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Small is Good, Simple is Better

This is what gives the Internet its vitality. Complexity is a barrier to entry and simplicity, with the ability to survive mistakes allows experimentation and discovery. The Web was created by one guy in a basement trying out an idea. One of millions - and it is only a hint of what is to come. Bob Frankston, from his comments in the Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy Workshop (Feb 25, 2007)

What if high-speed Internet went everywhere you went? That, Bob Frankston argues, is the real future and next evolutionary step of the Internet, not broadband! Making access speeds faster and faster, but keeping its distribution limited to where it already is, serves the existing incumbents, but doesn't serve society. It's an intriguing argument, counter to the agenda of the reigning telecom, cable, and government elites. To maintain their business model, Frankston says, large broadband providers require continuing protection from the FCC and the government, thus their devotion of tremendous resources to lobby state and federal governments and maintain the status quo.

The value of municipal wireless is that it is a relatively cheap, modular, and functional technology that fosters experimentation and learning and challenges the prevailing wisdom. It's good enough to provide basic connectivity, so it's available for cities to experiment with. That's the origin of my catchphrase: "Small is Good, Simple is Better." I believe that small cities are a key to unlocking the secrets as well, because this experimentation is more likely to happen where the motivation is strongest, out in the sticks in Small Town, Rural America.

In the face of rapidly changing technology, it makes sense to engage in a massive amount of rapid experiments, which provide lessons to all of us and move an entire industry forward. Rather than make very large experiments that unfold very slowly (e.g., Verizon's fiber roll outs) in urban areas that already have decent connectivity options, large numbers of cities can deploy numerous Hot Zones using a variety of combinations of technologies and then provide feedback to each other for the development of an alternate telecom paradigm, based on a very large number of self-empowered, open-minded emergent laboratories.

By keeping the deployments small, rapid deployment becomes possible. By keeping network design and objectives simple, we can isolate what goes wrong and improve on the process in the next round of deployments. It's as if we all were research scientists. But Small and Simple runs counter to what you will hear when you watch an ATT advertisement, where they will tell you that because telecom is so complex, you need a very large - global- company to manage it. What the heck, I'd do the same thing if I were ATT, it's their best argument to play to their strengths and highlight what makes them different. As rational as that is for ATT, it's not the direction that technological change points us to, according to Frankston.

Frankston argues that an alternate paradigm is to leverage new network technologies to make telecom distributed and locally controlled, in order to keep it simple and spread it everywhere very fast. With that approach, you don't need the size and capital of telecom companies. You let the technologies of the Internet and the very nature of networking work their magic. He says that telecom companies control the industry so it will evolve in a way that favors their continued dominance. It's a powerful argument, but one that requires you to throw away much of the dogma that you grew up with.

Imagine if we all paid low, low rates for broadband access? In fact, what if the rates were so low that they could be disregarded, covered by corporate sponsors and advertising? The practical person would object, saying that somebody has to pay for all that infrastructure. Sure, there is an initial capital bump, Frankston acknowledges, but the new paradigm eliminates the massive amounts of service fees we all pay - check your monthly telecom bill - and that would free up tremendous budget for consumers to spend on what they really want - applications and content. It's a redistribution of spending, and that is my long-term vision for telecommunciations and metropolitan broadband. I think that there will be some telecoms that get this, probably the smaller, more motivated companies.

It's refreshing to read Bob Frankston's long-form commentary, if mind-boggling and a little daunting, because he says much the same thing in his commentary available by clicking here. Before you stop reading because I must be insane, I urge you to follow through and read this essay, but leave your assumptions about some of your most fundamental beliefs on hold for a while - suspend your disbelief - because this is what Municipal Wireless is really good for - to challenge the prevailing conventional wisdom, which has the impact of pushing out the envelope for all of us and opening up new possibilities.

But be sure you're able to concentrate when you take on this task, because even though Bob writes well, he takes the reader on a long tour. It's fascinating to look at the telecom world through his perspective, because for him, a pioneer in computers and networking, what a long strange trip it must have been. He highlights new technologies and the wonder of the Internet, which demand a new paradigm. Following that thread, he declaims the very need for telecommunications companies, which rely on government-enforced scarcity to keep service revenues high, to maintain their large infrastructures and expensive business models. They say - "if you want us to build the new broadband infrastructure, we need incentives in the form of market protection to continue our revenue streams, so we can raise and spend the billions of dollars that will be necessary." An alternate approach is to try another way and let the market drive us to the best solution. Let's not put all of our eggs in one basket.

It was a similar argument that led to the creation of the public power industry in the early parts of the 20th Century. President Franklin Roosevelt's admiinistration fostered the development of public power in part to prevent private entitites from capturing control of all our nation's rivers, which would then be used to generate cheap hydropower. They also wanted the government to have insider access to the true costs of producing electricity, to ensure that large private companies didn't charge too much money to the detriment of consumer interests. Local governments today can provide the same countering balance of consumer protection from large broadband providers with municipal wireless.

To many, this must seem a heresy, but Frankston challenges us all to think in new ways about how we communicate, given the amazing potential of the Internet and the rapid pace of change in the technology world.

It's the 21st Century, after all. Time to put on your thinking cap and Open Your Mind to New Possibilities. Long live diversity, new frontiers, and the free market!

Posted on March 03, 2007 at 07:13 AM

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