Telecom reform over the last four decades has sparked massive innovation and growth – and helped lead to the vibrant wireline Internet we know today.
However, the wireless world could hardly be more different. Where the Internet’s rise was helped by agreements on open standards and access, the wireless world remains splintered by the “walled gardens” owned by wireless carriers. As anyone trying to create mobile features will tell you, entering the wireless market is extremely frustrating – many entrepreneurs have simply given up.
Unless this changes, the wireless broadband world risks facing an even bigger “innovation gap” than we have today. Europe and Asia continue to surge ahead without us.
Take, for example wireless devices.
In 1968, a landmark court ruling – the Carterfone decision – directed that any device could be attached directly to the public telephone network through a standard jack connection, unleashing market forces that gave rise to new products ranging from fax and answering machines to PC modems.
Wireless devices, meanwhile remain stuck in the walled gardens.
The same goes for applications, services and protocols. Opening wireless broadband to new market entrants – with open devices, open software and open IP services – is critical to continued innovation in new devices, new services and new mobile web applications coming out of Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
Similarly, to promote innovation in services and applications for consumers in the wireless world, a better model is needed than the current status quo. A key ingredient to change this is that competition should be fostered.
This fall, regulators have a once-in-a-generation chance to turn this dynamic around when auctioning this “beachfront” spectrum in the 700 MHz band. A small part of the airwaves that will be put up for bid in an upcoming FCC auction should must be made available to all software protocols, applications, content, devices and users to provide a staging area for broadband technology driven by investment, innovation and user needs rather than limited by the walled gardens of a few carriers.
This week, the Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on rule changes that will shape the rules of the road for how these airwaves will be auctioned and seek feedback on some proposals.
Open access requirements for a limited slice of 700 MHz spectrum would also address the requirements of key user groups that the current broadband duopoly has not yet met. A national wireless broadband platform is critical for the public safety community. For too long, first responders have relied on inadequate communications tools that were not interoperable in responding to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. The FCC has referred to this status quo of ad hoc, narrowband networks as “balkanized,” and they are right.
A proposal by Frontline Wireless, which I support and in which I am a partner, would ensure that whoever wins part of this spectrum would provide free buildout for public safety users of a national, IP-based network for interoperability and provide access to adjacent commercial spectrum when needed during emergencies. The network would allow public safety users – as well as commercial counterparts –to use any equipment they select, fostering availability of broadband tools that are innovative and competitively priced.
This next generation “4G” network would provide wholesale service under aggressive buildout requirements to be made available to 98 percent of Americans. Under the Frontline plan, the winner of this spectrum would be required to comply with conditions that foster competition and maximize user choices, including offering service on a wholesale basis; operating under open access principles; and providing roaming to wireless carriers who need it and seek it.
Beyond the upcoming bidding for 700 MHz, another government auction of such valuable airwaves is not on the horizon. It is essential that a small fraction of 700 MHz be set aside for an open network that supports open device interconnections. But prospectively earmarking a part of these airwaves for innovation, by ensuring that next-generation devices and applications have guaranteed access, is the best and only near-term opportunity for moving beyond a current environment in which a handful of carriers control our wireless future.
4 Comments
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Blake Senftner said:
I wholly agree. With the wireless service providers requiring a minimum of 50% of any revenue, negotiated down from an initial request of 70%, it is no wonder anyone does business with them. This keeps the cost of doing business so high that, as you say, many entrepreneurs simply give up and direct their efforts in other industries. This is one of the key technology drivers everywhere in the world, except the US. I feel as if it is time for the politicians to step in - clearly the cellular industry is not going to open up on their own.
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Hamish MacEwan said:
I agree with most of this, but the closed proprietary version of of wireless is cellular. Wi-Fi and WiMAX are existing wireless protocols and services that to the degree local regulators allow are open and global.
There could be better solutions with agile and cognitive radio, but they do exist.
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DSS said:
Much as I admire Ram’s awesome track record, I must say he is a bit off here in positioning it as an open standards network argument. I would argue that most of the public wireless networks except CDMA based are open. GSM/3G, WiFi, WiMAX are as open standards as one could hope to find. The reason behind the “walled garden” is simply maximizing corporate profit, not dissimilar to what the folks owning the local loops did not too long ago (and are trying to do again with the net neutrality debate).
It might be a safe bet right now to assume that most large providers lacking significant wireless reach would be eyeing this spectrum with lust, and will probably would not mind competing with all those conditions laid out by Ram above. -
NGS said:
a) Carterfone and wireless devices are not alike. Analog phones of their time, and still today, have one function: to generate pulses or tones comprising a dial sequence and to have a mic and a speaker that translate analog voltages to sound. Pretty simple. Now take a current 3G or 4G (don’ even exist) device and what do you have. Airlink protocols, access probes, authentication protocols, rx power level, tx power level, interference, out of band interference. Not so simple anymore. WIth spectrum being a shared resource (unlike the pair of wires that terminated ones landline back in the day) what one person’s device does to the network affects all others, or at teh very least, can make troubleshooting much more difficult. So Carterfone, while seeming to be a good analogy at the political level, is really not a good analogy technically.
b) No one in the wireless industry opposed open access per se. What they oppose is the requirement to use such a model in a given piece of spectrum. Frontline, and hence your suggestion is to limit the attractiveness of a piece of spectrum to only open access, and I find this suspect and incongruent with FCC policy for the last decade. If the “open access” model is the foundation of a successful business model, why do you not gain the spectrum at auction, competing fully with the other carriers, and then compete in the marketplace with an open access model, serving all those left behind by the large wireless carriers? This is the criticism levvied by the big players. If you are convinced of the success of open access, offer it without asking the FCC to endorse it. Otherwise, you are conceding that at “market” prices of spectrum, the open access model does not fly and that you hence have to lower the price of the spectrum artificially (by excluding bidders) to make it affordable enough to execute your business model.
I love the Frontline plan overall, but the exclusivity around open access and the E block is just not very well thought out politically.
