This week in the white spaces
Every once in a while I look in on the white spaces, to see how things are going. You’ll recall that the white spaces are unused, non-contiguous (”swiss cheese” ) frequencies between broadcast stations around the county. Commr. McDowell of the FCC has said that initial rules for the white spaces will be released sometime this fall.
If the white spaces are made available on an unlicensed basis for use by opportunistic, “smart,” low-power mobile devices, entrepreneurial engineers will think of ways to use this wealth of spectrum (300 MHz wide, if fractured) to provide mobile connections to whatever fiber installations are nearest. At the very least, they will experiment — and we could use some experimentation.
But the broadcasters are up in arms over this disruption. They can’t imagine that mobile personal wireless devices won’t interfere with their broadcasts, and they’re positive that unlicensed use of this spectrum shouldn’t be allowed.
This week in the white spaces:
1. Philips Electronics says that its device is super-sensitive to wireless microphones. So all the entertainers and sports announcers (including Wolf Pack Sports and a company handling multimedia rights for college sports teams, filers this week) and clerics can relax - use of the Philips prototype won’t interfere with their lives. Philips also says that it’s time for the FCC to issue its rules allowing unlicensed, portable uses of the white spaces so that devices can be designed and ready for the market in February 2009 - the date of the digital transition.
2. The wireless microphone people don’t agree, and urge the Commission to stop even considering portable unlicensed uses of the white spaces.
3. More seriously, GE Healthcare claims that “controlling the presence of personal/portable devices within the premises of healthcare facilities is an intractable challenge” that will pose risks to medical telemetry (basically measuring information about humans), and argues strongly that the New America Foundation doesn’t understand the healthcare environment.
4. The White Space Coalition (Dell, EarthLink, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, and Philips Electronics North America Corp.) checked in with the FCC’s Office of Engineering & Technology to remind that office (probably not for the first time) that requiring too much sensitivity and too low power levels of these opportunistic portable devices was probably a mistake. Decoding: if we require these devices to be so low-power, we won’t be able to do any real experimentation; you’re letting the incumbent broadcasters run the show, when we really should be shifting away from them.
5. The Association for Maximum Service Television and the National Association of Broadcasters (we can refer to these groups, collectively, as the broadcasters) piped up, saying again that personal and portable devices should be prohibited from operating in what they call the “television spectrum”. Decoding: it’s still our spectrum, even though we’re not using it, and if you outlaw portable devices these opportunistic uses won’t take off — people don’t really want fixed devices, they want mobility, and they won’t buy fixed devices in enough numbers to make manufacturing them worth it. The broadcasters are also contesting the sensitivity standards, saying that these devices should be much more sensitive in order to avoid interference with television signals.
If we take this week’s filings as a poetic symbol in small of the entire proceeding, I’d say that we’re headed for delay, or at the most a partial set of October 2007 rules that don’t deal with the unlicensed question - leaving it open for another day. That’s too bad, because we’ll see explosive innovation if these white spaces are unlicensed sooner rather than later.
Let’s hope that Chairman Martin’s inclination to allow unlicensed uses remains strong.
Two good things
The received wisdom here in the U.S. is, according to Gregory Sidak of Georgetown, that prohibiting telecommunications companies from entering vertical markets is a bad idea:
In general, statutory barriers to entry are strongly disfavored by scholars of regulatory economics. In practice, they are surprisingly costly to implement in technologically dynamic industries, they invite abuse through rent-seeking behavior, and they run the risk of harming consumer welfare.
Well, the EU telecom commissioner, Viviane Reding, has a different point of view. She thinks that functional separation (separating a communication company’s transport functions from its content dreams) leads to competition, faster internet access speeds, and better communications for consumers. According to the Financial Times, she views the British Telecom split between “networks” and “services” as a positive development. Her office has already sued Germany for letting Deutsche Telekom get away with vertical integration.
No stranger to controversy, Ms. Reding has a remarkably consistent method…First, she outlines outlandish ideas then waits for the air to clear before returning to the table to get a deal.
Calling this “outlandish” may indicate that the Financial Times itself is a little distant from the fray. These are serious economic questions, and Japan certainly takes the notion of separation seriously — at least on the DSL side of things.
===And today I went for the first time to the Ann Arbor Bim Bi Bop lunch, organized by the well-connected Ed Vielmetti. At least 30 people, in all kinds of technology-related walks of life. The introduction ceremony involved telling people how you could tell that the summer was ending.
Immobility
As cars overflowing with stuff crawl slowly towards dorm rooms and
apartments here at the University of Michigan, it’s worth spending a
moment to consider some mainstream news reports that share a
downward-sloping psychic curve.
Regulators all over
the world would like to have a say about U.S. lending policy, the Times
tells
us:
Politicians, regulators and financial specialists outside
the United
States are seeking a role in the oversight of American markets, banks
and rating agencies after recent problems related to subprime
mortgages. . . . International investors are . . . asking why
American lenders were
allowed to give mortgages to home buyers who could not repay
them.
We’re being whupped by Japan when
it comes to internet access, says
the Washington Post, and people are finally making the connection
between communications regulation and economic
growth/innovation. There’s a nice quote
from Vint Cerf:
Japan’s lead in speed is worrisome
because it will shift Internet innovation away from the United States,
warns Cerf, who is widely credited with helping to invent some of the
Internet’s basic architecture. ‘Once you have very high
speeds, I guarantee that people will figure out things to do with it
that they haven’t done before,’ he
said.
And, finally, USAToday pulls
together data on the Katrina recovery:
Of the $116
billion appropriated by Congress to
Gulf Coast recovery, $34 billion has been earmarked for long-term
rebuilding. But less than half of that has made its way through federal
checks and balances to reach municipal projects. Throughout the Gulf
Coast, residents are asking
why their government — at every level — hasn’t done more to streamline
the process and bring more rebuilding dollars to the region.
These things all relate to America’s
sinking, slowing, decaying, softening views on the public role of
infrastructure. Just like the rebuilding of a city, internet
access and sensible rules about credit are part of baseline civic
needs. Nothing much will happen on any of these three fronts
until the next election, and even then it’s likely that any “practical”
U.S. leader will take an accomodationist, incremental
approach.
Welcome to another sinking, slowing,
decaying, softening academic year in U.S. history. Maybe by
next fall we’ll be more willing to be impractical.
Yearly
Today was the day I finished off my cyberlaw syllabus. You should take this course! It’s got life, death, technology, transfiguration, and plenty of cases in which Perfect 10 is the plaintiff or Google is the defendant (or both).
More tomorrow.
The transition to digital and the death of common sense
Two news items interestingly connect today: First, the airing of Ken Burns’ new documentary, “The War,” is causing broadcasters some anxiety, because it contains four fleeting expletives. From SFGate.com:
Many public broadcasters aren’t sure whether the FCC will fine public television stations for airing ‘The War,’ and the FCC hasn’t revealed its position. That uncertainty is placing the broadcasters in a difficult position. They must either show a documentary in a form other than the artist created, or risk getting hit with large fines for broadcasting naughty words.
And the notion that unlicensed, portable uses of the white spaces might be possible is causing broadcasters some anxiety, because they’re absolutely convinced that these uses will interfere with their programming. From Broadcasting & Cable:
‘[Even if] both the Phillips and Microsoft devices work as advertised, they will still cause interference to over-the air TV reception,’ says David Donovan, who heads the Association for Maximum Service Television.
These poor broadcasters. They’re stuck with an uncertain regulator. They crave protection, they cherish their special status, but they can’t tell what’s going to happen next - and it causes an awful lot of anxiety for them. It’s a schizophrenic existence, being a broadcaster. Your entire existence is predicated on the favors granted you by government.
Surely the broadcasters should cut themselves loose, sell off their airwaves, and retreat to the countryside. Calmer all around.
State secrets
It’s common knowledge that companies that provide access to the internet cooperate with law enforcement. The telephone companies have always been closely tied to emergency responders and the police — in times of need, people reach for telephones, and this close cooperation has allowed many rescuers to reach panicked callers. But the cooperative relationship springing from law enforcement’s surveillance needs is just as close.
In the NSA spying scandal, the administration has frequently claimed that to reveal the nature of network providers’ involvement with the apparently unlawful wiretapping would reveal secrets - and therefore this relationship can’t even be discussed in court. Now the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, is admitting that “the private sector” (the network operators) did indeed help out:
Now the second part of the issue was under the
president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private
sector had assisted us. Because if you’re going to get access you’ve
got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the
suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies.
So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these
private sector entities.
And McConnell also says that people will die because we’ve been so public about our discomfort with this illegal wiretapping program.
It’s all pretty rich.
Q. So you’re saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?
A. That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently. . .
Artistry
Fifteen minutes before the film was supposed to start tonight, a slight trim man in a madras shirt bounded towards the front of the theater. I’d noticed the organ keyboard facing the audience before he came in, and I’d idly thought about people sitting through silent movies accompanied by virtuosos staring up at the screen. But then this guy came flying down the aisle and sat down on the bench, his back to the ten or so people scattered around the theater. It took him a long time to get the light to work above the organ - he fiddled with it patiently, and his confidence in its workings paid off when the light finally flickered on.
There must be a “swoop” stop on this particular theater organ. The first few notes he played were surprisingly tremulous (weird, wild vibrato) and replete with slides from one note to the next. Was he setting the mood for the Jane Austen movie that the ten scattered people were going to see? It was a sort of Hitchcock mood, if he was. Theremin in madras.
When I got here today it was blazing hot, and I really needed yet another pair of sunglasses in order to move around outside. The woman in the store who sold me the glasses (which I will lose in the next few days) said that what she really liked about Ann Arbor was the people and the absence of franchises.
This guy at the organ was definitely not a franchisee. He played “People Will Say We’re In Love” with tremendous religiousity, big plagal cadences. He played “Surrey With The Fringe On Top” with aplomb, and “Oklahoma” with the “swoop” setting in full flower. Big blasts of sound, starting from nothing.
It was real artistry. You could tell when he was getting to his big finish - Oklahoma blew around us, big baseball-stadium chords, and we wanted to burst into applause. That’s when the real organ-show started - he improvised with “You Must Remember This,” as the screen finally lit with images.
But it wasn’t time for the film just yet. He was improvising to the sponsors’ brands, staring up at the screen, riffing on You Must Remember This, as the Ann Arbor Improvement District (paraphrasing here, I don’t remember the sponsors’ names) expressed its silent support for this great theater that had brought us all together, in emptiness, with a guy in a madras shirt playing the organ as if his life depended on it.
He ended smoothly, the sponsors stopped rolling, and the film began. No previews. This time we were released to applaud, and he bounded back up the aisle, smiling just a little.
All the beautiful things in the world
That’s the title of a short film that plays when you visit the Morgan Library. J.P. Morgan went in search of beautiful things, and tried to buy as many as he could.
Speaking of beautiful things, here are a few more words from Walter Pater:
I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition, its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion of humanity.
So - what’s the great thing from which you are shrinking today?
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One month to go until OneWebDay: September 22. Here’s a Rocketboom segment (translated into a zillion languages, thanks to dotSUB.com), a great post from Beth Kanter about OneWebDay, and some news: Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Andrew Baron (Rocketboom), Dana Spiegel (NYCWireless), Birju Pandya (CharityFocus.org), and more will be speaking at Washington Square Park on Sept. 22, Saturday, between 3 and 4 pm.
Carl Malamud
Carl Malamud is doing his best to make historical court decisions visible online. This is inspirational - it took a huge fight for the online publishers to give up on controlling ownership of citations to page numbers in court decisions.
As the comments to this Tim O'Reilly post make clear, there are several places online where current court decisions are publicly available. I frequently go to the Cornell Legal Information Institute. But the historical data is hard to get to.
Another admirable effort of Carl's is getting Congressional hearings online. (Plus, any opportunity to tell people about the Internet Archive is a good thing, so follow the link.):
There is a concrete, funded set of
initiatives to finish the wiring of the [Congressional hearing] rooms so that all hearings have
video coverage, and it is clear from a technical point of view that it
is possible to achieve the goal of broadcast-quality video for download
on the Internet by the end of the 110th congress. The recommendation to
adopt that goal is currently awaiting action from the Office of the
Speaker and the Chairman of the Committee on House Administration.
Go, Carl.
Routing around traditional publishers who want to create friction (or barriers to entry) for online access to data isn't easy. This is the same extended tussle that ScienceCommons.org is engaged in. In the end, the gatekeepers should lose, particularly where the public benefits so far outweigh the private returns to the publishers. A cure for Parkinson's, made possible because scientists can easily share data across disease silos, or another royalty for Reed Elsevier? You be the judge.
Humanism and E911 (2004-2007)
Here's an uplifting thought that has nothing to do with internet policy:
For the essence of humanism is that belief of which [Pico della Mirandola] seems never to have doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality — no language they have spoken, nor oracle beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever been passionate, or expended time and zeal.
That's coming to you from Walter Pater, in 1871. If you're ever feeling rattled or rushed, just read that through a few times.
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But back to E911. Back in March 2004, the FCC started the “IP Enabled Services” rulemaking, saying that it wanted to consider what “social policies” should apply to “services” that use the internet protocol. It's worth pausing to remember just how broadly the Commission stated its jurisdiction: “[T]he scope of this proceeding – and the term “IP-enabled services,” as it is used here – includes services and applications relying on the Internet Protocol family.” In other words, everything online.
One of the first “social policies” the Commission took up was consumers' ability to “call” emergency services and have automated location information provided to the call center. (People can't always give their location coherently in an emergency.)
In its 2005 E911 Order, the Commission mandated that “interconnected VoIP” providers be able to route all 911 calls (accompanied by a call-back number and the caller’s location) through the traditional telephone 911 network to appropriate local emergency authorities. The Commission defined “interconnected VoIP” as those services that (1) allowed for real-time, two-way voice communications, (2) required a broadband connection, (3) required end-user equipment to process and receive Internet Protocol packets, and (4) allowed users to both receive calls from traditional telephone networks and make calls to telephone numbers.
The Commission set an unrealistic timetable for this (but that's another story), and effectively required all VoIP providers to negotiate without leverage with the incumbents who control access to the public safety answering points (but that's also another story). All of this was very hard for VoIP, which doesn't necessarily tie to physical location without the active involvement of the user (”I'm over here!”). Basically, the entire 911 system was built for the telephone era, not the internet era.
The FCC also hinted that it might broaden the definition of “interconnected VoIP” at a later time and might require automatic location information to be provided by devices:
Should the Commission require all terminal adapters or other equipment used in the provision of interconnected VoIP service sold as of June 1, 2006 to be capable of providing location information automatically, whether embedded in other equipment or sold to customers as a separate device?
This was a big deal, this suggestion, because we don't usually require location information to be provided as a condition of marketing or using a device or application. In fact, many people worry about the privacy implications of constantly being forced to say “I'm over here!” (Your cellphone, at this point anyway, probably gives you the option of reporting location only when you actually make a 911 call.)
Earlier this summer, in May, these other shoes began to drop. The Commission issued a notice saying that it was interested in requiring wireless providers and “interconnected VoIP” providers to provide better/more constant location information at all times. They said that they had tentatively decided to require “interconnected VoIP” providers to automatically report location to the existing public safety answering points (take a look at p.7, para 18).
This is a big deal. I realize I keep blogging that these proceedings are big deals, but that's because they're so hard to follow and yet so important that I need to find some simple way of putting across the message that this needs attention. It needs attention because optimizing all VoIP applications on location-reporting-in-legacy-ways would be destructive to innovation, destructive to privacy, and extremely helpful to the incumbents who control the legacy 911 system. It's always going to be easier to “phone home” to an old-fashioned system when you haven't left home in the first place - when you're an application that is tightly tied to the existing phone network. A large swath of VoIP services would be effectively wiped out. As I've argued in the past, this also cuts off all kinds of interesting, richer ways to allow competing providers to connect users to emergency services with better data.
What would Walter Pater do? He'd write something beautiful about the human spirit. That won't help us here, unfortunately. We've got a Commission that seems to be interested in forcing online services into old regulatory bottles, all in the name of public safety. There are some excellent CDT comments here from May 2007. If you're interested, take a look.