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Is Microsoft Hustling Us With 'White Spaces'? (wired.com)
rgh02 writes:
Microsoft recently announced their plan to deploy unused television airwaves to solve the digital divide in America. And while the media painted this effort as a noble one, at Backchannel, Susan Crawford reveals the truth: "Microsoft's plans aren't really about consumer internet access, don't actually focus on rural areas, and aren't targeted at the US -- except for political purposes." So what is Microsoft really up to?
The article's author believes Microsoft's real game is "to be the soup-to-nuts provider of Internet of Things devices, software, and consulting services to zillions of local and national governments around the world. Need to use energy more efficiently, manage your traffic lights, target preventative maintenance, and optimize your public transport -- but you're a local government with limited resources and competence? Call Microsoft."
The article argues Microsoft wants to bypass mobile data carriers who "will want a pound of flesh -- a percentage -- in exchange for shipping data generated by Microsoft devices from Point A to Point B... [I]n many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies -- spectrum -- under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars."
The article's author believes Microsoft's real game is "to be the soup-to-nuts provider of Internet of Things devices, software, and consulting services to zillions of local and national governments around the world. Need to use energy more efficiently, manage your traffic lights, target preventative maintenance, and optimize your public transport -- but you're a local government with limited resources and competence? Call Microsoft."
The article argues Microsoft wants to bypass mobile data carriers who "will want a pound of flesh -- a percentage -- in exchange for shipping data generated by Microsoft devices from Point A to Point B... [I]n many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies -- spectrum -- under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars."
This is why the space bar is the largest in the PC keyboard!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Wants to undercut mobile data providers so municipalities can save money. Evil!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Then Microsoft have most likely already completed the hustle.
Microsoft isn't the only big company trying to cash in on rural internet in the World. Facebook and Google have their own projects trying to find ways to win over a rural area that if that company wins might be the only game in town for some. I never trust a big company when it claims to have a noble purpose.
Oh no! Bypassing monopolies and disintermediating middlemen?! The horror...
That's good news: the so-called "internet of things" needed to be knocked back 20 years until society can get a handle on security and accountability. Microsoft is just the organization to provide the necessary retrograde motion.
The question shouldn't be is Microsoft hustling us, but does White Space even work as an alternative to all the incumbents because a 10 mile range doesn't sound like it would?
Notorious rent-seeker complains about high rent...
Why not rainbow spaces?
I know. Let's have a PARAAAADE!
MS will sublicense the spectrum to makers of HomeKit type products. Low power long range communication is what a smart door lock needs. Wifi is not the best solution due to power requirements.
Microsoft hasn't had a successful entry into a new market since..what? The xbox? Their mobile efforts have not only been disasters, they've been repeated and predictable disasters.
They've got their core markets ( desktop, server/services, gaming ), and are arguably "improving" them successfully ( with some serious mis steps along the way ), but I just don't see how anyone can think they'll pull a rabbit out of their hat here.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Once they have you in their clutches, they are like drug dealers, always tempting you for something a little bit better.
They want to control your lives. That will give them huge amounts of data about you, your family and your life.
They will use it to sell you even more 'stuff you can't do without' but at a huge cost.
Your life won't be yours any longer.
Why are they doing this?
Simple, to compete with Google and Amazon for control of you, what you watch, what you buy and everything.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Say not to MS. cut your ties with them. Don't pay them even a bent penny.
the same goes for Google and Amazon. Use other search engines or proxys and buy local not at amazon.
In the long run, you won't regret it.
"[I]n many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies -- spectrum -- under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars"
Spectrum licenses are the sole domain of the FCC, not local governments. Broadcast stations generally have to get siting licenses from local governments but that has nothing to do with licensing the spectrum.
Last paragraph.
None of this is in any way nefarious or malign. Microsoft's strategy is actually masterful. It's just not what it appears on the surface. And it is not going to fix the digital divide in America's rural areas.
I guess I need to read TFA again, because I didn't grok any of her argument as to why Microsoft's bid to get some whitespace to use for IoT is detrimental to rural users. Surely Crawford knows that Microsoft isn't the only player looking to get some of that sweet federal money to fund infrastructure projects in rural areas, right?
Once they become, not just a "product" but a whole "ecosystem" of products for municipal governments, they will never have more loyal, nay, slavishly devoted customers. I just finished 30 years with a local government. I was in the water department, which had its own budget for a little of the early-PC era, when they were considered toys. I watched the IT department take over that end.
I watched with my bewilderment gradually exceeding my disgust as the same bunch that clung bitterly to their IBM mainframe environment long after it was obviously obsolete, jumped eagerly into the arms of Microsoft, glad to have new Masters that would tell them their strategy and what to buy. Once they paid attention to the formerly-hated PCs at all, they ensured the fewest-possible vendors in the "environment" by going MS with *everything* that MS sold. Macs were quickly eliminated, then competing software, anywhere that MS had an offering. It wasn't just the office products and all the development tools, dutifully switching from VB to .Net to C# when MS told them to: it was how they became MS salesmen themselves 5 minutes after leaving the sales meeting.
Nothing was ever even discussed in terms of "choices" or selections, things like OLE and MSN and IE and Silverlight were just enthusiastically described as the obvious future, the only road forward.
So I can't recommend strongly enough to MS shareholders that you get your company installed in local governments everywhere. They're big enough to buy lots of product, and not courageous enough to try anything else. Out in the service-providing departments, customers that are paying for all this, can come forward with obviously-superior products at lower prices, and IT will blandly mouth words about "Total Cost of Ownership", and "Integration with other products" without doing a cost-study, and never look into them. Why would they? MS will be the obvious Road Ahead, onward to the 22nd century.
I'd be the first to cheer bypassing monopolies. But when Microsoft is doing that I've got that funny feeling.
for decades before their most recent decade+ old, off-shoring centric business plan.