By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 2 - Broadband growth in the United States has effectively stalled over the past five months, a possible victim of the economic slowdown, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Some 55 percent of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection, or a broadband connection, in their home, according to the report, “Home Broadband Adoption 2008.”
That number compares with 47 percent of adult Americans with broadband in early 2007, and 54 percent in December 2007. Hence broadband growth over the previous 12 or 13 months has dramatically tapered off.
The growth rate in broadband adoption from 2007 to 2008 was 17 percent. That compares favorably to the 12 percent growth recorded in the 2006 to 2007 timeframe, according to Pew’s annual studies in 2007 and 2008.
Yet for poor Americans, as well as African Americans, broadband adoption was slow or negative.
Among adults living in households with annual incomes of less than $20,000 annually, broadband adoption has actually regressed: the percentage dropped from 28 percent in March 2007 to 25 percent in April/May 2008, said the report.
Among African Americans, home broadband adoption stood at 43 percent in May 2008, versus 40 percent the previous year.
“The flat growth in home high-speed adoption for low-income Americans suggests that tightening household budges may be affecting people’s choice of connection speed at home,” said John Horrigan, associate director of research at the Pew Internet & American Life Project and author of the report.
“Broadband is more costly on a monthly basis than dial-up, and some lower income Americans may be unwilling to take on another expense,” said Horrigan.
Pew’s annual report has become the respected benchmark for understanding broadband adoption within the United States.
Looking over the past year, three groups did experience relatively strong growth in broadband adoption from 2007 to 2008:
- Older Americans: Those aged 50 and above experienced a 26 percent growth rate in broadband from 2007 to 2008.
- Lower-middle income Americans: Those with household incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 annually saw broadband penetration grow by 24 percent over the same period.
- Rural Americans: Among those who live in rural areas, 38 percent have broadband at home now, versus 31 percent a year ago, or a growth rate of 23 percent over the same period.
The Pew report identifies a number of other trends: including the fact that broadband prices have only dropped four percent over the past two-and-a-half years, that affordability (or the lack thereof) is having an impact on broadband adoption, and that wireless technologies may be poised to play a larger role in making broadband more widely available in the home.
Broadband users reported paying $34.50 a month for high-speed internet services in April 2008, versus $36 a month in December 2005 — a four percent decline. Cable modem users reported paying an average of $37 a month (versus $41 in 2005), while Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) users reported paying $31.50 a month (versus $32 in 2005).
Dial-up users, who now constitute just 10 percent of American adults who go online, now cite price as the key reason for why they do not subscribe to broadband.
Asked, “What would it take to get you to switch to broadband?”, dial-up users said:
35% The prices has to come down/be more affordable/cheaper
19% Nothing will convince me to get broadband
16% Don’t know
11% Other
10% It would have to become available where I live
4% When my cable/telephone company offers it where I live
4% Refused
2% Someone else will pay for it
2% If it was free
0% When my children get older
Note: Total may exceed 100% due to multiple responses.
Source: Q23 in the Spring Tracking Survey 2008 (conducted April 8-May 11, 2008), Princeton Survey Research Associates International) for Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The Pew report also found that fixed wireless services have increased their role in the home broadband marketplace, from next to nothing in 2002 to about 12 percent of home broadband connections. DSL maintains an edge in the marketplace, with 46 percent of broadband users subscribing, versus 39 percent for cable modem service. And the number of fiber optic users finally nudged above negligible, with 2 percent of home users subscribing.
Reports and Documents Referenced in this Article:
Editor’s Note:
BroadbandCensus.com continues to work with the Pew Internet & American Life Project on a report about the connection speeds whereby Americans access the Internet. This report, to be released later this summer, will include the first set of preliminary data about internet speeds obtained by BroadbandCensus.com.
Launched in January 2008, BroadbandCensus.com began running a beta version of an internet speed test on February 21. We invite you to take the Broadband Census and compare your internet speed with those of others.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has been a supporter of BroadbandCensus.com, and has contracted with BroadbandCensus.com to gather information about users’ broadband experiences and to incorporate those findings into a Pew report on broadband.
-Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=69
Tags: Broadband Census · Pew Internet & American Life Project · broadband · broadband data
News from the Personal Democracy Forum in New York:
By Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com
NEW YORK, June 24 – A group of non-profits, businesses and others organizations seeking to guide the creation of a national broadband plan on Tuesday announced the formation of a new initiative, “Internet for Everyone,” seeking the highlight the crucial importance of broadband.
The initiative, which was officially launched at a breakout room in the Lincoln Center here, where the Personal Democracy Forum was being held, gathering internet luminaries including Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig; Vint Cerf, chief technology evangelist at Google, Tim Wu, Columbia University law professor and Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press.
[…] Continue Reading “Free Press, Google and Others Form Pro-Broadband Initiative” at BroadbandCensus.com
Tags: Free Press · Personal Democracy Forum · broadband · google · net neutrality
Over at the Communications Workers of America’s blog, Speed Matters, the union claims credit for the Federal Communications Commission’s recent order requiring broadband companies to provide the FCC with more information, including data about availability by Census tract.
The blog notes:
The CWA Speed Matters campaign can claim another victory – this time at the FCC. As part of our Speed Matters campaign, CWA called on the FCC to increase its definition of “high speed” – a definition that had not changed for nine years — and to improve its broadband data collection.
Well, it is possible that the FCC’s broadband data collection will be improved. But the public is not likely to benefit from any improvements.
The blog post makes no mention of the fact that the FCC will continue to shield the names of the broadband providers that offer service in a particular ZIP code or Census tract. BroadbandCensus.com criticized the FCC for its failure to change this policy. The current policy limits consumers’ and citizens’ ability to benefit from local broadband information.
Also, with regards to speeds, the CWA post appears to misstate what the FCC required.
It is correct that, as part of order issued on June 13 (nearly three months after it was voted on the agency’s five commissioners), the FCC is requiring broadband providers to now tell the agency the speeds at which they offer service, grouped into eight separate speed tiers.
The agency will continue to collect data about services offered at 200 kilobits per second (Kbps). Only the second tier, or services offered at greater than 768 Kbps, will count as “broadband” under the new definition. Here are the speed tiers:
1. 200 Kbps - 768 Kbps
2. 768 Kbps - 1.5 Mbps
3. 1.5 Mbps - 3 Mbps
4. 3 Mbps - 6 Mbps
5. 6 Mbps - 10 Mbps
6. 10 Mbps - 25 Mbps
7. 25 Mbps - 100 Mbps
8. Greater than 100 Mbps
But CWA’s blog goes further, stating that “the FCC did adopt other CWA recommendations – especially to collect data on upstream and downstream speeds.”
The FCC order does not require either the carriers or the engage to engage in speed tests about actual broadband performance. It only requires that carriers say what they currently offer. The FCC document has a “further notice” section, in which the agency asks for comments on whether, and how, it should conduct information about “delivered speed[s].”
CWA also touts various pieces legislation in Congress that would go beyond the FCC order: the Broadband Data Improvement Act, S. 1492, introduced by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and the Broadband Census of America Act, H.R. 3919, introduced by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
Unlike AT&T’s Jim Cicconi, who said on June 13 that the company believes the FCC’s order has accomplished what the bills set out to achieve (while insisting that the company has no problem with the bills), CWA pushes these bills because they “would make funds available to states to collect broadband data.”
An important difference between the two bills, however, is that addition to providing money for state initiatives to map out broadband, the Broadband Census of America Act, H.R. 3919, also calls for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to create a publicly-available map of broadband deployment. The map would feature not only broadband availability, but also “each commercial provider or public provider of broadband service capability.”
BroadbandCensus.com seeks to provide the public with information about local broadband availability, competition, speeds and prices. In order to make this information as useful to the public as possible, BroadbandCensus.com believes that the names of the companies that provide broadband – and the speeds and prices at which they actually deliver service – must also be made available as part of any serious effort to map out the state of broadband in America.
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=57
Tags: Broadband Census · broadband data
June 22 - The subject of tiered access to high-speed internet services has been much in the news, with the announcements by Time Warner Cable, and also Cox Communications, that they would roll out tiered services.Well, the news out of NXTcomm08, the telecommunications industry conference last week in Las Vegas, only seems to underscore the prospect that greater control by network providers is on the horizon. According to a survey by Tellabs and research firm IDC, telecommunications professionals are split down the middle on whether increasing bandwidth demands are likely to “break” the Internet.
According to the survey, half of respondents said bandwidth demands would “break” the Internet.
Of greater interest, in my opinion:
Of the 80% who identified a way to deal with internet congestion, 32% think providers address spikes in traffic by prioritizing via packet inspection, while 24% believe that spikes are better handled by charging more for excess bandwidth.
My friend Chris Parente blogged about this development on Saturday, and he was kind enough to ask for my reaction. This is what I said:
Whether or not new bandwidth demands on the Internet cause carriers to offer tiered pricing or to throttle particular applications or protocols, independent monitoring will be crucial. The core purpose of BroadbandCensus.com is to provide bandwidth consumers, both individuals and businesses, with a place to find local information about broadband availability, competition, speeds, prices and quality of service.
-Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=49
Tags: Broadband Census · broadband data
The portion of the conference that I attended centered on the issue of “mapping” out the post-broadcast world. I also Twittered on the conference, and they are visible in the right-hand column of the blog.
Tags: Uncategorized
WASHINGTON, June 15 - In an effort to increase the data that the Federal Communications Commission has available as it designs broadband policies, on Thursday the FCC ordered broadband providers to provide the agency with more detailed information.
For the past eight years, broadband providers had to provide the FCC with semi-annual information about the number of subscribers that they have in each ZIP code. Now, they will need to provide the number of subscribers in each Census tract, too.
In a last-minute change sought by AT&T and the non-profit group Free Press, the FCC decided to also require broadband carriers to separate out the number of business from residential customers.
Additionally, under a new form created by the broadband data order, carriers must also say how many of their subscribers within each Census tract fit into each of eight separate speed tiers.
The tiers are as follows:
(1) greater than 200 kbps but less than 768 kbps; (2) equal to or greater than 768 kbps but less than 1.5 mbps; (3) equal to or greater than 1.5 mbps but less than 3.0 mbps; (4) equal to or greater than 3.0 mbps but less than 6.0 mbps, (5) equal to or greater than 6.0 mbps but less than 10.0 mbps; (6) equal to or greater than 10.0 mbps but less than 25.0 mbps; (7) equal to or greater than 25.0 mbps but less than 100.0 mbps; and (8) equal to or greater than 100 mbps.
Data about the numbers of subscribers in each ZIP code is kept by the agency and has not been released to the public. Additionally, the FCC does not release the names of which carriers offer broadband service within a particular ZIP code.
The orders released by the FCC on Thursday make no changes to existing rules regarding the confidentiality of this data.
However, the broadband data order does initiate a new proceeding whereby the FCC will consider how it should voluntarily collect additional broadband data, including data about customer Internet speeds. The agency says it is doing this so that it may propose “a national broadband availability mapping program.” It says it wants to consider confidentially rules for such additional data.
The FCC has been under growing pressure for years to collect more comprehensive information about broadband. A variety of public and private initiatives have been launched seeking access to more granular broadband data, including efforts by the California Broadband Task Force, ConnectKentucky, and this publication, BroadbandCensus.com.
Additionally, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed by the Center for Public Integrity, sought the names of broadband providers offering service within each ZIP code. A federal district court judge denied the effort in October 2007.
And at least three pieces of federal legislation seek better data from the FCC and other communications agencies: the “Broadband Census of America Act,” H.R. 3919, introduced by Ed Markey, D-Mass., Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, the “Connect the Nation Act,” S. 1190, by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and the “Broadband Data Improvement Act,” S. 1492, by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii. Markey’s bill has passed the House of Representatives; neither of the Senate measures has passed the chamber.
The broadband order had been pending nearly three months at the communications agency. It was relased together with a separate order modifying its original one. The FCC voted to enhance the reporting details on March 19, but hadn’t required broadband carriers to separate out the number of business from residential customers.
FCC Democratic Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein applauded the change to separate out business and residential reporting.
“Without this fundamental change, the usefulness of the improvements that we made in March would have been severely compromised,” Adelstein said in a Thursday statement released with the revised order. “By now distinguishing between residential and business customers at a more granular level, we will be much better positioned to understand the factors that affect broadband adoption,” he said.
URL for this article: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=35
Organizations and Topics Mentioned in this Article:
Editor’s Note:
BroadbandCensus.com has been closely following the data collection issue. We will issue a statement reacting to the FCC’s order later today.
-Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
Tags: Broadband Census · Connect Kentucky · Connected Nation · FCC · broadband data
Today I’ve filed several articles on BroadbandCensus.com with extensive coverage from the Broadband Policy Summit last Thursday and Friday. You can also see the links to these stories and others on broadband, at the home page of BroadbandCensus.com. (Brief excerpts from several of these stories are included further below as well.)
Check back at BroadbandCensus.com on Monday morning, when I’ll be posting material about the Federal Communications Commission’s Friday decision on broadband data issues.
June 14 - Critics and proponents of Network Neutrality squaring off on the topic on Friday agreed that recent actions by both cable and wireless providers had had re-vivified the debate about the topic. read more
June 13 - America’s wireless policies continue to be emulated by developing nations, Ambassador David Gross, United States coordinator for international communications and information policy, said Friday. read more
June 12 - Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., decried the move to impose Network Neutrality on broadband carriers, speaking at a keynote luncheon address at the Broadband Policy Summit IV here. read more
June 12 - Questions about the availability and detail of broadband data featured prominently in presentations and in discussions at Thursday’s sessions of Broadband Policy Summit IV. read more
Tags: Broadband Census
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 14 - Critics and proponents of Network Neutrality squaring off on the topic on Friday agreed that recent actions by both cable and wireless providers had had re-vivified the debate about the topic.
Comcast’s actions blocking upsteam traffic using the peer-to-peer program BitTorrent – currently under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission – continued to be a source of controversy between the cable industry and Net Neutrality advocates.
The debate, “Net Neutrality: It’s Back Again!”, took place at the Broadband Policy Summit IV, sponsored by Pike and Fischer.
Gigi Sohn, President of the non-profit group Public Knowledge, blasted Comcast’s practice, and the company’s response, after the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Associated Press reported about its tactics, last fall.
Comcast “lied about it, and they continue to lie about it,” said Sohn.
[more at BroadbandCensus.com…]
Tags: Broadband Census
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 12 - Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., decried the move to impose Network Neutrality on broadband carriers, speaking at a keynote luncheon address at the Broadband Policy Summit IV here.
Restrictions on the ability of carriers to design the rules whereby data flows over their networks are a bad idea, Stearns said.
He was particularly critical of a bill, the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act,” H.R. 5353, introduced by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.
[more at BroadbandCensus.com…]
Tags: Broadband Census
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 12 - Questions about the availability and detail of broadband data featured prominently in presentations and in discussions at Thursday’s sessions of the Broadband Policy Summit IV, which was sponsored by Pike & Fischer.
“I have been long lamented that we don’t have a national broadband policy,” said Jeff Campbell, senior director of technology and communications policy at Cisco Systems. “If we did have a national broadband plan, we would have to define what exactly is the problem that we are attempting to solve.”
[more at BroadbandCensus.com…]
Tags: Broadband Census
Editor’s Note: I’ll be blogging much of today from the Broadband Policy Summit IV at BroadbandCensus.com. Check back for updates!
-Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps, in the keynote address: “The issue of a national broadband strategy is beginning to take on a life of its own. We are going to hear more about it in the national campaign, and we are going to hear more about it when the new Congress assembles next year.”
Copps also praised the March decision by the FCC to update and expand broadband data collection. (The formal decision from the agency has not yet been released.)
On the first panel, Greg Rothschild, top aide to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., said that the current Congress wasn’t very focused on telecom-related issues. However, he said, Network Neutrality remained the “wild card” in the debate:
“Network neutrality can always bubble up…. Net neutrality moves to the forefront depending on consumer reaction, and a lot of that depends on the network operators,” said Rothschild.
“Last Congress, when Net neutrality was a big issue, we had votes in the subcommittee, and the full committee, and [in Congress.] Frankly, Net neutrality, or non-discrimination [rules] lost all three times.”
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=23
Tags: Broadband Census
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 3 - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday that his company’s attempt to acquire Yahoo was an effort to bring greater competition to the media business and the advertising industry.
“We are trying to give good competition to the market leader in that category,” Ballmer said about Google, his voice rising to a pitch as he addressed a question about changes in the market for online advertising.
“What about this Yahoo thing?” Ballmer asked rhetorically, referring to Microsoft’s continued quest for an aliance or acquisition of Web portal Yahoo
“The fundamental driver [is that] we are aiming to accelerate our move to get scale in online advertising. We think that this will be an important part of how the media business shakes out,” Ballmer said.
Ballmer, speaking at the annual gala dinner of the electronics association AeA, framed the Redmond, Wash.-based software company’s strategic moves vis-a-vis Google — which opposes a Microsoft-Yahoo combination — as a task to which ingenious software should be applied.
He criticized Google for failing to innovate — “search technology hasn’t changed a lot over five years” — and said that software was needed to empower better searches.
Better software will in turn enhance the sale of advertising, which is, he said “a good part of the media business.”
“At the end of the day, if there is good competition, the media producers will get paid a fair return from advertising on their site,” Ballmer said. “If there is not good competition, they will end up having to think about that in a different way.”
However the Yahoo maneuvering turn out, Ballmer left little doubt that the Internet had turned “the media and the advertising that supports it” on its head.
Ballmer also touted the continued progress of Moore’s Law, the technological maxim which says that computing power doubles every 18 months to two years. Moore’s law is name after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Silicon Valley microprocessing giant Intel. Technological progress will continue to bring faster processing, better digital storage, more flexible display technologies and faster wireless connectivity.
“We don’t exactly take [wireless broadband networks everywhere] for granted right now, but we are getting very close,” said Ballmer. He recounted how, on a recent trip to the African nation of Burkina Faso, he was “browsing the ‘Net, the same way over wireless as if in Seattle.”
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=11
Tags: AeA · Moore's Law · Yahoo · advertising · google · media business · microsoft · search · wireless
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 2 - Ensuring that all Americans have access to broadband is about more than ensuring high-speed Internet connectivity, said the CEO of the One Economy, a non-profit organization promoting a philosophy of “digital inclusion.”
In addition to ensuring that broadband is present, affordable and available for adoption by low-income Americans, groups aiming to make a difference in stemming the digital divide must also focusing on human capital and digital media content, said Rey Ramsey of One Economy, speaking last week at plenary session the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks here.
One Economy has been seeking to bring broadband into public housing developments, and then to create the tools and incentives for residents to use broadband. The group has sought created its digital content, including the Web site beehive.org, about emergency preparedness, and is currently developing a “public internet channel,” which aims to provide what it calls “a 21st century public service benefit for all Americans.”
“It is important to attack everything on the supply and demand side,” said Ramsey, rather than focus merely on the availability of broadband in a particular community. “So much attention is placed on the connectivity” piece of broadband, he said.
Ramsey said specifically that Internet speeds needed to be included in analyses of digital inclusion.
“We have to upgrade the thinking. We are falling behind in terms of speed,” he said of measurements of U.S. broadband. And he criticized the Federal Communications Commission’s inclusion of office use of the Internet in its broadband statistics. “We should only be looking at high-speed in the home.”
Others speaking at the conference, an annual gathering of volunteers and others who have been seeking up wireless community networks for more than a half-decade, also emphasized the need for a holistic approach to leveraging community engagement in the Internet.
Mark Ansboury, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology office of OneCommunity, spoke about the need to not only engage in dialogue about connectivity, but to create a platform for universal adoption of broadband within a community. OneCommunity is a non-profit organization targeting universal Internet access, social inclusion and economic development in northeast Ohio.
The group wants to make broadband as ubiquitous and free as the air we breathe, said Ansboury. But that noble goal doesn’t mean avoiding engaging with the business community — including the telecommunications carriers.
Among wireless communications networks, “the fear is that the incumbent carrier is going to come after me [so that] I have to stay so far beneath the radar,” Ansboury said. “We have built a commercially scalable network in northeast Ohio, but have structured it in a way that is a win for us and win for them.”
OneCommunity is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has committed up to $25 million over five years to create universal Internet access programs in 26 cities of focus by the foundation.
It uses next-generation fiber-optic networks, and also wireless communications, to meet its goals, said Ansboury.
Organizations Mentioned in this Article:
International Summit on Community Wireless Networks
One Economy Corporation
OneCommunity
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=9
Tags: FCC · Knight Foundation · One Economy · OneCommunity · digital divide · digital inclusion
By Drew Clark
Google co-founder Larry Page came to Washington last week to take on the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the lobbying group that represents over-the-air television stations. It’s a whole new adversary for the beleaguered broadcasters, who have been fighting cable and satellite television for years.
The Federal Communications Commission is currently considering a proposal, by Google and other tech players. It would allow tech companies to build electronic devices that transmit wireless internet signals over the “white spaces,” or the vacant holes in the broadcast television band.
“We have an ambitious goal called pervasive connectivity through ubiquitous broadband networks,” said Page, who is currently co-president of Web search giant Google, and the world’s 43rd richest man, according to Forbes. “To realize that vision, we need to change the way we allocate and manage the nation’s airwaves.”
Basically, Google wants the right to broadcast where the broadcasters aren’t doing so right now. And there are a lot of vacant channels to take advantage of, potentially offering a boon to the broadband-hungry technology industry.
Is the Radio Frequency Cop Missing in Action?
Why has the FCC, arguably the cop over both the broadcasting and broadband beats, allowed TV broadcasters to waste the nation’s choicest electromagnetic frequencies? Answering that question would take a detour in the spectrum politics of your grandfather’s generation. Broadcast television frequencies were allocated in 1952, under technological conditions far different than today.
Fears of interference kept stations far, far, apart on the television dial. That’s why even today, if you live in Washington, DC, no more than four of the 21 channels between 30 and 50 are occupied: 32, 45, 47 and 50. That leaves 17 available as white spaces. The channel numbers vary from city to city, and will likely change with the transition to digital television (DTV). Still, a lot of unused real estate is and will remain vacant in the sky.
Google’s solution: the FCC should give the industry permission to build smart electronic devices that will observe their own geographic location, and then offer connections to the Internet only when such transmissions would not interfere with television broadcasts.
Doing this “makes a lot of sense,” and would put the nation on “a path where we are using 99 percent of our spectrum, rather than three percent,” Page said at the event, titled “Google Unwired” and hosted by the New America Foundation, which has strong ties to Google.
It is a technologically trivial task to make a device with a global positioning system (GPS), or that senses its radio-frequency environment before transmitting. These devices would guard against interference better than wireless microphones currently do, he said.
Can the White Spaces Genie Be Put Back in the Bottle?
For their part, broadcasters say that white spaces transmissions will interfere with your grandmother’s television reception. “At least three times, the tests that have been submitted by the proponents of wireless devices have either failed or malfunctioned,” said Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of the NAB. “Failure is not an option when we are talking about the future of DTV.”
Further, Wharton said, “once you have introduced hundreds of thousands, or even millions of devices and they fail, or start causing interference, how do you put the genie back in the bottle?”
As the lobbying battle has heated up, both the manufacturers of professional wireless microphones – like Shure – and the major sports leagues have joined with the NAB to try to stop the smart devices.
Page calls the broadcasters’ engineering claims “very much an imaged and created fiction.” He added, “The NAB has also, in the past, complained about satellite broadcasting causing interference. People pay attention to [the NAB, but] that doesn’t mean that it is true.”
The big problem at the heart of the white spaces debate is political: broadcasters have long been reputed to be a major lobbying force in Washington. But their alleged prowess didn’t stop Congress from wresting a quarter of the broadcasters’ frequencies away from them in Spectrum War I.
Why Are Broadcasting and Wireless Services Treated So Differently?
This brings us to another side – a Third Way, if you will – in the white spaces debate. Instead of turning the white spaces into yet another political football between competing lobbyists, why doesn’t the government put these frequencies up for sale? It’s the kind of idea that you would think a warm-hearted capitalist company like Google would love.
Television spectrum is indeed a very valuable resource – for certain purposes. Broadcasters currently occupy 402 Megahertz (MHz) of it, at frequencies ranging from 54 MHz to 806 MHz. That means that NAB members are sitting on about 40 percent of the choicest frequencies below 1 Gigahertz (1 GHz). These are the frequencies that are powerful enough to pass through walls, trees and high-rise buildings. (They are giving up 108 of those Megahertz in the transition to DTV, and earlier this year the FCC auctioned off 60 of those Megahertz for $19.5 billion. Most of the rest is being devoted for public safety communications.)
Broadcasters obtained the right to use all these frequencies for free in the pre-Eisenhower era. Cellular telephone companies, arriving in the Reagan through Clinton eras, paid good money at government auctions to buy and reuse other, less desirable frequencies in the 1.8 GHz range. And somewhere along the way to the 21st Century, geeks and techies deploying new-fangled devices like low-powered wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) transmitters got FCC permission, on a free or unlicensed basis, to use the frequencies at 2.4 GHz at 5.8 GHz.
Broadcasters may be spectrum-rich, but they make very poor use of their frequencies. Less than 13 percent of American households watch television over-the-air; the vast bulk instead choose to subscribe to cable or satellite television instead. Wireless companies, by contrast, constantly use and reuse their frequencies. Wi-Fi presents a mixed bag: anyone who transmits at low power may use it, but overcrowding and other constraints can cause service to be spotty.
So what is the best model for deploying spectrum? There is currently a lively debate going on in academic circles about just this subject at the Information Economy Project at George Mason University School of Law. In the debate, Professor Thomas Hazlett of George Mason favors a property rights approach, while Professors Phil Weiser and Dale Hatfield, of the University of Colorado, reject the analogy of radio spectrum to land. (Disclosure: I serve as Assistant Director of the Information Economy Project, where I work with Law & Economics Professor Thomas Hazlett, who directs the project.)
While the spectrum-as-property-rights debate has implications for the white spaces debate, both sides agree that broadcasters under-utilize their spectrum. That was one part of the message conveyed by Page at the New America Foundation event.
Can a Third Way Satisfy Google and the NAB?
So does that mean that Google is right, and that vacant broadcast channels should yield to broadband? It’s important to consider an alternative – auctioning off at least a portion of the white space. The effort to do this has been promoted by CTIA, the wireless association, in March 2008. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin may be open to it.
I first heard about a variant of this proposal more than a year ago, from Tom Hazlett, at the May 2007 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Spectrum Policy, in Queenstown, Maryland. A long-time critic of broadcasters, Hazlett proposed dividing up the remaining 294 Megahertz – after the DTV transition – into six segments of roughly 50 Megahertz a piece. Each slice could be auctioned off, or, as an alternative, cleared for use by unlicensed Wi-Fi style devices. The nut of the proposal is that auction buyers must bargain with incumbent broadcasters to entice them to either exit their broadcasting business, or to keep from interfering with existing broadcasts. (I lay out the spectrum math in this sidebar.)
I was surprised, though, by the reaction that I witnessed to this proposal in Queenstown. Rather than skepticism, a wide variety of the attendees at the Aspen event – the country’s telecom elite – were simultaneously intrigued and even tentatively supportive of what is, after all, a very radical idea: potentially clearing broadcasters entirely off the airwaves.
In an interview, Wharton dismissed the proposal as unrealistic. “Why would we want to exit a business that we think has served the American people quite well?” Further, Wharton said, broadcasters “like being broadcasters, and serving communities, and being a part of communities. We have a broadcast system based on localism and service to community that is the envy of the world.”
However, to my surprise, Wharton was quite open to the CTIA proposal. He said that a licensing system “certainly makes a whole lot more sense than having these devices put into the market without protection.”
More to the point, however, is what Google itself thinks of selling off the white spaces. At the New America event, I asked Page what he thought about clearing broadcasters and auctioning the band. To my surprise, he replied: “I would be open to any of those things. We have proposed some things like that.”
Speaking specifically about auctioning off big blocks of radio frequencies, Page said: “Having a band manager that bought some spectrum, and then wholesale auctioned it would be a very positive thing. That would be a wonderful thing to have happen.” The tougher point, he agreed, would be enticing broadcasters to make changes.
Concluding Questions
Let me conclude this article with a series of questions about these proposals, each aimed at driving the public policy debate on this subject forward:
- What would be, in an ideal world, the optimal amount of spectrum to be set aside for public and unlicensed wireless transmission? Should none, one, two or more of the six 50 Megahertz bands be allocated to unlicensed use?
- Are there any broadcasters out there who would, if given a legal opportunity, exit the business of over-the-air broadcasting, and turn themselves into, effectively, cable-, satellite-, and Internet-only “broadcasters?”
- The value of the broadcasters’ right that cable operators “must carry” broadcasting signals over cable systems is a big subject that has to be addressed. Does the cable industry need to be enticed into a deal, as well? How much is the “must carry” right worth, and how does that stack up against the goal of liberating the broadcast bands for other, and more productive uses?
Don’t forget to read the sidebar on the spectrum math!
Drew Clark is Executive Director of BroadbandCensus.com, a FREE web service with news and information about competition, speeds and prices offered by high-speed internet providers. He can be reached via e-mail: drew at drewclark.com.
Tags: NAB · broadband · broadcasting · dtv · google · spectrum · white spaces
At Convio/ViaNovo event:”How the Internet is changing philanthropy, advocacy and politics” at the National Press Club. Live-blogging at http://twitter.com/drewclark, or simply at http://drewclark.com
The bottom line (5 minutes into the presentation): it’s all about fund-raising!
9:56 a.m. update: Tools that originated in non-profits are migrating to the political wolrd, and vice-versa.
Tags: Web 2.0 · e-mail · non-profit
