Today in the white spaces
I spent a lot of energy writing this past summer about how important to experimentation unlicensed uses of the “white spaces” are. And if you search on this blog using “white spaces” you’ll see a number of breathless posts about how key this entire endeavor is.
Now I know I’m right, because today the broadcast industry is marching on Capitol Hill, flags waving, guns booming, to make sure that no one ever gets to use these unused frequencies except them. Their battle cry (invented by me): “If we allow unlicensed, portable uses of these white spaces, broadcast television as we know it will come to an end.” (With thanks to Joel Brinkley’s wonderful book, “Defining Vision.”) If these guys are this worried, something important must be going on.
Great headline in Broadcasting & Cable: TV Industry Storms Hill, FCC Over White Spaces. And this press release from the National Association of Broadcasters: Broadcasters, Sports Leagues, TV Set Makers Unite in Opposition to “White Space” Interference Zones. Hear that coinage? “Interference zones.” These aren’t vacant places, these unused frequencies - they’re places of great danger to all-American television, the thing that gets the words of the elected legislator across to his/her people, the thing we all grew up with. “Hot zones.” “Interference zones.” Get it? Toxic! Destructive!
There’s another side to this battle. The softer-voiced people (who know what they are talking about) at the New America Foundation will calmly tell you (if you are willing to listen) that in fact there are plenty of ways that new portable devices can avoid interfering with your television set. Let’s hope that someone’s listening. This is a central battle for innovation, and surely empirical evidence should carry some weight.
Tying things together
It’s clear that last week’s Dept. of Justice filing hewed very closely to arguments often made by AT&T and others opposing any form of limitation on their ability to prioritize communications on their networks.
But it may be too easy to say that DOJ is in thrall to AT&T. This may be part of something much more significant.
The Bells, Hollywood, and law enforcement all have strong interests in controlling online communications. The internet disrupts their business models. We can see this in the AT&T fight against network neutrality (and the Pearl Jam story); in the studios’ determination to blame P2P software for every form of sin and every possible security risk; and in law enforcement’s desire to ensure that all highspeed internet communications have a back door that makes them easily tappable — as well as to ensure (see n.20 of the DOJ filing) that “public safety” packets get priority.
Non-neutrality writ large, which carries with it the ability to impose differential “quality of service” treatment on different packets, serves the interests of all three of these groups.
Non-neutrality also serves the interests of those who would like (more generally) to see the internet morphed into something much more akin to the current wireless model here in the US: a fully-monetized network, permitting use of particular applications that share their revenues with the network access provider. (This network would not be the same thing as the internet.)
Another document came out last week that ties this all together. It’s from the ITU, and it’s called “Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2007: The Road to Next-Generation Networks (NGN).”
The ITU defines “NGN” as a network that provides quality-of-service-enabled transport technologies. The idea is that packet transport will be “enriched with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) to ensure Quality of Service (QoS).”
Translation, as far as I can tell: packet transport becomes the same as circuit-switched transport. Prioritization is controlled; it’s a network optimized on billing.
Now, the ITU has been working on “NGN” for an awfully long time. It holds many many meetings about it. It takes a lot of work to change an open system into a cellphone system. But a cellphone system would put the network operators (and their friends in Hollywood, and law enforcement), back in charge of communications. They’d be able to charge whatever they want, outlaw whatever they want (eg, unwanted P2P communications, non-CALEA-compliant communications), and generally run the show they way they used to in the old days. It’s not clear that the “road to NGN” will ever actually be followed.
The DOJ filing is another step along that road. It parrots AT&T, but it may be tied to a much larger incumbent agenda around the world.