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FCC Wants to Open Bandwidth Market
Trilliumjs wrote to us about a NYTimes article concering some of the latest moves from the FCC. The FCC wants to turn some of the unused airwaves into an open market so that companies can pick up bandwidth as needed.
Actually, they already do in Austin. There are 2 companies that I know of, one called NoBell and the other whose name escapes me. Both can provide you with anything from a single dedicated IP up to full blown ISP services.
NoBell works with small cells, which cover about a 1 mile radius. To get decent coverage, they need a lot of cells, and currently they only provide service in a small area, in town, competing with DSL and Cable Modems. Consequently, their prices are about comparable, and you get up to 3 M-bits up and down stream.
The other company uses a single microwave tower located on the west side of town, and provides about a 30 mile radius. However, you need line of sight to use their service, so tall buildings make better candidates than single story houses. Their pricing is a bit higher, but it sounds like they provide a more reliable service. Incidentally, they are the only form of broadband I can get at my house, and I would need a tower for my antenna.
I have also heard about other local rural areas being provided with wireless service at a reasonable rate. Personally, I believe the start-up costs for a company like this would be considerably higher than a typical ISP, and the risk would be higher as well. However, they do already exist, and more are probably on the way as soon as a wide spread, cheap standard is in place for broadband wireless.
Enron isn't a start-up.
It's got a market cap of $ 47.23 billion and revenues of $31 billion in 1998.
They own alot of power plants.
Go check the Annual Report out at Enron's website @ www.enron.com
(I'm not an investor in Enron or anything like that)
Something like Henry George's "Single Tax" system might work here. While originally meant to be applied to land, it would probably work pretty well with bandwidth allocations.
It works like this: The owner of the property specifies the amount at which he values the property. Taxes are levied as a flat rate based on the specified values. This prevents anyone from setting an artificially high value on the property; set it too high, and you won't be able to afford the taxes.
But if anyone comes along and ponies up the amount you specified, you must sell. This prevents you from setting too low a value, otherwise you'll lose control of the property.
Pretty soon, the property (bandwidth) winds up in the hands of the people able to put it to the most productive use, and able to justify the maximum value (and pay the commensurate taxes). It encourages economizing on bandwidth (so that you can make do with a smaller "tract" of bandwidth, and sell or re-purpose the rest), and shifting bandwidth to more productive applications as technology improves.
Virtually every other scarce resource has been allocated by ownership and markets, and this has proven to average out much fairer than the alternatives that have been tried. (Royal fiat and central planning, for instance, have generally proven disastrously unfair and restricting.)
Why should the radio spectrum be any different from land, water rights, natural resources, food, or any other limited resource?
Yet the United States persists in treating it differently - until now. And suddenly people are "viewing with alarm".
I'm cheering.
And the only thing I'm concerned about is the details of how, and how much, of this resource will transition to private ownership. (Uncle Sam has a patchy record on that issue.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Doesn't this mean we'll be paying more for devices that use these frequencies? If a company owns frequency x and they lease it to another compnay won't they be seeking a profit on the lease? And desn't that mean higher rpices for the end consumer?
And what are the effects of this? Sounds akin to domain squatting where those that were first will make money on a resource they don't even use.
And why should a third party company make money on top of another for a "public resource"? Am I the only one that sees this as a another money making venture for speculative capitol? I mean it used to be the government that would get the revenues on allocation of bandwidth. Now it is another company?
And what's with bandwidth that can change owners depending on time of day?!
First of all, I will say that I am heavily biased toward the laissez faire side of the argument. But there is a fundamental problem with a resource that can be accessed from anywhere and whose value can easily be diminished by someone willing to despoil it (jamming). If it were possible for everyone who wanted to be heard to do so, without cost to anyone else, that would certainly be a desirable goal. But there isn't nearly enough bandwidth for that.
How should we decide who gets it? Does it belong to the highest bidder? And for how long. Can the first person to apply for bandwidth get it? We would have frequency squatting. How can we decide on the value of new uses vs. older established ones? Do we push out marginal radio stations to make room for stations that will pay more for the frequency? I certainly don't have all of the answers to these questions.
However, moving towards a market where the people who have the frequencies can sell the bandwidth is a partial solution. An excellent, and lengthy, discussion about the complexities of allocating property rights can be found here in David Friedman's forthcoming book Law's Order: An Economic Account. Perhaps the most enlightening point, is that from the point of view of economic efficiency it doesn't matter who the property rights are awarded to (assuming it isn't a stubborn codger who won't deal with anyone no matter how much it may hurt him). You will get the same outcome, with the only difference being the profit that the guy who originally holds the property rights makes. If the FCC sells that to the highest bidder, that money goes to the FCC. No worse that any other solution since they regulated the right into existance.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
The sort of things they're talking about here is in areas like unused TV channels (specifically mentioned in the article). It's a lot easier to make use of a 6 MHz chunk of spectrum with no guard band requirements than a 200 kHz chunk with all kinds of power and geographic restrictions.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
People go out and start using some new resource that has no particular legal standing.
De facto defense of the resource involves private actions and the costs of those defensive actions fall directly on the users.
Government steps in to enforce resolution of disputes and charges the claimants for the costs of such resolution and dispute resolution while imposing regulations to control negative externalities.
Entrenched holders of lawful rights then use their profit stream in political channels to seek legislative relief of the costs of the defense of their rights and freedom from regulations on their negative externalities.
Tax laws are passed which off-load the costs of defending the rights from the politically effective rent seekers to the politically ineffective renters.
Additional regulatory barriers to market forces are erected to further protect the rent seekers from competition while at the same time removing regulatory barriers which inhibit the rent seekers from exploiting negative externalities.
The basic problem is the political nature of government. The basic solution is to replace national and international governing bodies with Warrior's Insurance under which reinsurance networks indemnify and defend against losses of claimed rights.
Seastead this.
If you think corporate control over things like this are bad now, wait 'til G.W. (god forbid) is running the show.
People that donate the sums of money that he's received do not give money away without expecting something in return. He way overspent on the primaries, and now needs to re-fund his campaign again. How much is $$ is that going to take? How many more favors is he going to have to promise?
Sorry to politicize this, and I'm not saying that any of the other candidates are any better, but this kind of "corporate-first" ideal has been totally taking over this country as of late, and I don't see it changing any time soon.
Our government charter (US) was built on protecting individual rights. Our individual rights are now secondary to Corporate rights. I'd like to see this trend stop, rather than get pushed further into Greedville.
So, the airwaves are all for sale. Granted, in a way they always have been, but at this point companies will be free to buy up all of the frequencies, then "rent" the "ones they're not currently using" to those of us that couldn't/can't get in on this land-grab.
I've been wondering about why there aren't very many wireless isps, and this seems like the right forum, so here are some questions which have been plaguing me:
How does this affect general wireless networking? Will this make wireless isps feasible, or is bandwidth not the only problem? If so, does this mean that we'll soon see wireless isp's soon?
Personally, I've seen some notebooks with wavelan cards around campus and they seems like a much sleeker alternative to cable/dsl. What's stopping some isp from setting up wireless access points around a city? (much like those cellular ones)
One other point that people tend to forget, is the benefit of standardization. We, on Slashdot, tend to debate quite a bit about computer industry standards, whether it be hardware, desktop environments, compression, networking, whatever. We can communicate via IP because standards exist that you must adhere to if you want to participate on the Internet.
The same thing goes for the airwaves. If you want to listen to FM radio (in your region), then you know what frequency range to tune in to. Tuners are built with the assumption that these ranges are standardized. Television uses another... and so on, for many different applications. We can all take advantage of these things BECAUSE they are standardized.
So I would say the agencies that uphold the standards are VERY important. Without them, you'd be limited to what works with your own personal equipment. Sorta like a LAN vs. the Internet.
I wonder if the guy who started this thread would also argue that the IETF is worthless and should be abolished?
Best regards,
SEAL
While the concept is good and will pave the way for new digital services, there are some things that I am leery of.
Like any open market, there is the potential for abuse by those who are richer and more powerful than more independent interests. We've seen that happen in the DNS and ISP spaces. for this to work, there has to be an allotment to make sure that the mega media conglomerates stay within bounds.
And we have to remember who's side gubermint (sic) is on. And I think that it's not ours. When the gift comes from Uncle Sam, DO look the horse in the mouth!
Something else to keep in mind... saying the FCC should disappear is like saying the ITU and the NTIA should disappear as well. The ITU are the ones who have allocated the various frequency bands for the three world regions. The NTIA (check out http://www.ntia.doc.gov) does US specific stuff. They're part of the DOC (Dept. of Commerce) too BTW. The FCC is I think more of the enforcer and regulator. A lot of people are against regulation in many areas, but I think in this type of media, you really need to have tons of regulation just to make sure that people aren't stepping on other people's feet.
c h.html). They really do a lot more than most people realize.
If you've ever looked at what goes into placing a broadcast radio or TV antenna, you'll have a new found respect for what the FCC does. Also look at Title 47 of the US CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) (check out http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfr-table-sear
When talk is cheap, silence becomes expencive.
-Earthman
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
There is a very useful need to open frequencies for better utilization. The wireless portion of data traffic is poised to rush copper/fibre, regardless of dis/advantages. As a regulatory body, it makes sense for the FCC to make the move to reclaim unused resources and to plan for the switchover to digital video.
What I don't like is the idea of allowing airwave "squatting" that this points at. What regulation will be applied to owned space? I'd like to hear from anyone with more details than the article presents. I'd hate to see a situation similar to what happened to domain names.
effer
One item that seems to be missed is that the frequencies have already been sold (auctioned off over a year ago). What the FCC wants to do is allow those companies that already own a particular frequency band to sublet parts out to other companies. They're working on the rules for an exchange/trade program.
The Federal Government made a huge windfall profit when they sold off your frequency spectrum. It was almost as bad as selling off Yosimite or Yellowstone (Old Faithful, brought to you by Seiko, the official time piece for timing the geyser).
As for the companies that bought them, it was a good investment, especially now that they will be able to sublet at a profit. Imagine, selling invisible intangible airwaves! Now imagine what is going to happen when more spectrum is up for grabs, as possibly the allocation for Iridium will be. Reselling parts at a profit? Like printing your own legal tender.
I would expect the prices for WAN-wireless devices to creep up to help pay the subleasing of the frequencies.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
While all of those are valid concerns, there are some significant advantages to the FCC plan. Firstly, it opens up currently restricted broadcast bandwidth - this will allow those with the proper funds to make some very valuable advances: at the least, either more or better quality (image, sound, not content :) broadcasts. Secondly, opening the bandwidth will reduce the temptation for corporate entities to push the edges of public bands (i.e. CB radio, Shortwave, etc) to gain greater range and quality broadcasts. Thirdly, new services will expand to fill these channels: wireless ISP's and LAN/WAN's (as mentioned elsewhere) for example.
All in all, I would like to see the official FCC proposal before I make a call on wether this is a Good Thing(tm) or not.
:: remove the whitespace to e-mail me ::
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We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Hrm, this sounds an aweful lot like the IP space problem the net was going to run into. Only problem is you can't just extend the radio spectrum to allow more users can you?
Well, not as such, but you can use it a lot more effectively. For instance, a lot of the spectrum is being used by analog signaling device. For example 2 way radios. Everyone here knows that voice signals can be digitized and sent over an analog medium in a multiplexed fashion (PCS anyone?) a lot more effientenly then they can be sent over in their latent analog forms.
I think it's far past time that we made a paridim shift in our electromagnetic spectrum managment.
Step 1: Phase out analog transmission. Set a 5 year end of life on all current analog licences.
Step 2: Type Approve a new digital radio that is multiband, where the radio will try first on the highest (most plentiful, shortest haul) frequencies, and if it can't find a node, fall back untill it can. Ideally these radios should also act as packet repeaters and by neccesity include a public key encryption system.
Step 3: Establish, using licencing fees a N/A wide (remember boys and girls, frequencies don't care about borders. All this has to be taken with Canada and Mexico in mind) digipeter network.
Volia. You now charge your licencees not by how much spectrum they're occupying but by a much more real world measure, how many bytes they send.
Licencees gain the ability to operate anywhere on the continent, not just in their own repeater area, if there are no repeaters around we eventually fall back to HF, which can bounce around the world if it has to, but this would require a very different radio structure then the usual VHF models of today, so would probably only be used in circumstances where it absolutly required. In most cases repeater coverage would do it.
And the best part, most of the technologies here already exisit! Digitial voice transmission, TCP/IP for a networking protocol, digipeters, are all in use now in both commercial and amature radio circles.
Unfortunaly this will never come to pass, the idea of the US using such an open source, co-operative system goes too much against their capitalist nature. It won't happen till they absoltuly run out of spectrum space.
In the meantime, what will they do about violations under the current system. If someone who is leasing spectrum space between 2am and 5am violates one of the FCC/ITT code regs, whose licence gets yanked?
Minupla
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
There has to be restrictions on airwaves (with current technology) otherwise anybody could interfere with anybody. Think about it. You know all those FCC disclaimers on electronic equipment that says it can't interfere with other equipment and so on? That's there for a reason. If I could transmit anything I want on any channel, I couldn't be blamed if, say, I caused a commercial jet to crash. That also means that anybody could tap in on your cellular and cordless phone conversations (they already can very easily but this would make it more legal and even easier).
You know all those satellites that pump information down from the heavens? Without logical, organized, and restrictions you could make any satellite completely useless just by the interference your satellite causes.
The FCC may seem like a beurocratic waste of money, but there ARE real needs for them right now.
IANAL, but I play one on