future released a new report assessing the implications of potential network neutrality regulations on wireless consumers and the networks which support them.
The report, "Net Neutrality Regulatory Proposals: Operational and Engineering Implications for Wireless Networks and the Consumers They Serve,” provides an important technical perspective on the impact net neutrality regulatory proposals will have on the wireless services consumers demand and operators provide. Find out more about the release and read the report.
Back in August, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
approved three Notice of Inquiries (NOI) covering issues on innovation and
investment in wireless; competition in the wireless industry; and consumer
protection and access to information about communications services. Mobile
Future took the opportunity to respond to the FCC's investigations with reply
comments filed on behalf of the coalition. The reply comments focused on the recent paper
sponsored by Mobile Future, "Why the iPhone Won't Last Forever and What the
Government Should Do to Promote Its Successor." You can read Mobile Future's
comments here.
Mobile Future staff, as well as several attendees, are live-tweeting today's Mobile Future event at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Click here to see their tweets in real-time.
The event, "President Obama's Innovation Agenda: Spurring Investment and Innovation in the Wireless Sector," features Tom Kalil of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, Bob Hahn, Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Center and Visiting Senior Fellow at Oxford's Smith School, and Hal Singer, President and Managing Director of Empiris.
The forum will conclude with a panel discussion moderated by Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter and featuring Tom Kalil, Debbie Goldman of the Communications Workers of America, and Mike Rollins of Citi Investment Research.
The Mercury News in Silicon Valley recently published an op-ed by Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter. The piece outlines the potential pitfalls from the FCC's recent announcement to extend net neutrality rules to the wireless world.
For the 200 million Americans who increasingly rely on their mobile phones to manage their connected lives, this subtle rule change could have a raft of unforeseen consequences, say many mobile operators and the labor unions who work with them. These could include a slowdown in investment, job cuts and worse.
Today, the FCC started a proceeding to extend net neutrality requirements to wireless networks. Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter pointed to the successful policies already in place that have helped create today's dynamic, highly competitive wireless sector and urged the FCC "to find a balanced path forward--one that keeps pace with consumers' diverse mobile interests and facilitates further wireless innovation and investment." Read the full statement here.
Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter just published a Huffington post entry that discusses the wireless catch 22 of extending proposed net neutrality rules to the wireless industry at a time when we are facing a looming spectrum crisis.
With mobile data traffic growing at 100 times the rate of wireless voice traffic, a serious supply-demand imbalance is headed our way - one that can only be relieved by government leadership to make more spectrum available to keep pace with consumer demand. The technological and policy quandary? How to address this profound and pressing national need, while at the same time asserting that we have to potentially make the crisis worse by fixing these fast-evolving networks with what are widely viewed as unworkable engineering mandates.
What's the solution - long-term strategies and data-driven decision-making. Read more about Jonathan's suggestions in the article here.
Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter just published a Huffington Post entry that discusses the wireless catch 22 of extending proposed net neutrality rules to the wireless industry at a time when we are facing a looming spectrum crisis.
With mobile data traffic growing at 100 times the rate of wireless voice traffic, a serious supply-demand imbalance is headed our way - one that can only be relieved by government leadership to make more spectrum available to keep pace with consumer demand. The technological and policy quandary? How to address this profound and pressing national need, while at the same time asserting that we have to potentially make the crisis worse by fixing these fast-evolving networks with what are widely viewed as unworkable engineering mandates.
What's the solution - long-term strategies and data-driven decision-making. Read more about Jonathan's suggestions in the article here.
Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter just published a Huffington Post entry that discusses the wireless catch 22 of extending proposed net neutrality rules to the wireless industry at a time when we are facing a looming spectrum crisis.
With mobile data traffic growing at 100 times the rate of wireless voice traffic, a serious supply-demand imbalance is headed our way - one that can only be relieved by government leadership to make more spectrum available to keep pace with consumer demand. The technological and policy quandary? How to address this profound and pressing national need, while at the same time asserting that we have to potentially make the crisis worse by fixing these fast-evolving networks with what are widely viewed as unworkable engineering mandates.
What's the solution - long-term strategies and data-driven decision-making. Read more about Jonathan's suggestions in the article here.
I had the opportunity to attend 3G Americas forum on wireless broadband in DC today. 3G Americas is an organization comprised of telecommunications service providers and manufacturers charged with promoting GSM around the world. They have hosted a few forums in the District of Communications, and I always find their briefings quite informative. Today was no different with FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker, T-Mobile's Neville Ray, Nokia-Siemens Networks Sue Spradley, and Ericsson's Erik Ekudden providing their perspectives on the mobile broadband evolution and revolution.
Comissioner Baker kicked off the conversation and set the tone for the forum as she proclaimed: "I'm here because wireless is so important." She discussed the meteoric rise of mobile and how it will be a key component of the overall broadband plan that will be submitted to Congress in February 2010. Commissioner Baker is excited about the explosion of wireless data but very concerned about "the spectrum pipeline drying up." She hopes that the Commission can identify additional spectrum for carriers but also do it in a timely fashion. She noted how long it took to free up spectrum for cellular, PCS, as well as the DTV spectrum. Overall, she wants to mitigate uncertainty in regulatory policies and acknowledged that such uncertainty can lead to higher prices for consumers - "this is something we can ill-afford in building a connected nation."
Nevile Ray, Senior Vice President, Engineering & Operations (T-Mobile), provided the carrier perspective. He echoed Ms. Baker's comments regarding the explosion of data and was emphatic that operators are "not standing still." In T-Mobile's case, they are evolving to HSPA+ as an interim step to LTE. Mr. Ray believes that increasing spectral efficiency, increasing cell site deployments, and more spectrum will be critical to meeting the mobile broadband explosion.
Sue Spradley, President, North America (Nokia Siemens Networks), talked about the business challenges. Ms. Spradley stated that "the real challenge as usuage goes up is revenue per user doesn't necessarily go up" and that the whole "ecosystem is under tremendous pressure." She cited that the time it to for GSM to evolve to HSPA was long and that the evolution to LTE will "happen quicker because the ecosystem demand is driving it." She also urged regulators to take a "balanced approach" with "no sweeping regulatory changes" because it will cause the industry to "stop and wait."
Erik Ekudden, Head of Technology and Industry (Ericsson), beat the drum for more spectrum and global harmonization in band allocations. Mr. Ekudden predicts "everyone on Earth is going to want mobile broadband" and the ITU states that industry will need a minimum of 1,280 MHz by the year 2020.
Overall, I believe the forum could best be summed up by the response to a question regarding cell site density and whether it could make up the difference for a lack of spectrum as consumers continue to utilize wireless broadband. The panel addressed it by saying that reuse would only mitigate the problem but Ms. Spradley quoted Wayne Gretzky and said "a good hockey player plays where the puck is and a great hockey player plays where the puck is going." Thus, industry and regulators in tackling these issues need to plan where the "puck is going."
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski made news today announcing his intent to open a regulatory inquiry into the merits of imposing so-called 'net neutrality' rules on the wireless sector. The move adds another high-stakes conversation on top of a broad inquiry into the future of wireless and the methodical, inclusive march toward a national broadband plan.
At first glance, the announcement appears to be a populist slam-dunk. The term 'net neutrality' has no agreed-upon definition in policy circles. But in popular culture, it has become synonymous with free speech. And, whether you watch Fox News or read Huffington Post, that's one issue virtually all Americans can agree on.
Momentum is clearly building for greater regulation of wireless and broadband. But as we wade deeper into these issues and contemplate changing the environment that has led to such rapid and profound innovation today, it is worth thinking through the possible implications to consumers, innovators and our economy.
As we do so, here are three areas that should be foremost in policymakers' minds:
Consumer experience. The notion that all applications and websites are created equal has an appealing, egalitarian ring to it. It's proven a reasonably workable concept for wired broadband networks. But it poses the risk of potentially calamitous disruption to the wireless consumer experience.
Wireless and wired broadband networks are very different both technically and operationally. In fact, a primary reason mobile has exploded over the past decade is precisely because these networks are prudently managed. When's the last time, for example, your mobile device was overcome by viruses? Yes, many want mobile devices with endlessly customizable options - and the marketplace certainly delivers a wide array of choices - but most consumers also take the technology for granted and want to connect to people and information without a second thought.
In a world where streaming video is becoming more common, an 'all bits are created equal' decree could run a fairly extreme risk of degrading the wireless experience of many to accommodate the mobile content habits of a few. Available spectrum is finite. Capacity must continually be managed in a dynamic way. Do we really want the FCC to be not only the regulators of wireless networks, but also its engineers and network managers?
The Commission likely will carve out a few obvious exceptions. One would hope, for example, that we can agree that real-time health monitoring should take precedence over a neighbor's kid downloading the latest Hannah Montana movie. But the most exciting innovations often come from unexpected - and thus unanticipated - places. Who knew that the number of mobile applications downloaded on just one brand - iPhone - would exceed one billion in its very first year? Regulations can confine mobile's vast potential in ways we cannot easily predict today and will likely underestimate to our detriment.
Investment. We all know what happens when too many cars pile onto the freeway. One obvious solution is to build more lanes. This takes billions of dollars in investment. The most compelling argument I've heard on this front, came from a small Internet provider in Wyoming. 'I'm all for free speech,' he said, 'but I'm not for free beer.' His point: Given that we all are free to express ourselves on-line and off, any new regulations must carefully balance the broad public interest in keeping robust investment flowing into these networks. Free beer and free speech are both wildly populist notions. But only one makes for constructive, sustainable policy.
Of course, the stakes go well beyond the ISPs to consumers and the broader mobile innovation community. Both depend on robust, well-managed networks to deliver a quality experience that fuels demand for not only more bandwidth, but exciting new uses for it.
Innovation. One negative outcome would be regulations that are far from neutral. Let's be honest: vested interests exist on both sides of the net neutrality fence. The FCC needs to find a balanced path forward - one that ends the divisive debate about whether the government should allow innovation at the edge or in the networks. Clearly, we need both to keep pace with consumers and make the most of mobile innovation.
We are in a technology environment where the demands placed on wireless networks are increasing exponentially. This is a good thing for mobile innovation because it means we are delivering new and diverse consumer benefits on a much broader scale. To keep the innovation flowing, we need policies that clearly comprehend that network management is central to this ongoing progress.
Agree or disagree on this one divisive policy issue, I believe that all wireless stakeholders share a genuine commitment to encouraging innovation, investment, as well as diversity of content, services and applications. As we take a closer look at how we achieve these goals, we should resist a rush to judgment. Through 20-plus years of Democratic and Republican Administrations, entrepreneurs, innovators and consumers have driven mobile innovation and growth.
Increased and imprudent government intervention could cut short an extraordinary run that has delivered real consumer, social and economic benefits, and has the promise of doing even more in the days and months ahead. The risk of unintended consequences could derail so many positive advances and opportunities underway. Are we taking a constructive step forward or walking the plank on mobile innovation? Only time - and the quality, balanced nature of the coming deliberations - will tell.
comments | Permalink
Tags: Broadband, FCC, Mobile Future, Mobile Future Board, Jonathan Spalter, National Broadband Plan, Net Neutrality, Wireless Broadband, Wireless Innovation