Here's a fun event that I'll be speaking at on the 25th. Should be a lively discussion of what's possible (yet not happening) in terms of 21st Century spectrum licensure.

The End of Spectrum Scarcity:

Opportunistic Access to the Airwaves

As the FCC begins its year-long process to recommend a National Broadband Plan, one starting point is to unlock publicly-owned assets that can facilitate ubiquitous, affordable broadband access. Wireless spectrum remains the most cost-effective and rapid means to deliver broadband access to rural and unserved urban residents. But as mobile broadband use continues to increase exponentially, demand for spectrum will rapidly outpace availability under current spectrum management policies.

Public policy seems stymied by the myth that spectrum is scarce. In reality, only government permission to access the airwaves (licenses) is scarce – spectrum capacity itself is barely used in most locations and at most times. This underutilized spectrum represents enormous, untapped, public capacity for high-speed and pervasive broadband connectivity. It is vital to a national broadband plan to consider policies that will encourage more intensive and efficient use of the nation’s spectrum resources.

What combination of technologies and policy reforms can open the airwaves and enable an era of pervasive connectivity? Our panel includes technology and policy experts who believe dynamic, opportunistic access to underutilized spectrum – especially federal government bands – is feasible if we can only muster the political will. One promising mechanism for making substantial new allocations of spectrum available for wireless broadband deployments and other innovation is to leverage the TV Bands Database that will be certified by the FCC for unlicensed access to vacant TV channels. Several papers describing this and other ideas to achieve more shared, dynamic spectrum access will be released at this event.

Start: 06/25/2009 - 12:15pm
End: 06/25/2009 - 1:45pm

New America Foundation
1899 L Street NW, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20036
United States
See map: Google Maps

Participants

Kevin Werbach
Assistant Professor of Law, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Co-lead on the Obama Administration's FCC Transition review

Preston Marshall
Director, Information Sciences Institute,
Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California
Former Program Manager, DARPA
Next Generation Communications

Michael Marcus
Principal, Marcus Consulting

Tom Stroup
CEO, Shared Spectrum Company

Sascha Meinrath
Director, Open Technology Initiative, New America Foundation

Michael Calabrese
Vice President and Director, Wireless Future Program, New America Foundation

I've been working with Senator Klobuchar's office to draft up an open access fiber bill and, after a couple month's work, got the message that Klobuchar and and Mark Warner were finally introducing their text. Alas, pretty much nothing of the work we'd done on this was in the text -- in fact, it's basically the same text as Eshoo's office introduced -- which is entirely devoid of any meaningful anything.

What a pickle -- the potential for such good sacrificed at the altar of political expedience. Worse than that, it's the potential to claim that an issue has been addressed without actually doing anything meaningful to fix the problem. After talking with staffers, I know that they're getting push-back from those that don't want cheap broadband for the masses, but seriously, we're in the midst of a half-decade long, massive broadband market failure. One need just look at the numbers to see that the US, once #1 in the world of broadband connectivity, has slipped precipitously from this perch.

Of course, the introduction of a bill is only the opening gambit in a far larger political tango. To be fair, the goal is to get something on the table that can then be marked up. My concern is that when you open with such a remarkably weak hand, it makes it all the more difficult to affect meaningful change. Hopefully, this doesn't become a situation whereby a few elected officials grab the public spotlight for a few news cycles but don't actually plan to carry out any of the hard political lift that productive reform requires.

For now, I'm cautiously optimistic -- here's the press release we just put out on the topic:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New America Foundation Applauds Klobuchar, Warner Fiber Conduit Legislation for Broadband Superhighway

Legislation Will Link Conduit Deployment with Federally-funded Transportation Projects

Washington, D.C. June 15, 2009 -- U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar announced today that she will introduce legislation with U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) to promote more rapid, cost-effective expansion across the country of broadband networks that carry high-speed, high-capacity communications.

The "Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2009" would require the integration of underground fiber conduit into the construction and reconstruction of our nation's transportation infrastructure by requiring the installation of broadband conduit as part of any federally-funded transportation project.

The New America Foundation applauds this forward-thinking legislation.

"As the nation looks to develop a national broadband plan to move the U.S. ahead, it is critical that we look for innovative and efficient ways to bring broadband into communities across the country," said Benjamin Lennett, Policy Analyst for the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative and Wireless Future Program. "In linking an essential component of broadband deployment with the ongoing construction and repair of transportation systems (e.g. highways, roads, bridges, tunnels, and railways), the U.S. can start 'baking broadband' into our nationwide infrastructure investments, much as we do for essential utilities such as water and electricity, rather than view it as a distinctly separate endeavor."

The legislation draws inspiration from a proposal put out by the New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program and Open Technology Initiative in January 2009. "Building a 21st Century Broadband Superhighway," calls for earmarking $1.2 to $3.6 billion in the 2009 Omnibus Transportation Bill to mandate and fund the build-out of open access, conduit and fiber-optic infrastructure into the construction, resurfacing and upgrading of our nation's highway system. The New America plan contains seven key elements:

1. Fiber bundles of between 144 and 288 strands laid in an easily accessed ductwork and conduit system;
2. Fiber links should have easily accessible interconnection points that allow providers access on a non-discriminatory basis;
3. Common carriage and wholesale access on these network links;
4. AUP-free use of these fiber assets and any additional links necessary to reach an open interconnection point;
5. Access to any and all entities seeking to offer data services, both for-profit and nonprofit, including municipalities;
6. An accurate assessment and mapping the build-out process and functionality; and,
7. A revenue-sharing agreement wherein users contribute to a "Digital Excellence Fund" to support continuing fiber build-outs and provide funding for digital literacy and educational programs to increase broadband adoption.

"Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner are leading the charge to bring universal, affordable broadband access to underserved communities throughout the United States," stated Sascha Meinrath, Director of New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative. "The onus is now upon the rest of us to support the implementation of broadband best practices and ensure that good ideas are not sacrificed to political expedience."

A clear obstacle to bringing high-speed broadband to rural areas and promoting increased broadband competition is access to the underlying fiber-optic infrastructures that connect local broadband networks to the Internet. The vast majority of the cost associated with bringing high-speed fiber deep into rural communities and promoting alternatives fiber links along public rights-of-way is associated with digging-up and repairing the road to install the buried fiber. Among the key goals of the Klobuchar/Warner legislation is to spur the build-out of that essential broadband infrastructure by reducing the largest deployment cost, thereby offering a cost-efficient means to promote the deployment of fiber into communities across the country.

"The Klobuchar and Warner bill begs the question, 'If so much can be done with such modest support, why hasn't the United States invested adequately in such a critically important resource?" said Meinrath. "After a half-decade of broadband stagnation, the United States now has an opportunity to catch up and implement a truly innovative proposal."

To download a copy of NAF's paper on the subject, visit http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/building_21st_century_broadband_superhighway.

For media requests, please contact Kate Brown, Media Relations Manager, at 202-596-3365(w) or 202-213-7051(m).

Contacts:
Sascha Meinrath
Director, Open Technology Initiative
meinrath@newamerica.net
(202) 986 - 2700

Benjamin Lennett
Policy Analyst, Wireless Future Program and Open Technology Initiative
lennett@newamerica.net
(202) 986 - 2700

###

New America's Open Technology Initiative formulates policy and regulatory reforms to support open architectures and open source innovations and facilitates the development and implementation of open technologies and communications networks. For more information, visit, http://www.newamerica.net/programs/oti.

New America's Wireless Future Program develops and advocates policy proposals aimed at achieving universal and affordable wireless broadband access, expanding public access to the airwaves and updating our nation's communications infrastructure in the digital era. For more information, visit http://www.newamerica.net/programs/wireless_future.

About the New America Foundation
The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.

802.11n support, with its greater throughput and MIMO capacities has long been a milestone that open source developers have sought. My friend Aaron Kaplan IM-ed me other day (probably from the bowels of some hi-tech nerd bunker in Vienna) to let me know that, Eureka(!), 802.11n support has finally been put into the open source domain.

This morning, I received word from Joseph Bonicioli over at AWMN of some of the first systematic testing (and if you don't yet know about AWMN.net, you should take a look -- think mesh LAN with hundreds of services and applications, all distributed and community operated, and covering the metropolitan area of Athens Greece. I'm always amazed by the ignorant who claim mesh doesn't scale -- AWMN is just one example of how we could be doing broadband service provision better.

Here's what Joseph says:

...just wanted to share the joy. This week we successfully completed the first 802.11n long range link in the network. Its not very far (only 4KM) but it is very promising. 80 to almost 100Mbit TCP Traffic with 20MHz channels and ~150Mbit with 40MHz. Currently we are dealing with the redesign of our feeders and trying to find an optimal soft/hardware set. We are all really excited to see what AWMN V3 will bring to us. The first link has been routing traffic successfully at 80Mbit since the 11th of June 2009.

80Mbit sustained throughput over a 4KM link in an electromagnetically congested metro area is pretty impressive stuff. With announcements now coming about about 4X4 MIMO 802.11n configurations with 600Mbps capacity (i.e., throw 4 radios onto a devices that uses them all in concert), one can see how wireless connectivity speeds within networks are rapidly outpacing broadband connectivity outside of the network.

Good thing us community wireless networking uber-geeks already planned for that eventuality and built infrastructures that could take advantage of all this excess capacity. Ask your provider if they're doing likewise.

Initial details regarding the actual parameters of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) are finally beginning to be released. The information is rather limited, but here's what we can glean thus far from the Recovery.gov website:

• Applications for the first wave of funding requests are going to be due[released by] June 30, 2009 (to be awarded in December 2009). This is remarkably short notice to turn around a well thought out proposal -- especially since the details of what these proposals should actually look like haven't been released.
• The second wave of funding requests will be from October to December, 2009.
• The third wave will take place from April to June 2010.
• All awards must be made by September 2010.
• $350 million will be available for broadband mapping.
• $250 million will be avialable to encourage sustainable broadband adoption.
• $200 million will be available to increase public computer center capacity.
• The key metrics for measuring success (and thus, evaluating the competitiveness of each grant application) look to be:
  Jobs created
  Census tracks served
  Homes/businesses passed
  Investment funding ARRA leverages
  New equipment/capacity/users of the network

Hopefully, more information will be release soon as this info is woefully incomplete. In the interim, many of us continue to search for insight into what NTIA and RUS have planned regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

If you have more info, please let me know.

I've been fascinated by the recent announcement that Australia is spending $31 billion USD to upgrade its broadband. With all the excitement and fuss over the broadband stimulus funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it may seem strange to be claiming that the $7.2 billion is a pitifully small amount -- but let me bring this home for you:

Australia has a population of roughly 22 million people and is spending $31 billion USD. That works out to over $1400 per person.

The U.S. has a population of roughly 306 million people and is spending $7.2 billion USD. That works out to a bit under $25 per person.

To be commiserate commensurate with Australia, the US should be spending over $430 billion on its broadband infrastructure.

Jessica Clark over at the American Prospect has been thinking about the future of American public media and recently interviewed me, Kinsey Wilson, Rey Ramsey, and Ellen Hume about our thoughts on where we're headed. The article came out on my birthday (hoo-ray!).

Originally from the American Prospect:

Defining Public Media for the Future

The American Prospect

Four experts discuss what "public media" means -- and what it will look like in the future.

Jessica Clark, Kinsey Wilson, Rey Ramsey, Sascha Meinrath and Ellen Hume | April 30, 2009

How can we imagine a public-media network, which not only offers citizens news, information and culture but directly connects them to one another and stimulates debate? We asked four experts in journalism and media policy to help us brainstorm how this might work. An abridged version of their discussion appears below.

What does the phrase "public media 2.0 network" mean to you?

Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president of digital media at National Public Radio:

As we look ahead, there may be some confusion between public media, public-interest media, and journalism. I suppose in the strictest terms, "public media" would be the digital incarnation of legacy institutions such as PBS [the Public Broadcasting Service] and NPR. But in reality what we're going to see is a blurring of the distinction between public media, participatory media, and public-interest journalism. All of these are going to be practiced with a mix of commercial and noncommercial funding, as we see that advertising really doesn't provide sufficient support.

Rey Ramsey, chief executive officer of One Economy Corporation:

I would like to look at what I call "public purpose media," which allows everyone -- particularly low-income people -- to get life-sustaining and life-enhancing information. My goal is to make sure that you get quality information and that it engages you in some way. It's less about who owns it than its actual availability. We need to be smart about digital technology, about being inclusive of minority communities and the poor.

When we launched the Beehive, it was specifically designed to deliver tools and resources [to] low-income people. We've had millions of people visit the site and get info about how to take advantage of income-tax credits and children's health insurance. So when I say "life-sustaining and life-enhancing," that's precisely what I mean. In the public-purpose space, it's not about entertainment; it's really about making sure that very basic things are getting taken care of.

Sascha Meinrath, research director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation

For almost 10 years now, I've been involved with the global justice movement and Indymedia, which at the turn of the millennium pioneered this notion of on-the-streets, participatory journalism. Back in the late 1990s, we created novel ideas about community blogs and open publishing systems that have really caught on since. We really need to take those sorts of ideas and ideals to the next level to create a next-generation public soapbox.

When I think of the crisis that journalism is facing right now, it really centers around the notion of a professional journalist class within our society. They were endowed with both a steady paycheck and with the responsibility to be critical analysts. Clearly, what's happened is that critical analysis and investigative reporting have atrophied -- not that they are not existent but that journalism is not fulfilling that role. And I think people in our society are responding to that.

There's a reason why local media have ceased to be as relevant as they once were. That needs to be recaptured in some way. The role that media play is fundamentally important to civil society, but we need to rediscover what that means in a 21st-century economy and communication society. Community intranets and local control of media are critically important. Maintaining open networks free from censorship is also foundationally important to what this future media might look like.

Ellen Hume, research director for the Center for Future Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I totally disagree that there isn't a vibrant investigative journalism role that's being played. If you look at what local newspapers continue to do with their hands tied behind their backs, there are still people being exposed and going to jail. It's popular to say that investigative journalism is dying, but it's actually resurging in new ways in projects like ProPublica. Now, to say it's all well and good and financed, I wouldn't argue that. But I think that investigative work is really hard to do, and it's hard to imagine it's going to be done by flash mobs and that sort of thing. There is important investigative work that's being done, and sometimes it takes an institution to do it.

But are we going to have radio stations and licenses? Or are we going to be taking our audio bits, posting them using cell phones and other devices onto Web platforms and accessing them in whatever stream we want -- the way we do now with YouTube and other platforms? I think that the station is kind of history.

Wilson:

Not only do I think it's likely in the future, it's already here to some extent. It's very much part of the fabric of the way we're beginning to work.

There needs to be a portal of some sort, so that people looking for public-interest content will be able to find it. Also there needs to be money, to help post and produce some of this content that may be floating around. Is it the government's role to backstop this capacity?

Ramsey:

There is a role for government, but I think that everything should be on the table. Trying to figure out what gatekeeping needs to be done and by whom is not the most important thing at this point. I think it's trying to ensure that some very basic things get done, and there are multiple ways to do this.

I would like to see there be a myriad of creative ways for the consumer to get to the content. We've had too many problems in terms of that; there are still too many segments of the population not being served -- particularly when there's public money being spent. We have to make sure that inclusion is at the top of the list.

Meinrath:

We need government subsidies for the in-depth, long-term work of muckraking. We need a lot more of that in our society. When we don't have it, we go to war over false pretenses and do all sorts of other things that we probably wouldn't be doing if the body politic were better informed. And part of this critical juncture is this reassessment of what it means to be a broadcaster. I think we are very much at the end of the broadcast era. Not that broadcasting ceases to exist, but, like the pamphleteer of old, we are transitioning into something new and different. There will be broadcasters that evolve gracefully and those who cease to exist. But I think content distribution is going to change. It's going to have to, because people are demanding that media be a lot more inclusive and diverse.

Ramsey:

It's really important to separate the notion of function versus institutions. There is investigative reporting going on: That function is occurring. We might need to backstop the function, but what we have is institutions that are faltering, and they're two very separate things.

Wilson:

I'm not so sure I want to see the government directly funding news-gathering per se. We don't have a deep tradition of that in this country, as you do in some other countries in Europe and elsewhere. I think I would want to see some evidence that the firewall between funders and news-gatherers could be maintained.

Hume:

It's problematic to have government fund media production, but I think media capacity or citizen-journalism capacity is a very important thing to consider having government funding for.

I would also like to put in a word for media literacy. I think the education system which the government has influence over is absolutely broken when it comes to civics training and media. In many schools, media literacy -- if they offer it all -- is just "the big corporations are out to screw you, therefore turn off the TV sets." There's so much more to learn. How do you participate using these tools? How should you evaluate whether something is truthful or useful to you? That's such an important part of the new landscape.

But to have government fund actual muckraking, I hate to say it, but I think it's very naive. That just has never worked. On the other hand some institutions are going to be required to have the clout to speak truth to power. The whole flow of power that's changing with public media is both wonderful and frightening, because it's dispersing the ability to hold those stories in the faces of the people in authority and say, "You can't ignore this."

Wilson:

A lot of government funding has been directed toward overcoming the barriers to entry that traditional distribution systems posed. It was very costly to get into the media business, and it required the kind of support that you could get from government to overcome that. We're in an environment now where the cost of information distribution and production is approaching zero. So it raises the prospect of what's really going to get funded.

Hume:

I wasn't talking about the government supporting specific stories and content creation but the capacity for news to be presented. I still think the government needs to have a role in pushing back against some of these efforts to control aspects of the Internet, for example.

Ramsey:

I would probably agree that direct government funding of reporting would be problematic. But there is a fair amount of government money that goes into sustaining and enhancing a system. And there's a lot of money that people fight very hard for in the system under the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And there's a constellation of those who get it and those who don't.

Potentially, a public media 2.0 network could be for people who have been underserved. But there are a lot of competitors for this new space, including institutions that are already getting money under the old system. Is it possible to network together some clout, by bringing some institutions together around a story, maybe on a local level? Has anybody seen this work?

Wilson:

I would venture that the emerging journalism world is going to be a constellation of more-narrowly focused niches that are perhaps drawn together in some fashion, through some kind of network. But audiences will tend to gravitate toward those who create the most commanding experience or content or have the most commanding voice within a particular category. That is a very different model of media than the broad, horizontal cover-the-waterfront sort of journalism that was fashioned in part because of the types of distribution systems that existed.

How those network together, how many different actors come into play, and even whether all of them are traditional journalists remains to be determined.

So is it useful to think about the capacity that we're building -- potentially with government funding -- as the capacity to band together around issues, providing a space where you can discuss those within some civil context? Is that a useful redefining of "public media 2.0"?

Hume:

I think you have to start with where people are feeling passionately connected if you are going to engage them with media. On the other hand, the notion that the government would support issue-based media of any kind -- unless it's propaganda for the military -- strikes me as very unlikely. Anytime you think you're going to get this wonderful moment where the government is going to support media about an issue, someone's going to be on the other side of the issue and say, "No, no, no, you can't do it that way."

Wilson:

I think the audience is going to define how all this gets shaped in ways that it wasn't able to previously. And I think the role for public media is to remove barriers and to ensure that information flows freely, allowing people to communicate easily with one another, to ensure that there are standards around the interchange of information. It's more of an enabling capacity, perhaps, than a convening capacity.

Meinrath:

I actually think that Kinsey hit it on the head when he talked about how costs of distribution are dropping to the floor. Of course, that scares the bejesus out of folks in the traditional media.

We, as a society, have to seriously consider what it means when media and communications become just a fundamental part of everyone's everyday life, except for those left offline. There are detriments to being outside that conversation, that public sphere, as it's growing and growing. We really have to think about spreading connectivity, spreading broadband to all reaches of the country. In terms of innovation, we need to fully reconsider our spectrum. We also need to look at public subsidies for broadband connectivity throughout the country. It's like the über-media: voice, video, e-mail, all of these things wrapped into one. For those left off, it's going to become increasingly difficult to participate in civil society.

The leaking [White House] has begun officially "announcing" that Mignon Clyburn (daughter of powerful South Carolina Congressman and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn) as FCC Commissioner. This has been long expected and rumors have been percolating for several months among those in the know, but this appears to be the first time that Mignon Clyburn has been confirmed in the mainstream press.

So it's a good day to talk more openly about what this means for the general public interest. Let me start by saying that I'm keeping an open mind, having never worked with Ms. Clyburn nor had any personal dealings with her. That said, behind closed doors, just about everyone I've talked with -- right across the board -- has been deeply concerned that Ms. Clyburn will be a disaster for the public interest.

The dominant feeling is that she is extremely tight with the telecom incumbents and that having her on the FCC will all but ensure a stalemate that will prevent any meaningful telecom reforms from being passed. To me, this seems strange since so many of us on the Technology, Media, & Telecom advisory committee during the campaign were looking forward to much needed and innovative reforms once the new FCC was in place.

If this is true, President Obama would have really sold the public interest down the river. Either way, even objectively this looks like a traditional "inside baseball" quid-pro-quo -- appointing the daughter of a powerful congressman to score political points just doesn't look good. And there's the issue that the cable and broadcasting industry are very excited for this nominee -- so much so that it has a lot of folks worried about how independent Ms. Clyburn will be vis-a-vis these incumbents' interests.

What I had heard is that her first choices of jobs were all involving the DoE; but having failed to secure a position at the Department of Energy, the FCC Commissionership was the "booby prize." Given how little is actually known about Ms. Clyburn's positions on key telecommunications issues and her lack of experience in this area, one cannot help but wonder why she's been chosen for such a critically important post.

With nothing less than the future of telecommunications riding on the choices this nominee would be making, it leaves me deeply concerned about the future of the FCC and it's efficacy in addressing a host of problems that have continued to worsen due to it's lax oversight and its abdication of responsibility to adequately regulate to maximize the public interest.

I'd certainly like to learn more about what her positions on the actual issues are -- it would greatly relieve my trepidation. Currently, I see the incumbents rejoicing and veteran public interest folks being worried and that's never a good sign.

I'll continue my searches for information on her actual stances on the issues (good, bad, and ugly).

[UPDATE01] I've begun collecting reactions from folks in the know -- here's what they've been saying (they're not "on the record" and thus I'm keeping them anonymous):

"...her father is the Whip and he went through hell just to get to Congress after losing a few state campaigns, she won't do anything that will rock the boat for her father nor his chances of running for Gov. of SC someday." [Given the power of AT&T and the telcos in South Carolina (many of whom are major contributors to Jim Clyburn's congressional campaigns) this would imply that she would be very unlikely to vote against their interests.

"Arrgghhh" [My personal favorite. In particular, it sums up the fear that one CLEC in South Carolina has about Ms. Clyburn and it's implications for competitors to the telco incumbents.]

I'm hopeful that over the course of the next 24 hours we'll start seeing more information on her public statements and votes on issues intersecting with telecom policy. Stay tuned.

Tomorrow I'm keynoting at the "Internet Openness: Net Neutrality and Beyond" event at the Cardozo Law School in New York City. It should be a spirited discussion since I'm debating with Berin Szoka from the Progress and Freedom Foundation (a right-leaning, market fundamentalist think tank). Interestingly enough, I've spoken with Adam Thierer (aslo of PFF) on on many issues (e.g., privacy and data protection, freedom of speech, etc.) we vociferously agree.

But the "leave it all to the 'free market'" that wants to keep government 100% out of telecommunications is where I think PFF goes off the deep end. "Self-regulation" only goes so far, without government setting parameters for markets, one ends up with the malfeasance and collapse of the savings and loans, airlines, car manufacturers, and now banks (and all of this in the past 25 years). You'd think we would have learned by now that government acts as a check and balance -- without it, markets spin out of control. And in much the same way that you wouldn't want the government running everything, neither do you want markets running amok (only to be bailed out with my hard-earned tax dollars when they come back for a bailout to the same government they didn't want involved in the first place).

Should be an interesting time. Event power is below; here's more:

4/21/2009

11:30 am - 5:00 pm

The Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal is pleased to present a symposium on Internet openness, net neutrality, content diversity and competition. What is the new definition of net neutrality and what are the developing mandates? How do policymakers promote or harm the richness and diversity online content/media? Join the lively debate with speakers including Sascha Meinrath (New America Foundation); Berin Szoka (Progress & Freedom Foundation); John Morris (Center for Democracy & Technology); Matthew Lasar (Ars Technica); Fred Benenson (Creative Commons); Jonathan Askin (Brooklyn Law School).

This event will take place in the Moot Court Room, Tuesday, April 21, 2009, at 11:30am. We will be providing lunch and a reception to follow, so please RSVP (mweldon@yu.edu) to ensure enough food is available. CLE credit will also be available: 1.5 credits for each of the two sessions.

Schedule:

11:15am: Check-in
11:30am: Session 1(Meinrath/Szoka)
1:00pm: Lunch
2:15pm: Session 2 (Morris/Askin/Lasar/Benenson/Heller)
4:00pm: Reception

Government Technology just published a feature article I wrote -- should be hitting news stands soon, in the meantime, the article is up on their website. Thanks to Mark Cooper, John Windhausen, Ben Lennett, Debbie Goldman, Robert Atkinson, Wally Bowen, Derek Turner, and everyone else who provided insight, comments, and feedback for the article.

Here's the text:

The economic crisis that's hammering the U.S. has created space for innovative thinking and new ideas. "The age of market fundamentalism, with its ideological belief that markets are always right, that wealth should trickle down and that less government is better, is simply over," said Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America. Furthermore, Cooper said, "Public policy must start from a new understanding of the role of government and the private sector." This new reality has created an opportunity to improve broadband build-out.

For the past six months, a multibillion dollar expenditure battle has waged in Washington, D.C., that will help decide America's communications future. With hundreds of billions of dollars being spent by Congress to stimulate the economy, broadband is finally getting its due. John Windhausen, president of Telepoly Consulting, sums up the rationale: "Big broadband networks promote economic growth and jobs; companies locate businesses in communities that have faster broadband networks; and, in a global economy, local broadband networks help the U.S. attract businesses from overseas."

However, until congressional leaders decided what provisions to include when they reconciled the House and Senate versions of the Economic Stimulus bill, no one really knew exactly how much funding would be made available and through which specific processes and agencies. The compromise plan, we now know, provides $4.4 billion to extend broadband and wireless services to rural, suburban and urban areas through the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration and $2.8 billion to expand broadband access to rural areas through the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service. Spurred by this investment, a healthy debate has sprung up over the details of what an "ideal" broadband plan should entail - a debate that will continue to have relevance as decisions are made on exactly how this stimulus money is spent.

As a co-author of one of these broadband proposals, I've focused on trying to solve the "middle-mile problem" - the lack of competitive service providers connecting last-mile networks to the Internet backbone. I've talked with many key policy proposal drafters in Washington, D.C., and several overlapping facets among these proposals point to better ideas that could be incorporated into an ideal long-term broadband infrastructure build-out. At its heart, however, is a dawning understanding that the days of Internet connectivity being a luxury item are long behind us. Today's debates center on what it means to live in a 21st-century society and work in a modern economy.

 

Is Broadband a Luxury?

We live in a civil society - a place where primary education is free to all, anyone can enjoy a walk through public parks or on sidewalks and freely drive on streets. Libraries in the U.S. loan books for free - literature that can be read on a spring day in parks or beneath the streetlights of Main Street on a warm summer's evening. You don't have to tip the firefighters or pay for police protection. In a civil society, public safety is freely available to everyone.

Americans enjoy myriad services and resources that they don't pay for each time they use them. Yet each of these key facets of contemporary society is part of a new social contract, adopted only after years of battle and turmoil to overcome a status quo (e.g., private fire protection and educational services, or for-fee libraries and parks). Eventually, however, some newfound service models are deemed to provide such an enormous benefit to the population that society is willing to invest in ideas that "lift all boats." As a society, each of us is better off when certain basic services are freely available to all.

At the dawn of the digital era, during this first decade of the 21st century, the most important new commodity is Internet access. A growing canon of research has documented the enormous benefits for those who have broadband access (and the detriments faced by those without it). Connectivity is the currency of the Information Age, much like the computer era integrated machines (from laptops to PDAs, and cell phones to iPods) into our daily regimens, the Industrial Revolution brought manufactured goods to public life and the agrarian revolution helped alleviate famine. A new social contract that includes Internet connectivity for all is not a particularly expensive endeavor - free broadband for everyone would cost a tiny fraction of the Wall Street bailout and would be cheaper than one year of the Iraq war.

Many politicians, from municipal representatives to President Barack Obama, actively support broadband build-outs. And the January debate about the economic stimulus package made nationwide Internet infrastructure development a key component of the intervention. A multifaceted solution is needed. For instance, fuel-efficiency and car-safety standards have helped shape the national transportation grid, but the U.S. had to make a major public investment in the infrastructure. Broadband poses a similar challenge and opportunity.

My colleague Benjamin Lennett of the New America Foundation and I have been working on one proposal, Building a 21st Century Broadband Superhighway: A Concrete Build-out Plan to Bring High-Speed Fiber to Every Community, to create a national broadband superhighway that would provide fiber capacity to cities, towns and rural areas across the U.S. Its core idea is very simple: Each time we rip up, repave or build a road, we should also lay fiber infrastructure along that route anyone can use. Over the next five years, this initiative would create a web of connectivity - a critical new infrastructure for the digital age.

Communities, Internet service providers and municipalities are engaging in demand-side aggregation, but affordable Internet access is lacking - a bottleneck that our proposal solves. Thousands of networks around the globe provide free connectivity to participants. For example, residents of Philadelphia and St. Cloud, Fla., already receive free broadband. Groups like the Tribal Digital Village and CUWiN Foundation have been building free networks to serve local communities for years. There are opportunities in the U.S. to implement broadband solutions that dramatically improve everyone's lives. Therefore, the question is: Does this new administration have the gumption to create a "broadband Apollo project" to maximize the potential of the Information Age?

 

Building Better Broadband

"In the broadband space, for us it is clear that the cozy duopoly of telcos and cable companies has failed to deliver adequate service at reasonable charges as required by the Communications Act," Cooper said during a recent forum at the New America Foundation. "The stimulus package provides an ideal opportunity to try a different approach."

The challenge, then, is finding overlapping areas among the numerous proposals that are being presented. Debbie Goldman, a research economist for the Communications Workers of America, said the No. 1 goal should be to find areas of agreement among key stakeholders. Goldman sees the key as a focus on creating jobs. "If we're going to talk about creating and maintaining jobs, we've got to be technology-neutral and neutral in terms of where this money goes," Goldman said. "We have to make sure it's going to companies and organizations that know how to spend the money, operate and build networks, and can do it fast." To facilitate this, the Communications Workers of America supports targeted tax credits for new investment. And it's not alone.

Robert Atkinson, president and founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, agrees with the Communications Workers of America's assessment. "We think there should be rural tax credits [and] a speed tax credit," Atkinson said.

Wally Bowen, founder and executive director of the Ashville, N.C.-based Mountain Area Information Network, believes the most efficacious intervention would be community-based. "It makes far more sense to direct broadband infrastructure funding to local networks - the local and regional nonprofits, telephone and utility cooperatives and municipalities that have been springing up all around this country," Bowen said. "These are the networks most likely to have ‘shovel-ready' broadband projects, [and] they are more easily held accountable for the taxpayer dollars that are in the stimulus package [because] local network operators live in the communities they serve."

Lennett, a senior program associate of the New America Foundation, said one key problem is perspective. "We are not viewing broadband as infrastructure, we're still viewing it as basic connectivity or a luxury," he explained. The broadband stimulus bill, in its current form, is a one-off intervention. Lennett said this sort of intervention may garner political hay, but the problem is really that "we continue to focus on short-term Band-Aid approaches without having any sense of where we need to go and building in policy mechanisms and recommendations that are going to be focused on long-term approaches ... that will handle the demands of the future."

A key feature of the many proposals that would future-proof broadband networks is ensuring that they remain open to innovation and competition. "Requiring openness for public money is absolutely critical," Lennett said. "The whole point of public subsidization and public investment is that you're trying to benefit as many people as possible. ... If you encourage closed networks that limit who can benefit, that goes against the whole point of public investment."

Derek Turner, research director of the media reform group Free Press, makes the case succinctly: "We don't want to be using federal dollars to fund networks that are closed and discriminatory." In addition, many public-interest groups want to see a package that's specifically targeted to intervene in unserved and underserved U.S. regions. The thinking is that the most bang-for-the-buck will occur "where the investment equation is such that no broadband investment would probably take place there absent some sort of grant infusion from the government," Turner explained. "It's also the best use of money from an economic efficiency standpoint because a lot of these areas have pent-up demand, and you're able to maximize consumer surplus by putting your money there rather than in an area that's already served."

Below is my testimony before NTIA from March 16, 2009. While most of the other folks who presented focused on the impacts for corporations, I wanted to bring the conversation back around to what was primarily important -- the potential positive impacts on local communities. Here's what I said:

Thank you very much. It is good to be here.

For those who know me, I will be taking a slightly different perspective on things. I spent the past decade in addition to my work at the New America Foundation also doing community technology deployment. I have been climbing on roofs, building coalitions and suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous local politics, and I have been successfully implementing solutions in communications that people said were impossible to deploy.

So let me begin by restating what I hope is obvious, which is that private profits are the byproduct of the critically important digital inclusion work -- work that needs to be done desperately in this country -- but they are not the end goal of the stimulus funding.

Our fundamental goal should be to search for the most efficacious eligible entities, both public and private, and maximize the social and economic benefits of this national intervention. It is critically important for NTIA to evaluate each application on its own merits, and not disallow any specific entities or organizations from applying a priori.

The fact is that broad band stimulus is so desperately needed is indicative of the woeful state of current service provisioning within many communities. It's very existence that of the BTOP program points to the need for new thinking and innovation and new strategies that dramatically differ from prior attempts.

The types of eligible private entities we must support must go far beyond usual suspects. Within the private sector NGO's of all types must be eligible and must include nonprofits, hybrid partnerships with municipal entities, etc., etc., etc.

Current measures, business models and implementation plans have far too often marginalized considerable resources and expertise within local communities. The deprioritization of local control and accountability has too often led to far less effective IT training for local residents, lowered educational outcomes, decreased salience to local constituents of the systems that are deployed, and the marginalization of these communities that these resources are supposed to be serving.

So NTIA has an opportunity to begin to address these digital injustices. We have both an obligation to ensure that the very best organizations receive public funding, and the concomitant duty to ensure that the most socially and economically just outcomes are deployed. Diversity ensures that universal and broadband access and the widest span of digital resources becomes a reality.

To sum up, digital inclusion is not just about the services offered, it's about the local control and accountability of these organizations. It's about finding the right institutions and organizations to deliver these services in the first place.

I very much look forward to the following discussion and public comment. Thank you.