It's rare that the New York Times and Wall Street Journal agree so wholeheartedly on things, but this past week has seen both issue calls for wireless innovation across the United States. The New York Times issued a pro-municipal wireless editorial that, among other things, states:

Broadband service is no longer a luxury. It has become a basic part of the infrastructure of education and democracy. EarthLink should fulfill the commitments it made. Even in these tough economic times, cities should keep pushing municipal Wi-Fi and looking for partners and plans that can make it a reality.

Lee Gomes from the Wall Street Journal issued a pro-White Space Device column that focuses on the successes and potential uses of these new technologies:

The white-space proposal has been in the news in recent weeks because of its strong backing by Microsoft and Google, among others. White space, they say, could help create a "Wi-Fi on steroids," with faster connection speeds running over longer distances than are possible now in the hot spots common in homes and coffee shops. As for interference with TV broadcasts -- or with wireless microphones, which use this same spectrum -- that can be easily handled. Before transmitting any data, a white-space networking device would "listen" to detect if a frequency is in use. A version of this "smart sensing" is already widely and successfully deployed by the U.S. military.

Here are the full stories:

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I was recently looking at data over the course of a week from the US Census, the ITU, and the OECD, all looking at indicators of broadband services in the United States. What grabbed my attention was the remarkably close relationship between the diminishing number of Internet Service Providers and the global standing of the United States when it comes to broadband penetration rates. Clearly there's a relationship here, the question is, what's driving this mess? Here's the data in graphical format (sources are the US Census, ITU, and OECD):

As I reported earlier, Bell Canada has been caught throttling traffic from independent service providers. More data is now coming in and the extent of the bandwidth throttling has been remarkable. Here's a 24hr snapshot from one ISP:

Meanwhile, independent ISPs have set up a map of where they're being discriminated against -- as it turns out, Bell Canada has been doing this to scores and scores of competitors. Here's the map:

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FCC Commissioner McDowell presented at the Tech Policy Summit pointing to the recently announced Comcast/Bittorrent "solution" whereby Comcast would stop degrading Bittorrent traffic as a huge success. Personally, I think the so-called solution does nothing to protect end-users from future malfeasance by network operators, so I asked Commissioner McDowell what the FCC is doing to prevent what will certainly become a data obfuscation arms race from developing. Here's the problem in a few easy-to-understand steps:

1. A network operator discriminates against certain types of traffic.

2. End users begin to encrypt their traffic and pass data from applications and/or services that are discriminated against through an encrypted tunnel (e.g., VPN, SSH, etc.).

3. The network operator is now forced into a fairly problematic decision -- if they don't discriminate against encrypted traffic, more and more services and applications will encrypt their traffic; but if they do discriminate against encrypted traffic, they're saying, in essence, that if you want privacy, you will get worse service.

4. Meanwhile, corporations that rely upon VPN for their everyday dealings, will scream bloody murder; so then network operators are forced into an even more dastardly decision -- discriminate wholesale against classes of users. In other words, all residential-class users will be foisted off into a low-priority tier of service.

So how can this be avoided?

Build capacity.

A great resource discussing the rationality of this solution is David Levinson and Andrew Odlyzko's, "Too expensive to meter: The influence of transaction costs in transportation and communication". But the main issue is that building capacity is the best solution for end users, while the tiering and further commodification of existing bandwidth comes at the literal expense of end users.

Steven Mansour just pinged me about Bell Canada purposefully degrading traffic of independent internet service providers. This is a huge violation of network neutrality and exactly the kind of behavior by telco incumbents that must be made illegal. Michael Geist looks to have broken the story -- I'm sure it'll be coming out to the more mainstream media momentarily.

An article on municipal wireless I recently wrote for GovTech's Digital Communities Magazine on the myth that municipal wireless has been failing just came out. If you're looking for more background behind my recent statements in the New York Times, then this is certainly worth a read:

Municipal Wireless Success Demands Public Involvement, Experts Say

Most media have it wrong. Municipal wireless networks across the United States didn't stumble in 2007 - high-profile cities where deals fell apart, such as Chicago, San Francisco and Houston, were not going to finance, own or operate their respective networks. These weren't municipal networks at all. The business model that faltered in 2007 was the "private corporate franchise" model based on the deal that Philadelphia and EarthLink agreed to in 2006. It was, in fact, the free market that failed last year - not governments in their traditional role as the builders and maintainers of critical infrastructure.

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Last month, Comcast announced it was taking over control of Insight's networks in much of the Midwest. Last week, without any warning to its customers, Comcast cut off service as a part of a "network upgrade." For the past decade, the Chambana.net community webhosting project has provided low-cost services to our local community. For the past several years, we've utilized (and paid the premium for) enterprise class connectivity.

Since we're in the midst of upgrading and adding redundant backup uplinks, we were quite reliant upon Comcast. We've had to pay a huge mark-up for services that are supposedly better than the norm -- but Comcast completely disregarded the service level agreements that Insight had and, but cutting off service, caused the outage of service to scores of websites, hundreds of e-mail lists, and thousands of users.

The silver lining in all of this is that after two days of zero response from Comcast, Pete Collins was able to put us in contact with a Comcast employee (Jim) from the Chicago offices and Jim was able to get things cleared up fairly quickly. The total outage time was several days, and without Jim's help, would have been far longer.

But the real problem is that this sort of massive disruption to service was both completely unnecessary, entirely avoidable, and done in an environment where Comcast faces no negative repercussions for causing substantial harm to the communities that rely upon Internet connectivity for their livelihoods. This sort of business practice must be disallowed by the Public Utility Commissions and other bodies that are supposed to protect the general public from this sort of corporate malfeasance. Otherwise, it's only a question of time before it happens again.

"EU Court: Downloaders Can Stay Private" state the Associated Press; "EU court says file sharers don't have to be named" says Reuters; "EU top court protects downloaders' privacy" writes Xinhau; "File-sharers 'need not be named'" is the BBC headline. From London to Beijing, the media are reporting on the recent high court ruling in the European Union -- in civil suits, Internet Service Providers don't need to turn over information on file-sharing customers, regardless of whether they may be sharing copyrighted materials. Meanwhile, in the United States, AT&T (among others) is considering adding deep packet inspection to its core routers in order to filter copyrighted content (whether legal or illegally used).

The EU and the US are launching on two entirely different trajectories -- one that balances copyright holders' rights with the privacy and fair use rights of the general public (the EU) and one where copyright owners are systematically stripping the general public of its fair use and privacy rights (the US). In addition, US policies will lead to a data obfuscation arms race -- making it increasingly difficult to engage in legitimate law enforcement.

At some point, I suspect that policy-makers will need to step in to reign in the RIAA, MPAA, and their allies and re-establish a balance between the rights of copyright holders and and general public. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, is focused on balancing of rights, authorizing Congress to: "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" while, at the same time, "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Alas, the US has become increasingly blinkered -- focusing more and more on the latter and ignoring the responsibility to promote science and art as well.

My friend and colleague, Pete Collins, was highlighted by the Beacon News. For those who don't know him, he's one of those very rarest of breeds -- a super-tech-savvy, personable ubergeeks capable of distilling technology's complexities into accessible human-speak. When I first met Pete a few year's back we immediately hit it off and I'm quite glad to see folks recognizing him for all the amazing work on municipal networking that he's coordinated. I'm very much looking forward to catching up with him in Vegas.

Meanwhile, as alluded to in the original article, Pete did a stint as rock star -- those in the know also eagerly await his yearly Giant Rock Star Party... last year I flew in from the East Coast to attend and boy was it something. As with all legendary parties, the details are hush hush.

Meanwhile, here's homage from the Beacon News:

A big year for the IT guy
Issues forced techies to the forefront in 2007

December 28, 2007
By STEVE LORD Staff Writer

GENEVA -- The IT guy has long ago shed the nerd image and become the VIP of the office.

And in 2007, at least in the Fox Valley, the people who run Information Technology took it one step further and stepped out from behind the door to the server office, becoming a public face themselves.

No one personified that more than Pete Collins, IT guy for the city of Geneva. Whether lobbying for a fair law governing cable and Internet video, helping get a deal for free wireless Web service or turning on the city's webcasts of City Council meetings, Collins was certainly no quiet guy behind glasses and a pocket protector.

"I've got a cool job," he says. "And to me, part of the job is I'm supposed to stand up and fight for the city."

Collins did that in 2007, wearing a path between City Hall in Geneva and the Statehouse in Springfield to lobby for the public policy side of the Cable and Video Competition Law of 2007. The battle for more than six months between AT&T and individual municipalities and counties centered on who would license video, whether it was delivered through coaxial cable or fiber optic on the Internet.

In the end, AT&T got its desire to only get a state franchise, rather than have to negotiate franchises with individual counties and cities. That also applies to cable suppliers such as Comcast.

But work by Collins and many others representing large and small municipalities insured that cities still will get franchise fees, and will have control through the permitting process of what is built in public rights-of-way. It also attached customer standards that video deliverers must live up to.

While the bill was not perfect -- Collins himself was not completely happy with the final outcome -- it was the result of the expertise of Collins and people like him that helped make the bill something practical cities could work with.

The IT guys are more than fix-it technicians these days; they are policy advisers, too.

"You have to ask yourself, what is the role of IT in the city," Collins said. "We're looking out for what's best for the citizens."

Collins has been no shrinking violet in the area of delivery to the public of television and Internet services. He is president of the Illinois Municipal Broadband Communications Association, and has been involved in the information technology field for almost 20 years.

He speaks regularly at national broadband seminars and summits. This week, he is speaking at a wireless conference in Las Vegas.

While Collins has been in the forefront, promoting municipal broadband for a while, he admitted 2007 was an unusually busy year.

"There was a just a lot going on this year," he said.

We just launched the Wireless Innovation Alliance here at year's end to help counter the massive, multi-million dollar lobbying and PR blitz by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). At stake is access to the unused frequencies in-between TV broadcast channels. The NAB says that allowing unlicensed devices in these channels would destroy TV (and they have zillions of dollars and lobbyists on their side). We say that's bunk (and have research/physics/reality) on our side.

I recently drafted an in-depth white space device policy backgrounder on the issue that's both accessible and chock-full of useful information about white space devices.

Meanwhile, a number of congressional members weighed in this week supporting white space devices, and Ofcom (the British equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission) just announced their support for white space devices -- what they call "interleaved spectrum" (maybe physics works differently across the pond?).

If you're now asking yourself, "What are these white space devices of which you speak?" -- here's a quick synopsis of the current battle (from the white space device policy backgrounder):

White spaces devices use the unassigned frequencies between broadcast TV channels to offer a range of wireless services to the public. Access to the vacant TV channels in each market has been the subject of intense lobbying, yet far too many of the arguments against white space devices rely upon misinformation about the technologies and the FCC process that will ensure that harmful interference TV broadcasts and other incumbent services does not occur. Much of the analysis that underlies anti-white space device lobbying does not equip policymakers with the information they need to make decisions in the public interest. We believe that policymakers deserve better than the torrent of misinformation that has characterized the debate over white spaces devices. Therefore, this paper is an effort to help policymakers strike the appropriate balance between protecting existing services from interference while making the benefits of mobile broadband services available and affordable for all consumers. This policy backgrounder contains an analysis of the impact of white spaces devices from the New America Foundation, an independent think tank that has published numerous independent studies on this issue over the past five years. The paper contains links to primary sourcing to support its claims and aid in the critical analysis of the counterclaims currently being made about these new technologies. Our goal is to provide decision-makers and interested parties with: 1) a brief historical background to the current FCC proceedings; 2) a description of White Space Device (WSD) technologies; 3) a point-counterpoint “Myths vs. Facts” section on some of the key concerns raised about WSDs; 4) an overview of the public benefits of WSDs; and 5) a concise summary of where we are in the multi-phase process of adopting WSD technologies for consumer use.