Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Spectrum for All

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 08:00:03 -0500

Policymakers Encouraged to Open More Spectrum to Unlicensed Use
Arguing that spectrum is not a thing that can be used up, and that technical
developments such as smarter receivers, faster computers and mesh networks
solve interference problems, columnist Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at
Stanford University, writes that more spectrum should be opened for unlicensed
use. Using the analogy of a conversation at a party, Lessig explains how
smarter, new technologies can transmit radio signals effectively, even when the
airwaves are crowded. He says that it isn't necessarily true that shared spectrum
will become congested because there can be good architectures for spectrum
sharing that could enable increased capacity as demand increases.
Experimentation in developing such architectures would be boosted by access to
more unlicensed spectrum.
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March 14, 2003
Spectrum for All

By Lawrence Lessig

A generation from now, when policy types look back to the first decade of the 21st
Century, there is no doubt they will think of a "Powell" as
one of the most important policy makers of our time. But I'm betting it will be Michael,
not Colin, Powell. I'm a big fan of the balance and
wisdom of the Secretary of State. Yet the more I see of his son, the chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission, the more
convinced I am that Michael Powell could shepherd us to perhaps the most important policy
change to affect the technology industry, and
hence the economy, in 50 years. Just as the former Soviets remember their Chairman Mikhail
(Gorbachev) as the father of their latest
revolution, so too, will we remember our Chairman Michael (Powell) as the father of the
most important revolution that technology could
begin—and for a similarly brilliant strategic reason.

The issue here is spectrum—that swath of electromagnetic radio frequencies that is used
today for everything from AM radio to Wi-Fi
networks. The FCC regulates this spectrum. How they do so is about to change. The command
and control model of spectrum regulation
that defined FCC policy for most of the 20th century will certainly crumble. The only
question is what policy will take its place. The dominant
or "Party" view (to continue the Gorbachev riff) is that spectrum should be
propertized—divided into lots and sold to the highest bidder. This
is how we allocate access to just about all valuable resources. It's the way we could
allocate access to spectrum.

Chairman Powell has been a "Party" member for most of his (relatively short) career. His
view has always been that the market is a better
regulator than the FCC. Thus most believe he thinks the same way about spectrum and trust
him to deliver a fully propertized spectrum
market, soon.

But increasingly, there is dissent within the Party, as some are beginning to suggest a
counter-revolutionary
thought: Rather than property, spectrum should be left in a "commons"—or in a public
space. Like a freeway, or a
public park, use of a spectrum commons would neither be regulated nor propertized. Its use
would, instead, be
free for anyone, subject only to a few simple rules about devices. Just as you can go
where you wish on Route 66,
but not with a go-cart or with a tank, so too could you do what you wish with spectrum in
a commons, so long as
you would obey similarly minimal coordinating rules.

The passion behind this counter-revolution is not romanticism about sharing, or any
opposition in principle to
"property." The push comes instead from the success of the most important spectrum commons
so far—the
"unlicensed" spectrum bands that have given us Wi-Fi networks. More fundamentally, the
push comes from an
increasing concern that the burdens of a property system could well outweigh any benefit.
The intuition is not hard
to grasp. Property systems are not free. To make sense, their benefits must outweigh their
costs. Party members
count two sorts of benefits from a property regime. The first is coordination—making sure
that users of the
spectrum don't conflict with each other. The second is allocation—making sure that the
right to use a bit of
spectrum is given to the highest valued user.

Both benefits are indeed important. Yet both come at a cost. And if we could achieve at
least some of these benefits without suffering the
worst of these costs, then the gain from propertizing spectrum becomes harder to justify.

The best example of just such a system—where technology coordinates use without a market
controlling allocation—is the Internet itself.
While the wires and computers that get connected to the Internet are mostly privately
owned, Internet protocols create an effective commons
for network communication. The protocols assure coordination. But nothing in that simple
protocol can guarantee that Internet resources get
devoted to the highest and best use.

Your urgent e-mail to your travel agent asking him to rebook you on the next flight
competes with "Mrs. M. Sese-Seko's" plea for her
"URGENT BUSINESS PROPOSAL." Nothing in the basic design enables anyone to prioritize over
anyone else.

In principle, this "flaw" could be fixed. In principle, we could impose a property system
on inter-networking resources generally. That property
system could allocate Internet resources to the highest and best use. It could block users
that failed to pay the price, or channel that use to
the Internet slow lane. But the costs of such a system would likely outweigh any gains. To
police and toll the Internet would be to exclude
many new and experimental uses, not to mention uses that are non-commercial or
educational. The "innovation commons" of the Internet
freeway, these people believe, has produced more innovation and growth than a tollbooth
network would have.

Counter-revolutionaries are the first to admit that we don't know enough to be certain
that the commons model would be better than property,
either for now or forever. But we do know enough to know there's a good shot it could be.
And in the face of that knowledge,
counter-revolutionaries argue that policy makers should not be locking us into one view of
the future over the other—by, for example,
auctioning spectrum in a way that defeats the opportunity for the commons to demonstrate
its potential. They should instead be guiding us to
a position where both can compete, and the dominant view, prevail.

My bet is that Chairman Powell gets this. And the evidence is a subtle but important
ambiguity in the part of FCC policy that Powell gets to
control. While the Chairman is, on the one hand, carrying out the pro-property vision of
the Party, he is, on the other hand, simultaneously
encouraging the work of the counter-revolution. The strategy comes directly from the
playbook of Chairman Mikhail—defend the Party while
sowing the seeds of its demise.

Side-by-Side Development

Last fall was a good example. On November 15, 2002, the FCC released two fundamental
reports about the future of spectrum regulation.
The Party report floated the idea of a "big bang" auction, a method by which a significant
chunk of spectrum would be immediately sold at
auction, thereby inducing other incumbents to auction the spectrum they hold as well.
Within two years, the proposal would propertize 23
percent of the most valuable spectrum.

Yet on the same day, the FCC released the Spectrum Policy Task Force report, which sounded
a very different note. At the core of its
recommendation was support for a spectrum commons. No single model (property or commons)
should dominate, the report argued. Both
strategies should be adopted simultaneously to allow each to prove its value.

But to allow both systems to develop side by side would doom the property system to an
early defeat. Just as tollbooth networks were quickly
dominated by the freeway of the Internet, the energy of a spectrum commons would wildly
trump Party property. No doubt, significant chunks
of spectrum will always be reserved and allocated with property. And no doubt, some uses
will require this assured or guaranteed access.
But much greater efficiency would be found in the gains from the spectrum commons. And if
so, then long before the Party members
recognize that their leader is a counter-revolutionary, the counter-revolution will have
had its effect.

I may be wrong about the Chairman. But if I am right, then count on a networked future
that is wildly better than our past. Imagine then a world
of innovation and growth when anywhere and everywhere you could always be on—connected via
wireless. With a few simple rules, and the
space to play, wireless innovators would give us the second great Internet revolution. And
our children would speak not of how only Nixon
could have gone to China, but of how only Powell could have given us the spectrum commons.

http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,932624,00.asp
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