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October 2007 Archive

Planning for OPLAN II

It's been awhile since I've been over to the Telco 2.0 website. Martin Geddes in the UK does a great job with that site, along with his original more personal blog, Telepocalypse. I was pleased to find that Martin's been doing some good work on telecom reform - that's what Telco 2.0 is about, to try to drive home the need for change among telecom executives.

This blog in particular set off my previous two posts about OPLANs - New Ideas for Incremental Muni-Fibre and Metro-Fibre. I like it because it pretty much spells out a practical way for private and public sector change agents to get busy now on implementing some of the ideas we talk about on MetroNetIQ.

Namely, there is no reason to wait to get it all together - to put together an RFP, to assemble a business case, to find a private partner, etc., etc. In fact, a city can start by reviewing its own telecom expenses and connecting its distributed facilities with fiber of its own.

That's precisely what the City of Gainesville, FL is doing. Last month, after visiting the Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas, I wrote about Gainesville - see Utility Forum Shows Multiple Broadband Approaches.

The next panel featured an in-depth look at the community of Gainesville, FL, home of 2006 National Champions, the University of Florida Gators. On the panel were Commission Member Ed Braddy and two representatives from the Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU), Frank Latini, Technical Services Manager, and Dan Clark, Marketing Specialist for Gator.Net. They outlined a low-key strategy that has enabled the utility to bring new Internet opportunities to the citizens of Gainesville by incrementally extending the FTTH network on a project by project basis, without raising political objections or opposition from the incumbent cable and telecom broadband providers.

The website GRU.net provides more detailed information on the services offered. Commission Member Braddy described a communication strategy to compare the fiber network to "digital streets and roads," which he said has been an effective communication method. While the team holds a goal of engaging in an advanced deployment of a fiber optic loop for industrial purposes, their method is to engage in public private partnerships with MDUs and property developers, who share the costs of deployment. Their advice to any utilities, when asked how to manage perceived risk, is to "Go Slow."

How does Gainesville's approach compare with Geddes' recommendations in his blog? Pretty good alignment, if you ask me. Key to note here is that wireless and fiber are two sides of the same coin. Regardless of technology, a business model is needed that provides for capital recovery, as well as sustainable operations. So chalk this method up as a second example of 3.0 Emergent Customization...

What interests us most is that it provides a practical framework for realizing Malcolm Matson's open access vision of the future, where networks are funded and owned by long-term low-risk investors and any service provider can ride on top. This is called an OPLAN (Open Public Local Access Network), and implies both the end-user access and metro backhaul are part of the same open network. It's an intellectually attractive proposition. The trouble is finding the route from "here" to "there."

Some of the biggest problems with municipal fiber deployments are down to the fact that it's a big, expensive, monolithic project. The up-front cost is hefty, and its repayment means you have to be very sure there will be enough demand to pay it back. It's difficult to trial the idea of muni-fiber (or any other kind of metro-fiber roll out) without making a huge investment and therefore taking a big risk. This is the "anchor tenant" problem Dave Hughes, Director of BT's Wireless Broadband division, mentioned during the session. Other speakers noted how hard it was to co-ordinate the purchase of connectivity across multiple public services given their varying contract commitments and buying cycles.

So one way of dealing with the large costs and coordination issues of a huge capital project is to not do a huge capital project. Go incremental instead of all-at-once. Sure, there are trade-offs, but there is some wisdom in carving a larger project up into smaller bits, not the least of which is that it makes the project feasible. How about technology risk? By buying into a declining cost curve, you will get more modern equipment at an overall lower cost. The equipment makers may not like it, but it makes sense from a buyer perspective.

Nobody wants to build a metro backhaul network without access network customers; but nobody wants to build an access network without a plentiful supply of cheap metro backhaul. And few are willing to risk doing both. So, what is to be done?

Gradwell's suggestion is simple, as all the best ideas are in retrospect. There are six core elements:

1 An incremental approach to building an open-access muni metro network.
2 Shift from opex to capex - own, don't rent.
3 A multi-utility approach to cabling and ducting around town.
4 A hybrid public/private approach to access networks that connect users to the trunk.
5 A stable infrastructure investment plan to encourage private actors to invest.
6 A holistic view of end-user costs that looks beyond just out-of-pocket ISP and TV/phone service fees.

Now we're getting somewhere - this looks like a plan. Go Slow, in pieces. Buy, don't Rent. Get the most out of holes you dig. Partner where it makes sense. Invite in private money. Roll in lots of cost substitutes for a more robust business plan. I'll cut out the middle man and just copy the rest of the planning guide here - check it out!

The incremental OPLAN

He suggests that cities, or for that matter other actors, start by taking an inventory the sites they already own and their major internal networking customers. Then link up heavy traffic generators that currently use third-party connectivity. Stop shipping your internal phone, e-mail, database synchronization and video surveillance out from the LAN (where you almost certainly use at least 100Mbits/s Ethernet and probably Gigabit Ethernet) to a telecom or ISP network (at some much lower capacity and higher price) and then back in to the LAN in another building. Rather than paying for every bit, why not run the GigE direct between the switches in the two buildings?

So step one is to look for clusters of public buildings (e.g. Fire + Police) that share a connectivity need and join them together.

Shift from opex to capex

With a small capital investment, these buildings can now share a common backhaul to the Internet or outside world, rather than having to buy one each from a telco. You get an immediate drop in opex from both their internal communications as well as external traffic. The business case is easy to make, particularly where the capex is low because you're digging up the street for other reasons anyway.

Multi-utility approach

It's a sort of mixture of opportunism and foresight - opportunism in that you pick out links that happen to be needed, ducts, culverts, and the like you happen to own, and add more fibre than you need, and foresight in that you deliberately seek to add fibre whenever you dig up the road, and plan to add a node when you start a new building. By managing the physical ducting as part of a multi-utility plan, you can greatly lower your costs. Replacing the pavement? Lay a fiber. Lamp posts wiring getting old? Lay a fiber. Sewers a bit too Victorian? Lay a fiber. Gas pipes looking leaky? Lay a fiber.

Today's telecoms industry seems to be an unnatural joining of infrastructure, operations and customer relationship businesses. Who would be surprised to see them go their separate ways?

Hybrid public/private approach

And then, of course, why not hook up some more buildings? But you can do better than that; if you have all this capacity, you could link up to the company across the street and charge them for it. Then you might extend it to their other site across town. And private players may decide to hook in and build access links between businesses and residential users and the backbone, and start offering retail services.

A stable plan

By publishing a long-term plan of what "open links" are going to be deployed and when, private players can start to make investment plans to piggy-back on this network. A corporation might not be around in 20 years' time, markets change from week to week, private investment plans get canceled easily. A town or city is there permanently, and human geography changes only slowly by comparison.

Holistic view of cost

With this model for incremental deployment, you keep rolling until you cover the whole city. It has the advantage that there are no leaps of faith; you simply install links where you have a need for serious bandwidth, or where the cost of telco transit hurts. The EU and incumbents can't complain because you originally built it purely for your own needs - right? The open access tariff is a secondary motivator.

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

Planning for OPLAN I

A few weeks ago, in a post titled Phoenix MetroNets: Rising from the Ashes, I wrote about a new Municipal Wireless 3.0 stage that I believe we've entered this summer, which I labeled "Emergent Customization," to reflect the coming diversity of metropolitan broadband business models custom-tailored to suit local area needs.

One of the foremost models that should begin to get more traction in the coming year is the Open Local Access Network or "OPLAN," which British telecom pioneer Malcom Matson of Open Planet details in this interview on Telco 2.0.

According to the International Telecommunications Union, the world currently spends around $1,600 billion a year on telecoms. Under heavy government regulation shaped by the sector itself, this money ends up with 'operators' selling us a 'service' on terms unrelated to the capital and maintenance costs of the underlying infrastructure. The question we must ask is whether we can deploy the digital technologies of 'abundance' under a radically different business model, whereby this money could deliver greater benefit by being left with end users in their local economy. Malcom Matson at OPLAN.org

More on the interview after the jump.


The nutshell definition of an OPLAN is a privately financed access network, dedicated to serving a local geographic community (anywhere from a street or business park to an entire town or city). It is open to all-comers who wish to interconnect with it. It isn't tied to a specific technology, but typically means deploying fibre access with symmetric speeds, since many users may produce more traffic than they consume.

Access outside of the local network (e.g. Internet access) is a service which is provided by a partner on top of the access network. The OPLAN itself provides no services whatsoever beyond local transmission.

Partners in developing an OPLAN are typically municipalities although Malcolm stresses that it is their covenant as an anchor tenant, committed to using the OPLAN for all its local connectivity needs, that is the key, NOT direct municipality investment. Long-term he argues that OPLANs will become owned by passive institutional investors (e.g. pension and insurance funds) as 'the new real estate,' delivering stable returns, low risk and passive investment management costs. The key defining feature of an OPLAN is the legal and financial set-up of the network which, whatever the corporate structure, prevents the OPLAN from acting like a traditional telco.

I think it's key to note that the local municipality, as well as the school district, health care providers, and other local public sector entities play a vital role in kick-starting this process. Someone has to get things started. By committing to use this type of network as a first step, these entities provide the catalyst to get a network in place, so that the market can then take over.

"Well, if it's such a great idea, how come these OPLANs aren't popping up all over?" the interviewer asks.

Malcolm responds:

OPLANs are only a 'good idea' for the mass of citizens and businesses that are not part of the global telecoms/cable TV cartel. For the latter, OPLANs are the kiss of death to their vertically integrated service-provider business models! But because these vested interests are massive corporations (and tax generators), they have the ear of public policy makers and their now, great ally the regulator, to tilt and twist the market terrain to extend their life way beyond what a true free market would otherwise permit. But I believe we will see a collapse of the service provider model and an explosion of OPLAN developments in the next decade. 'When?' precisely, will depend on the vision and political commitment of the pioneering cities who have the courage and determination to go for an OPLAN solution.

It's in your hands, all you Change Agents and Champions for a Better Tomorrow. Let's Get Going!

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

And Now for Something Completely Different

I'm stepping out in the world of blogging, adding my first embedded video. You'll appreciate the ten minutes you invest in watching this - it's a TWO-BY-FOUR TO THE HEAD.

The Mother of All Battles

British telecom pioneer Malcom Matson details a squandered opportunity from back in 1984, where the UK had an opportunity to accelerate into the digital age, but failed to take advantage of it. He describes three advances in digital technology, here and ready to go now, that change the name of the game in telecommunications: 1) fiber optic technology, with infinite capacity; 2) digital chip technology, with dramatically increased capabilities to process and store data; and 3) spread spectrum wireless technology, which brings us wireless mobility.

Check it out.


The Old Telecom Business Model - a scarcity-based business model, where a vertically integrated professional network operator manages a closed network and charge retail service fees to retail consumers in exchange for providing access to a limited commodity - Internet Access (and in many cases, bundled content and applications). In today's case, broadband bandwidth is but one more service to mete out to a starving consumer class, who should be grateful for the services the telecom provides over its proprietary network in a low-competition business environment. This service is more akin to buying a ticket on a railroad line to go from point A to point B.

The New Telecom Business Model - an abundance-based business model, where a neutral network owner (city, pension fund, etc.) manages an open network and charges wholesale service fees to service providers in exchange for providing access to an abundant commodity, local network access on which to run services and applications for resale to retail consumers. In this new case, the provisioning of broadband bandwidth is separated from the retail services, content, and applications. The Open Network brings an abundance of retail service providers and the benefits of bounteous competition, turning bandwidth into a basic commodity and letting consumers pay instead for retail value-added services. This service is more akin to driving a car on a road or highway, to go wherever you damn well please.

We know who won in the battle open and closed models in transporation, don't we? Railroads with their closed models were revolutionary in their day, but then along came cars with the freedom to go anywhere there was a road. So dirt roads gave way to paved roads to highways to Interstates, and we haven't looked back. Railroads are still here, but they missed their chance and couldn't compete, because you had to go where the rail was.

So I ask you, what's so different about moving bits of data around, when compared to moving physical objects? Choice is choice, whatever it is you're moving, and enhanced competition and lower prices make it an easy decision. Sometimes we just need a 2x4 to the head to see things in a new light.

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

Obama to the Telecoms: Our Internet, Not Yours

The telecoms say they don't want the government telling them how to run their business, but in wanting to choose who gets to send what bits for how much through the internet (which, we may all recall, was invented in government laboratories) they want to tell individual internet businesses, plus all the hobbyists, what should and shouldn't be done on the internet.

That's a sure recipe for strangling innovation and freedom and is the opposite of what the net neutrality does. Net neutrality says "you can't control who does what with the Internet. You can't choose winners and losers." When the government says "you must obey Net Neutrality" it is saying "the Internet doesn't exist for the ISPs, it exists for the country. It's not AT&T's network. AT&T holds it in trust, same as with the phone network. It's a public asset we allow to be managed by private enterprise. In exchange for that private enterprise is expected not abuse their power." Obama To The Telecoms: You Don't Get To Tell People How To Use The Internet

See this link for a video clip of Obama taking the Net Neutrality issue head-on in an MTV forum. A web-savvy small business, an engineer no less, puts the Net Neutrality issue under the spotlight, asking Obama about Net Neutrality with a focus on FCC commissioners and their role. Obama is unequivocal in his response.

"Right now the speed with which and quality of your downloads or links are the same if you're going to the CNN or Time Warner website as if you were going to barackobama.com. But what you've been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and portals through which you're getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different websites and webcasts. So now what you'd have is, potentially, you could you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you'd be getting rotten service from some mom and pop site. And that, I think, destroys one of the best things about the Internet - which is that there is this incredible equality there.

And people, if you've got a good idea and get a great website - Facebook, MySpace, Google might not have been started if you had not had a level playing field for whoever has the best idea. And I want to maintain that basic principle in how the Internet functions and so as president I'm going to make sure that that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward."

Here, Here...Huzzah, Huzzah!

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)

John Edwards: Fight Corruption, Take Back Our Government

Our nation's founders knew that this moment would come - that at some point the power of greed and its influence over officials in our government might strain and threaten the very America they hoped would last as an ideal in the minds of all people, and as a beacon of hope for all time.

That is why they made the people sovereign. And this is why it is your responsibility to redeem the promise of America for our children and their future.

It will not be easy - sacrifice will be required of us - but it was never easy for our ancestors, and their sacrifices were far greater than any that will fall on our shoulders. John Edwards: The Moral Test of our Generation (major speech, full text)

It's a good speech, recommend you check it out.

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)

What Would Woodward and Bernstein Do?

Continuing with the Watergate II theme ...

As much as I promote Alternative Broadband on this blog, I guess it should come as little surprise that I've really become more and more used to getting my news from Alternative Media, namely, from special interest blogs and websites. Frankly, I find the writing superb and the reporting excellent, generally a cut above what you will see from the Main Stream Media (MSM).

It's amazing that since I began reading these blogs say six-nine months ago, I consistently find myself reading old "news" the next day in the morning paper, in what you might call a summarized version. Or when I have time to watch one of the cable news shows, I realize how much detail and nuance is missing. And you might as well forget the really mainstream media such as CBS News or USA Today, which provide the viewer what could only be termed as Cliff Notes News, dumbed-down at that!

These blogs, when you get used to reading past the opinions and the informality, provide some very compelling insights into what is going on in the world. They come across as fresh, if a little obsessive. Take these two that I highlight in this post today as an example.

The Anonymous Liberal is written by an attorney, who is self-described as Who Am I? For what it's worth, I'm a litigator at a large national law firm (at least until someone offers to pay me to write about politics). Until then, I'll just have to go by A.L. As an attorney, A.L. brings a level of subject matter expertise and attention to detail that a regular reporter could only dream of. See this analysis of the telecom immunity issue in Did the Senate Intelligence Committee Disclose Key Evidence of Telecom Illegality?

Consider next these two recent posts on The Next Hurrah. These two articles are great examples of how this Alternative Media can focus on details that may be considered too arcane for the mainstream press to cover, but are nevertheless relevant to give a more complete picture.

On October 25, this post, The United States of AT&T Wants Satellites Now, Too, highlights the potential of very large well financed companies to grow ever larger and more powerful, supporting the role of government to exercise oversight and keep things in balance. Something to think about when we consider how that power can be used in light of recent revelations, like ...

On October 27, this post, The Dodge on Retroactive Immunity, provides a good summary of how a Democratic-majority congressional committee could consider acquiescing to the demand of a weak Republican administration to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that broke the law in supporting the administration's request to use the networks they manage for domestic spying. That's still a head-scratcher for me.

This post is well-written and succinct as it goes into detail examining the inner workings of the committee and its approach to the law, on this compelling constitutional issue. I found it both informative and riveting.

The law says that only the AG or someone specified in 2518(7) may provide the telecoms with the certification that their actions are legal. Here's what 2518(7) says:

(7) Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, any investigative or law enforcement officer, specially designated by the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Associate Attorney General, or by the principal prosecuting attorney of any State or subdivision thereof acting pursuant to a statute of that State, who reasonably determines that— [my emphasis]

So the only people who may give telecoms the authorization that their eavesdropping is legal are: the AG, the DAG, the AAG, and any principal prosecuting attorney, such as a USA [Actually, maybe this means a State AG].

Yet, as the report informs us, for a period of time (a period of time, I might add, at some remove from 9/11), none of those people had signed off on the wiretapping program. After the Deputy Attorney General, as the Acting Attorney General refused to endorse the legality of the program, Alberto Gonzales authorized it.

The Committee can say, however, that beginning soon after September 11, 2001, the Executive branch provided written requests or directives to U.S. electronic communication service providers to obtain their assistance with communications intelligence activities that had been authorized by the President.

The Committee has reviewed all of the relevant correspondence. The letters were provided to electronic communication service providers at regular intervals. All of the letters stated that the activities had been authorized by the President. All of the letters also stated that the activities had been determined to be lawful by the Attorney General, except for one letter that covered a period of less than sixty days. That letter, which like all the others stated that the activities had been authorized by the President, stated that the activities had been determined to be lawful by the Counsel to the President. [my emphasis]

But Alberto Gonzales was not then one of the named people who could authorize such wiretaps. He was an attorney, but not a prosecuting attorney. In fact, at the time, he was not a law enforcement officer at all (unless you count someone enforcing Cheney's law as a law enforcement officer).

As I pointed out above, the committee tries to get around this inconvenient legal fact by waving around purposely vague language, using the phrase "certain other officers" to hide the fact that only specific other officers have the authority to authorize such wiretaps. They do it again in their final justification for extending immunity to the telecoms--replacing the titles of the very specific officers who can authorize wiretapping with another vague phrase, "high-level Government officials."

On the basis of the representations in the communications to providers, the Committee concluded that the providers, in the unique historical circumstances of the aftermath of September 11, 2001, had a good faith basis for responding to the requests for assistance they received. Section 202 makes no assessment about the legality of the President's program. It simply recognizes that, in the specific historical circumstances here, if the private sector relied on written representations that high-level Government officials had assessed the program to be legal, they acted in good faith and should be entitled to protection from civil suit. [my emphasis]

Effectively, the committee has rewritten the law to accommodate Bush's actions when he deliberately bypassed his own DOJ.

So, in addition to giving the Administration carte blanche to hide its own wrong-doing by invoking State Secrets and thereby depriving its accomplices of any defense, the committee has effectively rewritten the law. Where the law very clearly specifies that only a senior law enforcement officer may authorize wiretaps, they've inserted vague language that extends that authority to any hack who is willing to do the President's Vice President's bidding.

And in the process, most Democrats on the committee have written a convenient excuse for actions that amount to giving not only the telecoms, but Bush and Gonzales immunity.

So, it's not just about telecom immunity, but also about covering the tails of Bush and Gonzales. I have to think that if Woodward and Bernstein were on the trail of this current ongoing political drama, they would be writing something like what is written above at The Last Hurrah. So we have journalists pointing the way, what is missing in today's political world is a Congress with a backbone to stand up to this Administration's overreaching interpretations, subjugations of the Constitution, and abuses of power.

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 07:29 AM | Comments (0)

Unitary Executive v. Constitution - You Make the Call

Critics claim the President has used the war on terror to put himself above the law and that he has created a secret presidency of classified decisions and orders, that approve extraordinary renditions, torture, illegal detentions, and wiretapping without warrants with the collaboration of big telecom companies. This boundless secrecy and surveillance evokes images counter to American values. Bill Moyers Journal: Power and the Presidency

What good is broadband for all if this powerful new tool gets perverted and twisted into a means to repress political expression, to enable our government to flout our constitutional rights to privacy, to take away the country we love?

As much as I hate to say it, broadband policy has become more serious over the past several weeks. While the subject has always been inextricably wrapped up in national, state, and local politics, the discussion has generally been about getting access to a benefit, or on the downside, being denied a benefit. And it continues to be about benefits and consumerism, 99% of the time.

But there is a growing awareness of a new aspect to this network. We've shifted to talk about broadband networks becoming a threat to our lives and our liberty. It's not hyperbole to say that the Internet, when used as a tool and operated outside the bounds of laws, under the control of corporations that do not consider themselves to be subject to the same laws that you and I are, has become a realistic threat to democracy.

It doesn't have to be this way, and we are at the very beginning of this discussion. This is an important theme to pursue at this moment in our history.

Along with the excited talk about the potential of dual use iPhones and video over IP, we need to look at a darker underside to this broadband phenomenon. Because when comparing threats, the looming ExaFlood pales in comparison to the present subversion of the Constitution.

Check out this powerful video segment and see if you don't feel the same way. Moyers concludes his segment with this exchange, remembering a seminal moment from a mere 33 years ago.

BILL MOYERS: But listen to this voice from the past. From 1974. The Watergate scandals had revealed astonishing crimes and secret abuses of power by President Nixon and the men around him. The House Judiciary Committee was deliberating Nixon's impeachment. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas went straight to the heart of the matter:

BARBARA JORDAN: My faith in the constitution is whole it is complete it is total and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 07:10 AM | Comments (0)

Tangled Webs, Wicked Ways

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17

I always liked the poetic element of this quote and assumed it came from Shakespeare. Thanks again to Google and Wikipedia, I discovered that Sir Walter Scott wrote this one. Of course, this quote is a classic way to describe what happens when we lie - the story gets more and more complicated. Rather than relying on the Truth, which does not change, when we lie, we create a fiction in order to deceive someone. Whether the purpose is noble or not, the deceit requires maintenance, and because it is made up out of whole cloth, there's no record - thus, things get more and more complicated as the deceit progresses, and relationships are damaged due to broken trust, and some form of chaos ensues. This societal "truth" is the foundation of every murder mystery, detective story and crime drama - it's fascinating to watch the deceiver and his carefully crafted story of deceit become ever more entangled until they're ultimately exposed, or they get away with the deception (always a short-term win, for the winner is corrupted by long-term success at deception).

In similar fashion, I've been posting articles on the unfolding scandal of FISA and Telecom Immunity, not only because it's fascinating to watch this ornate story unfold, just like the best of the detective stories, but also because it may well shine the light on a carefully constructed myth: call it "Broadband by Bell." For it is a tangled web that the incumbent broadband providers have woven, not only in the networks they've built - literal tangled webs - but also in the line they've fed society that they are the only ones able to manage broadband. Yet our large telecom (and cable) companies are here to stay and the central question for our society when it comes to broadband telecommunication is

"How shall we move our country onto a more sound footing when it comes to broadband infrastructure? For it will either be by working through these large companies, or by working around them."

For better or worse, our very complex communication web in this country is based on a history of government outsourcing development risks to the private sector, in most cases, to a regulated monopoly (AT&T). From the start, it's been a complicated yet incredibly successful venture, one that has evolved into a myth, starting with Alexander Graham Bell's "Watson Come Here" line and moving forward to Bell Labs series of technical discoveries in the 20th century.

Over the past 35 years we've watched as first deregulation, then feeble attempts at competition, and finally technological advances have challenged the myth's central truth, which is that we are best served as a society by continuing to outsource telecommunication needs to the traditional companies, leaving these complex telecommunications issues to the professionals ("don't try this at home."). We're led to believe that only a very large company can provide us with the broadband network that we need.

Tangles are a wonderful metaphor because wherever there is a line, there is a tangle that must be sorted out. I experience this primordial frustration every time I do yard work, as I struggle with the hoses and the 100-foot extension cord. Years ago in my youth, I worked on a sailboat - a guy in port told me of his time working as a cook on a long-line fishing boat and shared a key lesson: "Never serve spaghetti to a crew on a longliner."

Fishermen spent much time untangling and mending their lines and nets. There is even a myth involving tangled line from Greek times to describe an intractable problem - The Gordian Knot, - a legend associated with Alexander the Great, often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem, solved by a bold stroke ("cutting the Gordian knot").

Today in America, we face a tangled web when we consider what to do about broadband. It may be a Gordian Knot, but there appears to be no bold stroke waiting for us as a solution to our problem.

Not only do we have
- this legacy of what to do with the large and powerful corporations created out of the regulated industries;
- the complex political maneuvering and conflicting stories in public and in the backrooms to confuse the issues;
- high stakes in the outcome;
- billions of dollars at issue;
- industry changes of historic proportion;
- political careers at stake;
- entrenched stakeholders with long histories of betrayal; and
- a pervading lack of trust;

But also, we have
- new technologies like Wi Fi Mesh (802.11a,b,g,n); WiMAX, FTTH, PON that bring with them alternate ways to "skin the cat;"
- new technologies that disrupt the way we access the Internet;
- new technologies that challenge the meaning of "voice" and "video;"
- new user behaviors as the Internet matures;
- new derivative benefits from telecommunications that disrupt old ways of doing things;
- new business models that open up the industry to new players; and
- a seemingly inescapable need to invest large amounts of capital to build the infrastructure that will both meet our evolving needs and bring all these benefits.

I've borrowed a term from organizational and social theory, called the Wicked Problem, to better understand what we face as we look at broadband. I would recommend you look at my previous post from one month ago today Broadband in America: a "Wicked Game We Play".

Here's a short excerpt.

The concept of "wicked problems" was originally proposed by Horst Rittel (a pioneering theorist of design and planning, and late professor at the University of California, Berkeley) and M. Webber in a seminal treatise for social planning. Rittel expounded on the nature of ill-defined design and planning problems which he termed "wicked" (ie. messy, circular, aggressive) to contrast against the relatively "tame" problems of mathematics, chess, or puzzle solving. Wicked problem - Wikipedia

Key Aspects of The Wicked Problem
1. You don't understand the problem until you have developed a solution.
2. Wicked Problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to Wicked Problems are not right or wrong.
4. Every Wicked Problem is essentially unique and novel.
5. Every solution to a Wicked Problem is a "one-shot operation."
6. Wicked Problems have no given alternative solutions.

In plain English, there are some problems whose nature is so complex and changing that the only way to solve them is through cooperation and dialogue, first to reach a shared understanding of what the problem is - how to define it - and second, to devise a series of trials that will test out potential solutions and bring back more information that can be used to develop a more refined solution. And in the end, the Wicked Problem has no conclusive solution, only one that is acceptable to the group as "good enough for now."

That's where we are with Broadband in America. We face an issue at once so critical, complex, and so dynamic that a sustainable solution for the benefit of all stakeholders in society will only be obtained if we first come together to work jointly to define the problem to our mutual satisfaction, then build on the trust we have generated to craft together a series of partial solutions that will reveal the optimal path over time.

We've been looking at broadband in much the same way that we've looked at traditional telecommunications: through different lenses that lead us to see different problems to be solved. Each stakeholder group, from communities to consumers to network operators to content providers, has vested, competing interests and different, competing priorities. We each have different levels of sophistication when it comes to being able to discuss and work on these issues, and often the issues seem even too complex to manage, so we lay them off on others to solve, or we put things off until later, and the issues don't get resolved. They only fester and grow more complicated with more time.

The time has come to face these facts and begin work on a sustainable solution. The time has come to set aside past differences and sit down together to come up with a plan that will work for all stakeholders. There will be some who will not wish to support such a joint effort at this time. There will be others who will deny the need to attack this issue in such comprehensive fashion. But that will not make the issues any simpler, nor will it make us need broadband infrastructure any less.

I'm reminded of a book we used to read to our kids, a game they used to play in PreSchool: "We're Going on a Bear Hunt." See this great video on YouTube.

We're going on a bear hunt.
We're going to catch a big one.
What a beautiful day!
We're not scared.

Uh-uh! A snowstorm!
A swirling whirling snowstorm.
We can't go over it.
We can't go under it.

Oh no!
We've got to go through it!

Hoooo woooo!
Hoooo woooo!
Hoooo woooo!

Bear Hunt Song

Only, unlike when we were kids, we can't run away at the end when we find the bear - there's no warm bed to hide under the covers waiting for us. We have to solve this problem on our own, together. It's a sobering task, being an adult.

We can run away, we can delay it, we can place blame - but then, we've been doing all these things and it hasn't gotten any better.

Or, we can decide to face our problem and deal with it head on.

When it comes to broadband, we've got to go through it, folks.

Posted on October 30, 2007 at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

The Revolvng Door between Government and Telecom Industry

Writing in The American Prospect, Brian Beutler lays out a relationship that doesn't get a lot of attention in the Main Stream Media (that's "MSM' to regular readers of blogs.) Beutler describes in detail how the news of telecoms doing the bidding of government should not be a big surprise, because they all know each other and more than likely, have worked with each other under the same corporate or government logo at one time or another.

It seemed like shocking news last week when the telecommunications giant Verizon admitted it has readily allowed warrantless national security investigators to browse customer records on thousands of occasions. But given the revolving door between the telecom industry and federal government, no one should be surprised by their cozy relationship.

According to OpenSecrets.org, a Web site run by the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., the worlds are well connected : There are no shortage of government officials who once worked in the telecommunications industry, and no shortage of telecommunications industry execs who once worked for the government.

This is not altogether uncommon in government and large corporate business, especially at high levels, but it seems to be especially common in telecommunications.

Many of the men and women who have hopped the fence - sometimes more than once - between government and telecom have done so via predictable channels. It's not uncommon, for instance, for aides and commissioners to the Federal Communications Commission to come from or move on to careers in telecommunications. It's arguably not even that surprising. But there are also the executives - like those who fill Verizon's ranks - who have spent years fighting for the government's right to pry into consumer data.

In an Oct. 12 letter to Democratic lawmakers, Randal S. Milch, senior vice president and general counsel to Verizon, admitted that, in tens of thousands of instances over the last two years, his company has provided government officials with subscriber information without court orders. According to the letter, that information has included subscriber names and addresses, local and long-distance telephone connection records, and methods and sources of payment.

Milch serves alongside William P. Barr, who is executive vice president and general counsel to Verizon. In Barr's past life, he was an analyst for the CIA, who went on to serve as a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and as the attorney general of the United States under President George H.W. Bush. Throughout his esteemed government career, and well after he'd moved into the telecommunications industry, Barr has shown a voracious appetite for government surveillance.

So, it's not just that they all know each other - they share a common agenda, which is to leverage their access to data for their own purposes. In government or telecommunications, executives from both sides are in positions of public trust, so this is worrisome.

In 1995, after he'd made the switch, he told the House Judiciary Committee that "emergency wiretap authority exists under current law with respect to a range of criminal activity. Existing emergency authority has been sparingly used and I am not aware of any indication of abuse. It is clearly appropriate that the same emergency authority that applies with respect to mafia conspiracies also applies to terrorist conspiracies."

He argued that, when conducting surveillance, a single subpoena issued by the government should be sufficient to cover multiple telephones registered to an individual target. "It is impractical to identify a particular phone. This is perfectly in line with constitutional protections. After all, the right to privacy guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment is an individual's right to privacy; it is not an inanimate object's right to privacy. Roving wiretaps targeted at particular suspects rather than specific phones should not cause alarm."

Barr's testimony was cited in the House Report on the Comprehensive Antiterrorism Act of 1995 as justification for an expansion of federal wiretapping authority. The following year, he advocated on behalf of the use of intelligence information in domestic law enforcement proceedings in cases of suspected terrorism.

And that was all before Sept. 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, Barr re-emerged on Capitol Hill to lend his support to controversial measures such as beefed up executive privilege, broadened Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority, and both the use of military tribunals in specific and the USA Patriot Act more broadly.

Barr represents perhaps the most overtly wiretap-friendly liaison between the telecom industry and the government of the United States, but he's far from alone at Verizon. Peter Davidson, Verizon's chief lobbyist, was once a staffer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and served as general counsel to former Texas Rep. Dick Armey when Armey was House majority leader.

Additionally, a former senior vice president at Verizon, Edward Whelan, was from mid 2001 to 2004 the principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked as well for Justice Antonin Scalia and, later, wrote an article defending Justice Samuel Alito who, in memos that eerily presage the current FISA debate, argued "an executive branch official who authorized the illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens without a warrant should be immune from lawsuits," according to Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe. The Alito memos were written in his Justice Department days, before he was appointed to the Supreme Court.

None of this necessarily means Verizon and other telecom firms can't be trusted to honor our privacy, and the law. But it does show that if the executive branch wants access to nominally protected information, or the Congress wants to expand the legal framework in which surveillance is allowed, the doors are wide open and their friends are eagerly waiting.Snoops Get a Direct Line |

This type of perspective puts these events in a whole new light for me. It makes them that much more serious because it becomes hard to see where the government ends and the telecom company begins.

Posted on October 29, 2007 at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

Laura Scher Kicks Some Assets

Laura Scher, co-founder, chairperson and CEO of Working Assets, has written a couple of blogs that beg to be shared with you.

Working Assets is a mobile and credit card company founded in 1985 "on the belief that building a business and building a better world are not mutually exclusive." The company has donated over $50 million to progressive nonprofit groups. As CEO, Laura helped Working Assets grow to more than $100 million in annual revenue. Laura now is a lecturer at Stanford University, teaching "Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship" at the undergraduate level.

In early October, Laura wrote about the propriety of an Internet Service Provider that would reach into your emails and censor you, based on their determination of what is appropriate use of "their" network. HMMMMMM....did you read the fine print of your contract?

Last week we witnessed Verizon trying to prevent a nonprofit from communicating with its own members because the company believed the content to be unsavory. Under the pressure of The New York Times front-page story and a storm of criticism, they caved.

Now it's happened again: another communications company trying to limit communications of its subscribers. This time, AT&T has added a bizarre provision in its terms of service that its network subscribers - anyone using AT&T for internet service - cannot participate in "conduct that AT&T believes...tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries."

So the message from AT&T is: if you're using AT&T for your e-mail, be careful what you say. Goodbye free speech. Hello, corporate censorship.

But let's be clear: the only one doing real damage to AT&T . . . is AT&T's own corporate policy .

Sadly, we have few alternative services. Over the past 10 years we have seen consolidation instead of competition. Where there were once 10 phone companies now there are but a measly four. Most of us have only two choices for Internet access and both are enormous companies. Our government has remained silent, if not complicit, as this consolidation has occurred. The FCC and Department of Justice have approved merger after merger, each of which reduced - not encouraged - competition.

Remember, today's "new" AT&T (which, not incidentally, has given over $1.8 million to Republican candidates) is really SBC, which, before it took over that telecom giant, gobbled up Ameritech, Pacific Bell, Bell South, and Cingular, among others. It's noteworthy that these companies originated as regulated utilities, charged with the rights and responsibilities of providing a public good. Yet today the regulators, instead of protecting the citizens of this country, protect and abet the companies that are eliminating consumer choice through voracious mergers.
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I leave you with one unsettling question. How does AT&T find out if we're writing e-mails that are "damaging their name? " Are they now tracking our in-boxes? If you read this and use AT&T for your Internet service, why not give this a try: e-mail this article to a friend. It's the most subversive thing AT&T thinks you can do. October 5, 2007. AT&T: Out of My In-Box!

After the jump, I've captured a more recent blog by Laura that speaks directly to the current imbroglio concerning FISA and Telecom Amnesty.

It's been all over the news that in 2007, executives at Verizon and AT&T donated over $42,000 to Senator John D. Rockefeller, IV, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Prior to 2007, Rockefeller wasn't getting any significant contributions from telecomm executives. But of course, prior to 2007, Rockefeller wasn't pushing his committee to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies that helped the NSA with its secret, warrantless surveillance on America's telephone calls.

There are so many reasons to be enraged by this.

As CEO of Working Assets, the socially responsible mobile and long distance company, I have watched for 15 years while big telecom "bought" monopoly power from Congress, from the White House and from the FCC. This is how they do business. Instead of building the best phone company, they buy politicians.

Instead of the vibrantly competitive telecom landscape promised by the deregulation of AT&T in 1984 and the Telecom Act of 1996, today we have a handful of telecommunications companies controlling legislation and policy, consolidating instead of innovating, and shutting out competitors. All with the blessing of the FCC.

Once upon a time the FCC took its role seriously, and required the phone companies to lease their networks. For a brief moment we had a competitive local telecom market offering a range of customized bundles and new features. Working Assets offered local service and doubled our donations for the customers who participated. But in due course the FCC bowed to the phone companies, and competitive local service simply vanished.

To add insult to injury, our politicians are cheap dates. For $42,000, these mega telecoms made a small but effective investment, given the magnitude of the lawsuits they are hoping to avoid, upwards of billions of dollars of damage. That's cheaper than hiring a D.C. lawyer for a week. When an issue is below the radar screen, it's easy to buy influence. But now that the issues have gone from thwarting competition to spying on Americans, I hope the public will start to pay attention, and hang up on the telecom companies' on-going campaign to buy the law that suits them best. Money Talks

Posted on October 29, 2007 at 02:43 PM | Comments (1)

A Long, Not So Gentle Backslide: Ersatz Oversight

I'm reminded of the "With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies" quote when I consider current events in our Democratic-majority Congress, more specifically, the Intelligence Committee and the FISA/Telecom Amnesty Issue. What passes for oversight and checks and balances these days, while a distinct improvement over the sad history of the first six years of this new century, still has a long way to go to get back to where it was a generation ago after the reforms that followed Watergate and the Nixon resignation.

Broadcast journalist, author, and social commentarian Studs Terkel has a great Op/Ed piece in the NY Times, The Wiretap This Time, where he puts recent events regarding FISA and Telecom Amnesty into perspective. And this guy has perspective:

Terkel graduated from the University of Chicago in 1934 with a law degree but says instead of practicing, he wanted to be a concierge at a hotel and also joined a theater group. He joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project, working in radio, doing work ranging from voicing soap opera productions and announcing news and sports, to presenting shows of recorded music and writing radio scripts and advertisements.

Terkel is well known for his radio program titled The Studs Terkel Program that aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997. The one-hour program appeared each weekday during all of that time. He interviewed guests as diverse as Bob Dylan, Leonard Bernstein and Alexander Frey. Wikipedia

This Op/Ed is valuable read, as Terkel reflects with first-hand experience on an inglorious past that saw the travesties of McCarthism move on to domestic spying and wiretapping of political opponents (think Martin Luther King), etc., etc. While we thought hoped we had put this behind us with the Church Amendment in the 1970s, apparently there is no rest when it comes to defending the Constitution, especially when you're defending it against assaults from within your own government.

In 1978, with broad public support, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which placed national security investigations, including wiretapping, under a system of warrants approved by a special court. The law was not perfect, but as a result of its enactment and a series of subsequent federal laws, a generation of Americans has come to adulthood protected by a legal structure and a social compact making clear that government will not engage in unbridled, dragnet seizure of electronic communications.

The Bush administration, however, tore apart that carefully devised legal structure and social compact. To make matters worse, after its intrusive programs were exposed, the White House and the Senate Intelligence Committee proposed a bill that legitimized blanket wiretapping without individual warrants. The legislation directly conflicts with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, requiring the government to obtain a warrant before reading the e-mail messages or listening to the telephone calls of its citizens, and to state with particularity where it intends to search and what it expects to find.

Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a "get out of jail free card" to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it's impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them.

And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know that their actions were illegal. Judge Vaughn Walker of federal district court in San Francisco, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, noted that in an opinion in one of the immunity provision lawsuits the "very action in question has previously been held unlawful." The Wiretap This Time

Posted on October 29, 2007 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0)

Medieval Medicine: Mortal Remedies, Suspicious Cures

I don't know about you all, but I'm not altogether impressed with the work to date of the Homeland Security agency.

I for one do not feel any safer than before this huge bureaucracy was created after 9/11. Tick off just these three items from the long list of evidence ...
- Warning us of threats - the color scheme was downright silly from the start, then became untrustworthy when it was shown that heightened alerts were timed for political effect
- Protecting us from our airplanes - The Transportation Safety Administration was smart when they sealed off airplane cockpits after 9/11, but that's where it stopped for me. I fail to see how making me take off my shoes and my belt and pull out my laptop, how frisking old ladies, how fighting with nursing mothers over their baby bottles, how confiscating shampoo, hand lotion, and nail clippers helps us more than hurts us. Have we gone crazy?
- Protecting us from our borders - The Border Patrol intends to build along the US/Mexico border, while many local officials fight off their efforts. The bad guys have to realize that a fence in Mexico would just make entry from Canada that much more attractive, or for that matter, sailing in along the coast would not be so hard. It seems we're much more afraid of the cultural threat of more illegal Hispanics than we are of terrorists.

You get the picture - it's not an inspiring track record, especially considering how much money we're spent in order to be safer.

Yet our ports for one thing remain vulnerable, as do our nation's chemical facilities, and indeed, much of the rest of our national infrastructure.

So I'm not exactly filled with warm feelings when I read today that Homeland Security is concerned about the safety of the Internet. I'm concerned too, but in a different way. And after reading this editorial in today's New York Times The Information Highway Patrol, I'm not sure this particular patient can stand this particular doctor's cure. It sounds more like applying leeches to bleed the patient to remove the evil spirits. No thanks.

Getting the NSA and 2,000 workers involved in a secret plan to "secure" our nation's vital information infrastructure sounds quite suspicious, especially in light of recent revelations on other domestic surveillance programs detailed in my recent posts on this site. And when members of the Congressional oversight committee are kept in the dark, I get even more uneasy.

I would offer one small piece of advice - the more diverse our community of Internet Service Providers, the harder it would be for anyone to tear down the Internet. The more dispersed its centers of control, the more difficult it is as a target. The way to attack a network is to go for the hubs, those critical areas of concentrated activity. So the more hubs there are, the less damage taking out one of them would cause.

I believe our security from threats to infrastructure will come more from spreading out the critical pieces, so that if one piece is lost, the body does not suffer so much. We need to get our protection from the private marketplace. I don't believe our security will be improved by letting our government keep ever more secrets or spend ever more money to gather more and more sensitive information, while at the same time putting more and more eggs into the few baskets of very large telecom and cable service providers. I don't get it.

Read the editorial below and see if you're not just a little concerned about the proposed cure to the problem of a vulnerable Internet.

No one can envy the Department of Homeland Security its multifarious responsibilities stretching from port security to cyberspace. But surely the agency is obliged to respond fully to Congressional inquiries about its murky plan to monitor government and private communications in the name of protecting the information infrastructure from terrorists. Details have been vague, but the plan reportedly involves some 2,000 workers and the expertise of the National Security Agency and other espionage specialists to guard the Internet.

It's no wonder members of Congress are curious, considering the administration's subversive track record of domestic spying. Members on the Homeland Security panels - who complain they are too much in the dark - have asked the agency to hold off on plans to unveil the program as early as next month. Constitutional and privacy questions need to be adequately answered first.

The nation remains unprepared for a major Internet crash, according to the latest accountability report from Congressional monitors. A proper defense obviously requires close cooperation from experts in government and private industry. A bit of progress was noted in the hiring of an assistant secretary to coordinate cybersecurity. But Congressional monitors find the effort lagging, with a major reason the private sector's mistrust of the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security.

The agency has a huge task, securing the communications infrastructure while protecting the government's ability to communicate in an emergency. It cannot afford to undermine that effort by withholding information from Congress. Answer the questions; make the case along the delicate ridge between national security and constitutional privacy.

The citizens are knowledgeable users of the Internet and sense both its vital role and fragility. They want it protected. They just need informed reassurances by way of their elected representatives, not vaporous edicts from the administration.

Posted on October 29, 2007 at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

The Road to 1984, paved with good intentions

Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Amazon.com synopsis of George Orwell's 1984

My daughter and my wife recently read 1984, and I'm tempted to go back for a second read, having first read it back in 1973 at age 16, when 1984 seemed a long way off, both literally and figuratively. Back then, in my youth and in a more simple time, I couldn't imagine such a horrible world, but George Orwell, writing in 1948 and having just lived through the horrors of World War II totalitarianism and amid the fresh realization of the ongoing hell that Joseph Stalin had produced in the Soviet Union, had no problem imagining such a world in great detail. But it seemed so far away - could never happen in the USA - home of democracy, the balance of powers, the rule of law, where the right to privacy was sacrosanct and civil liberties were protected by the greatest legal and political system to ever walk the planet.

So I hesitate to write this post, because I don't want to seem paranoid, and I don't want to even imagine that that life from 30 years ago is gone, in any way, shape, or form, as if imagining it could make it come true. But when I connect the dots of recent events, coupled with the dots of recent history with telecom companies and the rise of the Internet, I think a little caution and a small dose of fear and foreboding is in order, because technology has finally enabled a future where the government can look into our private lives with great ease. It's only rational to look at the situation with skepticism even though we're assured that our government and the network operators only break the law with our best interests at heart. After all, we're constantly reminded, "We're in the middle of a Global War on Terror, and things are different during wartime..." But then, when I look at the administration's long-term vision, I see no end in sight - I think this Wartime footing goes on indefinitely...and so, one must assume, would the wartime suspensions of civil liberties.

If we do end up in Orwell's 1984 world, and I hope with all my heart that we don't, I don't think we'll wind up there through a revolution. It won't be sudden, rather, it will be through the gradual chipping away of our civil rights, enabled by a compliant press and a scared public, and through ever more powerful technology that lets the government gain access to information to wield ever more power and control. Who knows if it's next year, or ten years from now, or twenty? But surely we're on a path that has at least a growing potential to end in some kind of future like Orwell described in 1984...that is, if we don't steer away from this path by consciously building and maintaining safeguards against it.

What bothers me is that I don't think enough people realize the impact that the Internet and other digital technologies bring to this potential for authoritarian government. They dramatically alter the equation. The more citizens and businesses come to rely on broadband Internet, the more our lives move on-line ... the more susceptible we become as a society to abuse of our digital life data files. So where else does our current path take us? The more I think about this, the bigger it becomes.

Consider my assessment after the jump.

The Recent (and Past) History of Telecoms and the Law
(see recent posts here, here, here, here, here and here.)

1. From Monopoly to Oligopoly. Over the best intentions of the government to bring about competition during the past three decades, two very large and powerful telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have reorganized and pulled back together the bulk of the old Ma Bell, adding wireless and Internet and video along the way.
2. Might Makes Right. These companies have a history of seeing the law not so much as an absolute boundary to be respected, but more as a flexible, malleable boundary that they can change with enough money and enough political influence and enough time.
3. Good PR is Good Cover. These companies have demonstrated a history of well-calculated success in changing the law and regulations and then managing public opinion to suit their purposes and benefit their strategies. They're good at what they do, especially when it comes to getting their way.
4. Behind the Scenes. These companies have long enjoyed a cozy relationship with lawmakers and regulators, where together they share a desire to blur the lines between business and government.
5. You Scratch My Back ... These same companies have recently been found guilty of breaking the law for sharing private customer data with the federal government when it asked, but doing so without a warrant as the law required.
6. Get Out of Jail Free Card. Wrapped into "public security" legislation being promoted by the Bush administration in a climate of fear combined with very slick political maneuvering, is a provision to overturn the court's ruling against the telecoms with retroactive legislation that will give the telecoms immunity from prosecution for their law breaking. Some believe the reason documents requested by the Senate from the White House went to the Intelligence Committee instead of the Judiciary Committee was so that they could tie the request for records to a quid pro quo demand to immunize the telecoms.
7. Power, Attitude, Vision. The telecom companies control vast sums of money, unprecedented political influence, and through their information networks, they enjoy views into our private lives like never before. They have greater capability than ever to abuse their positions of trust. Which is not to say they will always do so, but this is not a good start.
8. Checks & Balances. The only thing that stands between routine violations of privacy, indeed total loss of privacy, by a repetition of these events is a credible legal barrier that keeps these network operators in check.
9. Big Brother - Not Yet. And that is the challenge raised by recent events, and that's why I think the Democrats will make this a big deal, starting with Sen. Dodd's filibuster and moving on to the presidential campaign next year.

The Recent History of the Bush Administration

1. Signing Statements = Line Item Veto. Throughout his administration, when Bush signs a new law, whatever the law, he generally accompanies it with a Signing Statement that says what pieces he agrees with and will enforce, and what he disagrees with and will disregard. In essence, a line-item veto, which the law does not give him, but which he takes nonetheless. What does "law" mean anymore with that kind of attitude? He neuters our law-making body, the Congress, with signing statements.
2. The Constitution - "More guidelines than rules per se". Sworn to uphold the Constitution, Bush has instead subjected it to the widest of interpretations to fit his policies, their maneuvers more often struck down than upheld by the courts, but too often not reviewed or challenged at all. And when that happens, Bush can always go back to the Congress to change the very laws his administration has been deemed in violation of, in effect, to retroactively overturn the court's ruling. What does "law" mean anymore with that kind of attitude? He neuters our court system, turning our rule of law upside down with such manipulation of the Congress.
3. Secrecy - What they don't know won't hurt them. Unlike any other administration, this one uses every power at its command to keep things behind the scenes and to avoid investigation and scrutiny. Under the cloak of National Security, any number of issues remain behind the curtain, and the cloak can cover up a lot of things.
4. Government Outsourcing - Let's Get This Party Started. From Blackwater to Halliburton, this administration has overseen a transfer of functions to the private sector and an incredible coziness with large corporate interests, from K Street to Wall Street. Government's role almost appears to have become to take care of large corporations first and the people second to screw the people. And to hear former Qwest CEO Nacchio tell it, telecoms are part of the large corporate feeding frenzy at the government trough.
5. National Security - The Mother of all Trump Cards. It's as if all legal rules and social mores have been suspended in the interests of National Security. We have lost our way when we see:
a. the US use torture and "rendition" so that it becomes commonplace and innocents are arrested, abused, then released with no apology;
b. the US suspend habeus corpus and allow their president to throw people in jail with no charges;
c. the US attack a country unprovoked, under a cloud of deception, against world opinion, and now, against US public opinion;
d. the US rattle sabers to attack another country, again in this preventative mode, in the absence of pursuing a diplomatic alternative;
e the US run up hundreds of billions of dollars to wage a war, with billions more to come, but no tax to pay for it and then those same leaders say that health care for poor children cannot be paid for, can't be afforded;
f. the US Justice Department brings charges against political opponents with impunity, even throwing a Democratic governor in jail, while ignoring Republican malfeasance in that same state; and
g. the US government and large corporations conspire to spy on their own citizens and customers on a wholesale basis, and when after such behavior has been uncovered, make strong-arm attempts to retroactively immunize those culpable.

When all these things happen in a short six years, one must ask - What happened to us and our wonderful country? What comes next? Will broadband Internet help us or hurt us even more?

The cynic in me says that until this trend is stopped, its logical to expect more law-breaking, more spying. And when that is discovered, expect more amnesties, more chipping away at the protections built into the law, more eroding of the law itself. And if the trend continues long enough, expect such behavior to become the norm and expect our government and society to lose all semblance of democratic reality. Down will have become Up, and Up, Down. Truth will be more and more Lies, Lies will be held up as Truth. Welcome to 1984. It didn't come in 36 years, as Orwell predicted, and it may not come until even one hundred years after publication - 2048, only 41 years from now, when my son will be my age. But this future awaits us if we do nothing to stem these trends.

On the bright side, and that's hard to find after writing a post like this - at least it doesn't look like this direction is widely supported. So perhaps there is hope after all. Consider this recent ACLU Poll.

A majority of likely voters in the U.S. oppose giving immunity to telephone companies who sold customer information to the government, according to a survey released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Telephone company advocates in Congress and the Bush administration say that if telephone companies handed over information to the government, or allowed warrantless wiretaps, it was only in response to the nation's emergency needs in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But ACLU's senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani said money may have been the motivation and most Americans aren't happy.

According to the ACLU survey of 1,000 likely voters, 59% were either opposed or strongly opposed to the idea of giving companies that sold such information to the government civil or criminal immunity, even if that information was used to "investigate terrorism."

About 31% of those surveyed said they supported or strongly supported giving such amnesty, with the remaining percentage of voters saying they were undecided.

Posted on October 25, 2007 at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

Obama to FCC's Martin: Slow Down and Open Up

Presidential candidate and Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama wants Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin to take a series of intermediary steps before making the leap to rewrite media-ownership rules, saying that not to do so would be irresponsible.

In a letter to Martin Monday (see below), the senator asked the FCC chairman to "reconsider your proposed timeline, put out any specific change to the rules for public comment and review, move to establish an independent panel on minority and small-business media ownership and complete a proceeding on the responsibilities that broadcasters have to the communities in which they operate."

The letter came in response to the news last week that Martin had come up with a timetable for moving forward on the congressionally and court-mandated rule review, planning to put out his own proposals for media ownership rules Nov. 13, then letting the public comment for four weeks before holding a mid-November vote on the changes. Obama Calls On Martin to Slow Down on Ownership Review

Setting aside for a moment the impossibility of putting out rules on Nov. 13, having public comment for four weeks, then holding a mid-November vote - I'm sure that's a typo - this news item is noteworthy in so much as FCC actions are getting scrutiny from a leading presidential candidate.

Granted, Barack Obama is a sitting US Senator and so it's not as noteworthy for a Senator to address concerns to the head of an executive agency, but one can see how all such issues start to take on more poignancy as the political campaign cranks up.

Fof the nearly seven years of the Bush administration, the FCC has typically seen rulings among the commissioners as a three-vote Republican majority outweighing the challenges of the two-vote Democratic minority. Not so often are challenged FCC rulings and processes detailed in the main stream press.

That all may change as the political campaign heats up in a few months, with this challenge as a harbinger of things to come.

Posted on October 23, 2007 at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)

Getting More Interesting

In the long run it's unclear whether Dodd's hold and filibuster threat, whatever backing it gets from Hillary and Obama, if any, can really hold up the FISA legislation. Advisers to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have said that while they're willing to work with Dodd to assuage his concerns, they expect that the bill will go to the floor despite his objections. It's also unclear what the final bill will look like; the bill has only just emerged from markup in the Senate Intel committee, and there's some opposition to telecom immunity among members of the Judiciary Committee.

Either way, opposition from Hillary or Obama, or both, could throw some significant obstacles in the way of the bill. And even putting aside whatever long term impact this has on the legislation itself, such a campaign by MoveOn could at the least make telecom immunity an issue in the Dem Primary.Election Central | Talking Points Memo | MoveOn And Top Bloggers To Launch Campaign Pressuring Hillary And Obama To Back Dodd On FISA

This issue that I discussed at length in a previous post here has the potential to go on and on and on, putting the telecom / government relationship under the microscope (and potentially spilling over into broadband policy?). Stay tuned...

Posted on October 23, 2007 at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)

Where There's Smoke ... Part VI Three New Issues

My last post tried to fill in the gaps on how we got "here." As broadband Internet matures, as cellular voice and data service proliferates, as media services converge, and as new wired and wireless technologies offer new network options and new business models, at least three new issues are focusing the debate when it comes to the new Triple Play approach to networked media (Voice, Video, Internet Access). Here are the topics and some key links to learn more.

Network Neutrality - Wikipedia Reference for a good, fairly balanced overview; Washington Post Jan 2006 Overview; Good Economic Argument; Lawrence Lessig's more libertarian viewpoint; and Law Professor Tim Wu's legal viewpoint

State and National Franchise Fees - New York: Issues in Cable Franchise Fees; New Jersey: October 2005 Municipality Issues Brief; Texas SB 5 Statewide Cable Franchise and subsequent FCC Cable Franchise Order; NATOA 2005 Telecom Cable Franchise Analysis

Spectrum Policy - Field Guide to the Upcoming 700 MHz Spectrum License Auction; 2002 FCC Report on Spectrum Policy; NYCWireless on unlicensed spectrum policy reform; Software Defined Radios (SDR) and Spectrum Policy; NTIA Fact Sheet on Recommendations to Improve Spectrum Management

For a high-level layman's overview of these issues, check out my off-the-cuff summary below.

Network Neutrality

It wasn't long that a new issue arose to sit beside the proposed guarantee for municipalities to own and operate networks. The issue of Net Neutrality reared its head.

Incumbent ISPs had begun to complain that "bandwidth hogs" placed undue burdens on their networks by consuming large amounts of bandwidth from applications like video downloads and uploads and peer-to-peer file sharing. They suggested that network operators should have the right to charge such consumers different rates, but more importantly, they should be able to charge content providers like Google and others different rates to guarantee premium service levels and speedy delivery of their content. Consumer advocates warned that this would violate the spirit of the Internet, which was designed to be a dumb distributer of undifferentiated bits of data, which had until then ensured that all data was treated the same. The issues of Net Neutrality emerged.

- After all, didn't consumers already pay for Internet access in the fees that they paid to their ISPs? Additional fees charged by operators would be "double dipping."
- And what would happen when network operators discriminated by delivering their own content first?
- Or what if only large companies could guarantee delivery of their content by paying those fees to operators - a two-tier Internet would result, where good quality content delivery would be expected from large well-heeled providers like Google, but smaller companies who would not be able to pay a separate fee. Network operators would offer slower service and smaller content companies would watch their market share decline, as consumers showed a preference for the faster but more mainstream content.
- Much of what made the Internet special, its widely diverse and off-beat content offerings, would fade under this scenario, and the Internet would start to resemble the broadcast networks with their limited, mainstream content offers.

In summary then, Proponents of Net Neutrality argued that Net Neutrality legislation was needed to ensure that network operators would not abuse their positions of power and discriminate in how they delivered content. It was needed to preserve the Internet as a neutral distributor of content. Opponents of Net Neutrality argued that Net Neutrality legislation would put undue burdens on network operators, who would face increasing costs but have no offsetting fees or revenue sources to allow them to stay financially healthy.

Statewide and National Franchise Fees

Interested in entering the cable TV market to compete with cable providers in offering lucrative video services, telecommunication companies began to argue against the current system of local municipal franchises, where a large company would have to negotiate separately with hundreds or thousands of city governments for the right to offer TV service in a local market. The costs would be huge.

To offer competition and lower rates for consumers, telecom companies argued, it would make more sense to have franchise fees standardized over entire states, or better still, over the entire nation. This would eliminate a significant barrier to entry and increase competition, opening up closed markets. Cable companies objected that they had had to win all these municipal franchise agreements, and would be bound by a patchwork of agreements and fee structures, while the telecommunication companies enjoyed a new, streamlined system. Most notably in Texas in 2005, the telecommunication companies prevailed with a statewide franchise agreement law.

Spectrum Policy

The FCC regulates who can use which sets of radio wavelengths, how they can use them and where they can use them, in what locations - together, these regulations come under the heading of Spectrum Policy. For the uninitiated, spectrum is a physical trait of electromagnetic radiation. On the low end is sound , this graph below is a great introductory overview.

electromagnetic spectrum.png

More to the point, here below is the multi-colored eye chart of Frequency Allocations of Radio Spectrum produced by the US Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Office of Spectrum Management, available for download in a PDF here. As you can see (in your downloaded, blown up version, not in the miniscule eye chart below), unlicensed spectrum bands are in dark green, labeled Amateur Band - look for the Wi Fi spectrum band at 2.4 GHz.

Frequency Allocation Eye Chart.png

One key issue of spectrum policy is how much spectrum to devote to unlicensed use, based on the success enjoyed with Wi Fi equipment, creating a new industry and spurring innovation out of what had been considered "junk band" frequency, the province of baby monitors and microwave ovens. Should the FCC make more such spectrum available, or sell the spectrum licenses like so much valuable real estate, to raise funds for the federal government?

That issue jibes with another issue up for timely discussion in this area: the allocation of the 700-MHz band of spectrum licenses held for the longest time by television broadcasters. As part of the move to digital television, these bandwidth are no longer needed by those broadcasters and so they're being reallocated to new users. This is an attractive band for radio data transmission because the signals are better able to penetrate solid objects and so network designers can use fewer devices to cover more territory - these licenses make for a more efficient wireless broadband network, and more efficiency means lower costs.

There is much speculation on whether this auction of 700 MHz spectrum licenses coming up in early February 2008 will result in one of two potential outcomes: Option A - one of the incumbent players wins the auction and rights to the spectrum, in which case they may set it aside to keep it away from competitors - meaning less competition and maintenance of the status quo. Or, Option B - a new player (like Google or Apple) will spend to gain the licenses and use them to enter into competition with traditional telecom providers - meaning more competition and a challenge to the status quo.

Posted on October 22, 2007 at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

Where There's Smoke ... Part V Summing it Up

I spent a good part of yesterday connecting a Number of Dots to better understand where we are in the current state of broadband regulation and management in the United States to better see the direction we're heading.

See the dots here and connect them yourself...this is no exhaustive bit of reporting here, just a reflection on a pattern of activity that should be disturbing to anyone who is watching. A preliminary conclusion is that nobody is really in charge; our government is ineffective at best, hopelessly compromised at worst; and we have an industry on autopilot, increasingly consolidating its gains and growing ever stronger.

Part I Open Eyes & Ears Tell a Story, If We Listen and Watch for a rundown on 35 years of telecommunication deregulation that have failed to bring about competition.

Part II One State Example goes into detail on how the large amount of lobbying dollars spent by telecommunication giants AT&T, headquartered in San Antonio, and Verizon give the big telco lobby an overwhelming presence at the State house and in local politics.

Part III FCC Regulatory Relief provides background on the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and its singular ineffectiveness in building a national broadband infrastructure through its strategy of giving regulatory relief to large cable and telecom interests.

I finished the series with Part IV How Close is Too Close? a long discussion on the current national debate concerning the effort in the US Senate to revise the FISA law, including the potential to grant AT&T and Verizon retroactive immunity from prosecution for violating the law when they opened up their private customer records to the federal government without a warrant.

I realized this morning why these dots when connected cause me such heartburn.

1. The Internet is not like other networks.
2. The Internet ties everything together, providing our society with such compelling efficiencies that over a short period of time we have been drawn to place more and more of our data and daily business operations onto the Web.
3. The Internet has become dramatically more important than any one of the previous networks that the FCC regulated, from telephone to cable to radio stations to handheld ham radios, and its speed of development and adoption dwarfs those other networks and industries.
4. When the dominant network that we depend upon utterly, with access to all of our digital information and private secrets, is operated by a handful of companies in bed with a federal government that plays fast and loose with the laws, has an unprecedented preference for secrecy, and plays the Fear card at will, we are truly staring into George Orwell's 1984 Society as never before...

I was rattled there for a second. The good news is we're not there yet. It's more a general sense of dread of what could be if we continue down this path we're on.

There's more to the story, so let's wind things back and talk some more about a more complete view of the picture.

Way, Way Back

In the old, old days when the 1934 Act was passed, we used the telephone to talk on, AT&T held sway, and we listened to the radio networks for entertainment. The big issues were how to get telephone service out to the rural areas and how to make sure that analog radio signals didn't stomp on each other.

Way Back

Television came along, and decency standards reared their heads. Soon, cable companies built up to provide service where reception was poor. Three national TV broadcast networks served up standard fare to a mass national audience.

A While Back

Cable became more prominent as specialty content networks started offering alternatives to the national broadcast networks. Cable companies negotiated local municipal franchises with local governments, who cut deals to get some public revenue from franchise fees. Generally, one telephone company regulated by a state commission (as well as the FCC) provided service to a community. Cable meant TV and Telephone meant phone calls. Long Distance was regulated by the feds, then deregulated and competitive options sprang up, lowering the costs of calling outside your local area.

Cellular phones began to show up, but they were expensive, so many people just got pagers. In time the capabilities of cell phones began to go up, as prices began to fall.

Telephone companies began to offer high speed data service, but it was very expensive and so only businesses bought lines from the telephone companies. The Baby Bells, recently unbundled from AT&T, talked about a day when they would provide television services over high speed data lines and negotiated rate freezes with regulatory commissions to help finance that vision.

More Recently

Customers could buy dial-up modems that would let them use their phone lines and they could buy service from new companies like AOL or Prodigy to get onto the new Internet and the World Wide Web. It was a novelty to many, speeds were slow, and WWW was ridiculed as meaning "World Wide Wait." But then, Cable companies started offering a new service that provided "always on" Internet at much higher speeds as a premium add on, which came to be known as Broadband. As the curious signed up, they became hooked with a much better service and the Internet boom began to make headlines.

Fairly Recently

Seeing all the revenue that cable companies were getting, telecom companies launched aDSL services, which provided "download" speeds much faster than dial-up, but still slower than cable, and customers could use most of the available capacity to download websites and "surf" the Web. Telecom companies managed their networks and Internet Service Provider (ISP) offers so that "download" was faster, but "upload" speeds were quite slow, because they figured that few people needed to send data that way, mostly e-mails with small file sizes. DSL began to eat into Cable broadband and represent a threat. For the first time, cable and telecom companies were really in competition with each other. But often, that meant that consumers could pick from one of two options, both priced about the same, generally cable broadband was still priced a little more in most markets because it was faster.

On the sidelines, voice over Internet Protocol - VOIP - was being developed and launched. Getting your phone service over your broadband connection was primarily seen as a commercial service, but VOIP startup Vonage raised tremendous capital which it began to spend on TV ads to go after consumer business. Combined with customers who were using their cell phones and dropping their fixed telephone service, telephone companies began to see a drop in their steady Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), a mainstay of their corporate revenue. A troubling development for a telecom company.

Cable companies saw increasing competition from the two main satellite TV companies, Dish Networks and DirecTV, which made original inroads in rural areas where cable was not avaialble, but then began to sell in urban markets in direct competition with wired cable companies, which had been enjoying steady price increases.

Cellular telephone companies offering very similar services and facing price competition in national markets began to consolidate, even as they enjoyed record subscriber growth based on flat-pricing plans for voice service. They tried to get customers interested in data plans, but customer acceptance remained weak.

How much of this fairly recent private sector competition and market development did the FCC oversee, or contribute to? Not much. One of the principal means of interaction by the FCC was to auction off bands of radio spectrum licenses for vast sums of money, which kept much of the available spectrum licenses in the hands of a small number of well capitalized telecommunication companies. In other words, they limited competition in wireless markets by focusing on spectrum as a primarily a source of revenue for the federal government, rather than a tool to create a diverse market of wireless service providers.

Most Recently

Owning a dominant share of the ever growing broadband market, cable and telecom companies acted in unison to keep municipalities interested in new municipal wireless and FTTH projects out of "their" markets. They supported state legislative initiatives in 2004 and 2005 to ban municipal ownership, and in some cases, to ban even privately provided networks in partnership with municipalities. When most of those measures were defeated, the municipal ownership issue shifted to the Congress, and three other key issues began to focus the debate.

That will be the focus of the next post...

Posted on October 22, 2007 at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

"OnShoring" and "RuralShoring" - How Broadband "Shores Up "our Economy

So, let's say you're a city leader in a smaller town out in the sticks and you and your colleagues are wondering what to do to stimulate your economy and keep the young people from leaving town in search of greener pastures when they graduate from high school?

See this article, Some firms replace offshoring with onshoring - Los Angeles Times for more details.

This article describes how the sinking dollar and maturing overseas Outsourcing markets are making Rural American towns look more attractive to large companies seeking to lower their operating costs. They're asking themselves, "Why not look closer to home when considering where to locate a sales operation, or a call center" That's a distinct possibility when your town has broadband infrastruct