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Yes, it is manifestly true that, led by the iPhone, of course, wireless Internet-enabled devices are chewing up bandwidth on 3G and other cellular networks at an unprecedented rate. But is that really a crisis? FCC Chairman Warns of “Looming Spectrum Crisis” for Wireless Devices.
I’ve got a lot of respect for Julius Genachowski. But on this point, I suggest he is all wet. Look at the historical parallels. Thomas Malthus warned more than 200 years ago of a food crisis as the industrial revolution expanded populations, and that did not happen either. In wireless data, the technology has advanced by an order of magnitude in just the past 3-4 years, like fiber optics using WDM to cram more capacity into the same amount of bandwidth. What is 3g today is almost 4G in Japan and other nations.
So don’t bet against technology. Increased efficiency in wireless data protocols — OFDM, for instance — trumps spectrum capacity all the time.
Posted via email from glenn’s posterous
So exactly why are we paying for the “DTV transition” anyway? One can argue that taxpayers have a moral obligation to subsidize lower-class people in times of economic change. Obama urges Congress to postpone DTV transition [CNET News]. But did we pay for folks in the 1920s to switch from horses to automobiles, or in the 1960s to switch from B&W to color televisions? No way.
In my view, having taxpayers foot the bill for “DTV converter boxes” would be like sending everyone a check from the Treasury so they can subscribe to cable or satellite television. It’s completely absurd and a waste of money. Sorry, Rachelle Chong, but that’s how I see it.
Another great title (and incisive post) from my friend and client Drew Clark at BroadbandCensus.com. I suppose the reaction in Silicon Valley to folks saying they’re from Washington, DC and are “here to help” may just be slightly more favorable going-forward. FCC Chairman Kein Martin’s Incredible Silicon Valley Wi-Fi Adventure. Well done!
This is why it is a really bad idea to text while you are driving. Train Operator Sent 29 Texts on Crash Day [ABC News].
That’s what Andrew Orlowski of the UK’s The Register calls Friday’s decision by the Federal Communications Commission to cite Comcast for unlawful violation of "network neutrality" principles. One can agree or disagree with the proposition, endorsed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, that Internet users should be free to reach any site without interference by their ISPs.
“We are preserving the open character of the Internet,” Martin said in an interview after the 3-to-2 vote. “We are saying that network operators can’t block people from getting access to any content and any applications.”
But it is just absurd to conclude that any federal government agency should be allowed to issue what it expressly terms a set of non-binding "principles" and then make an official finding of illegality when a company fails to follow those principles. Confusing is an understatement here. Dissenting Commissioner Rob McDowell’s complaint that the FCC here is actively regulating the Internet — or at least historically unregulated "enhanced services" offered by ISPs, unlike common carrier telecommunications services — is spot on.
Business Week has an opinion piece in the current issue — cutely titled "Talk To Me, Fridge" — predicting an automated smart home where applicances talk to each other, and external sources like the electric company, automatically. Well, more than a decade ago I represented Echelon Corp. of Silcon Valley in a legislative battle over whether some FCC standards would interfere with competition for home automation; our congressional sponsor, Rep. Anna Eshoo, used The Jetsons as her example of the technical future. Few of us realized, then, that more than a decade later the automated smart home would still be another 10 years away.
But Drew Lanza’s take seems to assume that the chip component cost curve is all that’s standing in the way of a networked house in the very near future:
That’s thanks in part to the proliferation of Wi-Fi, technology that lets us connect to the wireless Internet at high speeds—not only from our homes and coffee shops but also from cars, airplanes, and even parks. To that we can now add a new generation of task-specific semiconductors so inexpensive that they can be deployed in the billions to various sensors and objects and then connected to the Internet via the same wireless technology.. . . In the coming years, designers will deliver these semiconductors for a buck or two and get them to run off a single AAA battery for years.
Sounds a lot like what Scott McNealy said about Jini a decade ago and what technologists projected for RFID even closer than that. They were wrong and, I suspect, so is Lanza.
Today was a very big day for technology at the U.S. Supreme Court, with two hugely significant cases being argued. The first, Grockster v. MGM Studios, arises from the movie and recording industries’ efforts to impose contributory copyright infringement liability on post-Napster providers of P2P file sharing software. Supreme Court Takes Hard Look at P2P [CNET News.com]. The second, BrandX v. FCC, arises from the FCC’s efforts to clear the way for cable modem broadband service without requiring cable companies to share their facilities with ISPs. Supreme Court Asks Why Cable Broadband Lacks Regulation [ITWorld.com].
It’s always hard to predict where the Court will come down from its oral argument questions. But these remarks from Justices Breyer, Scalia and Souter in Grockster are quite revealing.
Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out Xerox copiers, videocassette recorders, iPod music players, and even the Gutenberg press had the potential of abuse by consumers. “In each case there could be vast numbers of infringement illegal uses,” he said, but he added that the benefits to society from those inventions were incalculable.
Justice Antonin Scalia wondered whether innovators would be punished immediately after creating a new product if the entertainment industry had a legal veto. “If I started a business now, how do I know how to proceed?” he asked. “If I’m a new inventor, I’m going to get sued right away.”
“There’s never the intent to break the law when the guy is in the garage inventing the iPod,” added Justice David Souter.
There’s a sense to which both the cable and entertainment industries are overreaching. I’ve got friends and colleagues on both sides of each of these issues, but biting off more than one can legitimately chew is a very bad strategy, since courts (especialy the Supreme Court) are pretty good at sorting out litgants who overstate or overplay their hands.
So Bernie’s fiasco is finally over. They’ve taken his ranch and now are mothballing his corporate name. It’s just a shame that the once-proud MCI brand will apply to the sad remnants of such a sordid band of scum. [Washington Business Journal]
WorldCom made it official Monday morning. It is dumping the WorldCom name and adopting MCI as its official corporate moniker. The Mississippi-based company is also officially relocating its corporate headquarters to Ashburn, Va.
Starbucks and T-Mobile have made a big push to establish 802.11b “hot spots” around the country, but so far no one is buying! That’s perhaps not unexpected, since Wi-Fi is still somewhat of an early adopter technology, but the extremely small take rate — just 25,000 out of 22 million Starbucks customers — is surprisingly low. As usual in the New Economy, making a viable business model out of a new technology is proving harder to implement than the initial plans suggest.
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October 8th, 2009 | 
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