Broadband Newsfeed

Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption

ashar — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:04:29 -0500

Abstract

The paper reviews evidence from eight wireless markets: mobile broadband; wireless healthcare; smart grid communications; inventory management; access control; mobile payments; fleet management; and secondary markets in spectrum. I find that markets are adopting unlicensed wireless strategies in mission-critical applications, in many cases more so than they are building on licensed strategies. If the 1990s saw what was called "the Negroponte Switch" of video from air to wire, and telephony from wire to air, the present and near future are seeing an even more fundamental switch. Where a decade ago most of our wireless capacity was delivered over exclusive control approaches-both command and control and auctioned exclusivity--complemented by special-purpose shared spectrum use, today we are moving to a wireless infrastructure whose core relies on shared, open wireless approaches, complemented by exclusive control approaches for special, latency-intolerant, high-speed mobile applications. The scope of the latter will contract further if regulation catches up to technological reality, and opens up more bands to open wireless innovation, with greater operational flexibility and an emphasis on interoperability

This final version of the paper uses more updated market data than the 2011 working paper, adds case study analysis of failures or anemic cases of open wireless allocations, the U-PCS, WMTS, ITS, and 3.65GHz bands (suggesting valuable lessons for future design of open wireless allocations), and adds an extensive literature review and rebuttal to some of the major academic critiques of open wireless approaches.

Green = open wireless; Orange = licensed

iPhone	iPad

Smart Grid Communications U.S. Market Shares by Firm

Market share source: Pike Research Smart Grid Deployment Tracker, 1Q12
Technology characterization: Author
* Itron purchased SmartSync in Q12012 and now offers both types; I characterize each here based on
its model as of Q12012.

AMI node shipments, Q1 2012

Source: Pike Research Smart Grid Deployment Tracker, 1Q12

Market share of wireless in healthcare

Source: Kalorama Information
Wireless Technologies in Healthcare, September 2011

Eighty percent of wireless healthcare; seventy percent of smart grid communications; and forty to ninety percent of mobile broadband data to smartphones and tablets use unlicensed strategies. Unlicensed technologies are entirely dominant in inventory management and access control. For mobile payments, current major applications use unlicensed, and early implementations of mobile phone payments suggest there is no particular benefit to licensed strategies in this space. Fleet management is the one area where licensed technologies are predominant. However, UPS, owner of the second largest commercial fleet in the U.S., has implemented its fleet management system purely with unlicensed wireless, suggesting that even here unlicensed may develop attractive alternatives. By contrast to these dynamic markets, secondary markets in licensed spectrum have been anemic.

Policy Implications
The evidence from the most dynamic and critical markets in wireless communications suggests that unlicensed wireless technologies have been underrated in the regulatory calculus. Future spectrum policy debates, in particular those surrounding TV band auctions and reallocation of federal spectrum, should secure an adequate development path for unlicensed technologies, devices, and services at least as much as they emphasize flexibly-licensed exclusive rights.

The most immediate policy implications are:

The economic value of bands dedicated to open wireless capacity is widely understated in present studies; the approach developed and implemented here, of analyzing verticals that use wireless capacity and measuring capacity share suggests that open wireless strategies have a much higher value across diverse applications than has been generally captured by existing studies.
To capture this tremendous economic value, as the FCC implements its incentive auctions authority it should use every flexibility open to it to expand the availability of as many, as contiguous, and as little-burdened as technically feasible bands for open wireless operations. Current plans to use guard bands, microphone bands, and channel 37 are steps in the right direction, but the Commission should generally aim to optimize on three, not two, dimensions, adding the opening of new open wireless allocations to its calculations in how to optimize the TV band auctions.
The NTIA should update its studies of bands available for sharing with civilian use to account specifically for how much, and how soon, could be turned over to open wireless devices, rather than how much, and how soon, can be cleared for exclusive use. Ultimate determinations should be made based on the comparison of the costs and benefits of these competing alternatives for reallocating federal spectrum to sharing with civilian uses.
One of the most promising dramatic increases in wireless capacity in the short term would be to facilitate opening up of every single (or as close to it) WiFi access point to use and sharing by any WiFi enabled device. This will require some work in coordinating standards, sign-on, sharing of the wired capacity, and security, but the near-mobile-nomadic capacity already deployed in the nation's existing wired gateway infrastructure, in homes, small businesses, and almost every other building in America, is a vast untapped reserve of "spectrum" that must be tapped, and can be tapped by coordination, with almost no major technical advances and little by way of new regulation.
Open wireless allocations should generally be designed to be as open and agnostic as feasible among technologies and applications, with minimal rules, minimal special-purpose designation, and a focus on open standards and interoperability. In intelligent transportation systems, for example, we have seen substantially more innovation and activity using the ISM bands than using the special-purpose, Intellegent Transportation Systems band in 5.9GHz. In medicine, WiFi and bluetooth have been more productive than the Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS) bands, although both are open wireless approaches, and both dominate the licensed cellular M2M approach in healthcare. WMTS has played an important role in remote patient monitoring, but most wireless healthcare applications depend on general purpose bands.
The focus on auctions and the revenue they produce severely distort the political economy of wireless policy. The capacity gains that innovation in WiFi has made over some of these bands has been roughly commensurate with Moore's Law--a doubling of capacity every 18-22 months. Efforts to raise revenue, whether through auction or through short term leasing, that hamper this innovation dynamic are penny wise, pound foolish for a society and economy that increasingly requires wireless capacity for growth and secure, robust communications systems.

Feedback can be sent to Yochai Benkler <yochai_benkler@harvard.edu>

Berkman Buzz: Week of October 25, 2010

syoung — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 18:00:00 -0400

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
If you would like to receive the Buzz weekly via email, please sign up here.

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Ethan Zuckerman reflects on "narrative audio content," via the Internet.
* Christian Sandvig tries to recall the race to ISDN.
* Jonathan Zittrain considers the "awful" SMS replicator app.
* Dan Gillmor assesses the new Nook tablet.
* Joseph Reagle shares some gems from the history of reference work adverts.
* David Weinberger gives expunging a chance.
* Herdict on Net filtering in Uzbekistan.
* OpenNet Initiative on Australia's ongoing filtering debate.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Russia: Online Activism Success Stories"

Special note: The Berkman Center is now accepting applications for fellowships for the 2011-2012 academic year.

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The full buzz.

"What McKibben’s celebrating, primarily, isn’t radio per se – it’s narrative audio content. Here’s the distinction, as I see it. Radio is live, and highly perishable. In Rick Bass’s “Winter: Notes from Montana” (I believe – I’m on the road and don’t have the book in front of me), the author mentions jonesing for NPR, which doesn’t reach his isolated mountain cabin. Friends offer to tape his favorite shows and he turns down the offer, explaining that it would be too painful – the beauty of radio, for him, is that another person, somewhere, is alive and speaking at that very moment. That’s a powerful and important function of radio. But it’s not what I get from many of my favorite programs..."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post When the best radio isn't radio

"I used this comment to make the point that America historically dominated the Internet and that our current middling ranking in various Internet reports (including Akamai’s) was a fall from strength....I also made the point that these between-country horserace comparisons were often a waste of time. I noted that Germany won the “race to ISDN.” Yet it is not clear what the prize for that was. Does anyone remember the race to ISDN? The prize was probably a big brass plaque that’s now on display near the bathrooms in the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. I think broadband Internet rankings do matter (while the race to ISDN did not) because we know what the Internet is."
From Christian Sandvig's blog post Public Policy Causes Slow Internet

"With the iPhone, apps like these just aren’t available — at least without the stalker having to jailbreak the targeted iPhone first. On the more generative Android, it’s simply easier for bad stuff to brazenly find its way onto the platform since Google isn’t as obsessed with curating the selection of software for the phone. And with Android, the official apps market isn’t the only source for software — so the banning of SMS Replicator there doesn’t exclude it from the phone; the enterprising stalker can install it from elsewhere."
From Jonathan Zittrain's blog post "...helpful to people in relationships where this type of monitoring can be useful."

"But, based on what I can tell from coverage of today's launch event and the company's website, the Nook Color going to be a deliberately crippled tablet computer, locked down so that users can't add apps other than ones B&N decides they can add. There's an obvious reason for the company to do this: to prevent Amazon from using the new Nook as a platform on which Amazon could itself compete as a bookseller. But it's a counterproductive move in the end."
From Dan Gillmor's post on Salon, Barnes & Noble's new color e-reader

"...you can find advertising claims by print-based reference works that are as hyperbolic as any Web 2.0 pundit today. Morton's The Story of Webster's Third discusses this when he talks about the critical and popular controversy associated with the publication of the Third in the 1960s. (And he argues that while the advertising department did go too far, those actually producing the dictionary never made such claims.)"
From Joseph Reagle's blog post Truth in Numbers and Advertising

"I read an article this morning in “Hello!” about John Lennon’s seventieth birthday. It notes that “his life was taken away 30 years ago by gunman ____,” except they filled in the blank with the murderer’s name. I’m not going to. If you want to know the “gunman’s” name, you can look it up. But I’d rather not give him the recognition. In the current (near final?) draft of “Too Big to Know,” I touch on Wikipedia’s debate about whether to give each victim in the Virginia Tech murders their own separate entry..."
From David Weinberger's blog post Give expunging a chance

"Coinciding with Reporters Without Borders release of the Press Freedom Index on October 20, Facebook was blocked in Uzbekistan for a day when the report listed the country as 163rd out of 178 countries. Ranked near countries such as Libya and Cuba, the Eurasian country was placed only slightly above China (171st), Iran (175th), and North Korea (177th)."
From the Herdict blog post Facebook Blocked in Uzbekistan

"The AFP recently reported that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has begun actively pushing to filter Australia’s Internet content. According to news sources, the filter would block websites that contain rape, bestiality, and child sex abuse. Included in the plan is a proposed “secret blacklist” containing restricted sites, on which Australian ISPs could execute complete filtering control in conjunction with government policies."
From Qichen Zhang's blog post for ONI, Australian Prime Minister Backs Web Filtering

"While Internet analysts across the Atlantic are busy arguing if the use of technology brings about social and political change, bloggers in Russia add their humble contributions to the debate, probably unaware that the debate is taking place at all. Their victories are few and small and their impact can easily be attributed to statistical error - but they certainly are out there. The Russian blogosphere's success stories of the past few months have one thing in common: leveraged by the online media, the stories have resulted in executive decisions that helped people defend their rights."
From Alexey Sidorenko's blog post for Global Voices, Russia: Online Activism Success Stories

(Bonus: the Berkman Center's recently released Public Discourse in the Russian Blogosphere)

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The weekly Berkman Buzz is selected from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects -- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/current/ -- and sometimes from the Center's wider network -- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/network/

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to syoung@cyber.law.harvard.edu

Radio Berkman 152: A "Third Way" for the FCC and Broadband

ashar — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:14:35 -0400

From the MediaBerkman blog:

Last week the FCC announced that they would seek a “third way” in regulating the broadband industry, one that they hope will respect a recent court decision prohibiting them from cracking down on telecomms, while also ensuring some level of net neutrality.
Susan Crawford co-led the FCC Agency Review team for the Obama-Biden transition team and served as President Barack Obama's Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy until December 2009. She now teaches at the University of Michigan Law School. She founded OneWebDay and can be found blogging here.
Susan spoke with David Weinberger about what this “third way” is, and what it could mean for how bits get to your house.

For more on this issue, you might want to check out the Berkman Center and Wharton School co-sponsored event The FCC’s Authority Over Broadband Access on May 27 at the Press Club in Washington, DC. For more information and to RSVP click here.

CONTINUE OVER TO MediaBerkman FOR THE AUDIO AND MORE...

Radio Berkman Minis: Kalamazoogle?

ashar — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:51:33 -0400

From the MediaBerkman blog:

High speed internet may be scarce in the US, but the dream of having web be fast/cheap/everywhere is snowballing. The FCC’s much anticipated National Broadband Plan was finally released Tuesday. And Google’s Fiber Initiative – a move to finance and deploy an unbelievable gigabit speed connection to some yet-to-be-named lucky town or towns in the United States – has energized dozens of small communities across the nation.

Today we talk to the IT Manager of one of these towns – Michael Cross of Kalamazoo, Michigan – to see just what they see in the opportunity of ultra high speed connectivity. (Click here to see just how excited they are!)
CONTINUE OVER TO MediaBerkman FOR THE AUDIO AND MORE...

Benkler keynotes on Next Generation Connectivity at University of Ottawa's Centre for Law, Technology & Ethics launch conference

syoung — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Radio Berkman 143: Fast, Cheap, and Everywhere

djones — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:15:19 -0500

David Weinberger interviews broadband study PI Yochai Benkler for "Broadband Strategy Week"

syoung — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Next Generation Connectivity

syoung — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:00:00 -0500

The Berkman Center is pleased to announce that its independent review for the FCC, Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world, has been finalized. The Final Report was submitted to the FCC today, February 16. For access to the report and a selection of primary data sets, visit:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/broadband

From Principal Investigator Yochai Benkler's Preface to the Final Report:

Our most prominent initial findings, confirmed and extended in this final draft, were that U.S. broadband performance in the past decade has declined relative to other countries and is no better than middling. Our study expanded the well known observation with regard to penetration per 100 inhabitants, and examined and found the same to be true of penetration per household; subscriptions for mobile broadband; availability of nomadic access; as well as advertised speeds and actually measured speeds; and pricing at most tiers of service. Our study further identified the great extent to which open access policies played a role in establishing competitive broadband markets during the first-generation broadband transition in Europe and Japan, and the large degree to which contemporary transpositions of that experience were being integrated into current plans to preserve and assure competitive markets during the next generation transition. [...]
The primary changes between the original draft report and the final are: the inclusion of a new, extensive, formal literature review of the quantitative and qualitative literature on open access, in particular unbundling, and broadband performance and investment; expansion of the price and actual speed measurement benchmarking, as well as a slight refinement of assessing 3G growth; a new, compact review of the critiques of penetration per 100 measurements and responses to them that replaces the original focus on the density critique alone; new extensive case studies of the voluntary models of open access in the Netherlands and Switzerland; and a variety of discrete responses to useful comments we received on specific country studies.

The full Preface, Final Report, and a selection of primary data sets are available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/broadband.

Congratulations and thanks are once again due to the team who undertook this important research, and to everyone who contributed to the report.

Casting a Wider Internet: Yochai Benkler interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations...

syoung — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:00:00 -0500

FCC "Workshop: Review and Discussion of Broadband Deployment Research"

djones — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:00:00 -0500