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FEATURED TOPICDigital Transition -The term "Digital Transition" describes the process all organizations must go through in the 21st Century, as they leverage new technologies that provide new options for Applications, Equipment, Processes, and Networks that make them more effective. In contrast, the term "Municipal Wireless" is limiting. It puts the network technology ahead of the application and process changes that drive the business case. ORIENTATION |
Just in CaseJust in case you're tracking the FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction, I thought I'd recommend this website. Wet Machine has the best coverage, I think, of any website when it comes to the spectrum auction. AZ Posted on February 02, 2008 at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) FCC 700 MHz Auction passes a threshold
I'm not sure what this image of a souped up lawnmower is supposed to mean, but I'm putting it here to symbolize the opposite of watching grass grow. This looks like cutting grass as an extreme sport... So, maybe I was a little hasty in using the grass-growing analogy yesterday in expressing frustration with the slow pace of the FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction over at the FCC. Looks like it may be progressing a little faster than I originally thought. Glenn has a good write-up at Wi Fi Networking News here, titled FCC 700 MHz Auction Crosses Overall Reserve Price Threshold. We still don't know who bid what, but it's starting to look like reserves will be met (in most cases) and that means that there will be winners and losers. More to come. Check it out, Glenn provides a good write up that I could not improve upon. Posted on January 30, 2008 at 06:24 PM | Comments (0) Watching Grass Grow
Oh, oh, the suspense is killing me...this is truly painful. The subject at hand? The 700 MHz Spectrum Auction underway at the FCC. As momentous as the outcome will be, it's still excruciating to read updates that are out there for the 700 MHz FCC spectrum auction, especially stuff like this: The auction will end when there are no new bids and all the spectrum blocks have been sold. This could take weeks yet if the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) auctions in 2006 are any indication. Spectrum Sells, But Who's Buying? Long sigh here ...................................................look, I swear that blade just shot up ... which one? that green one, over on the left ... you know, the skinny blade, next to that fat one? ..... Posted on January 29, 2008 at 08:20 PM | Comments (0) Forget the Past and the Future, Here in the Present, Ignorance is BlissI was 13 in 1970, but seeing Joni Mitchell here in concert makes me wish I had gone to more concerts when I was young...didn't seem to appreciate all the good music opportunities out there at the time... "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got till it's gone, they paved paradise, put up a parking lot"...Joni MItchell, Big Yellow Taxi, 1970 We don't appreciate what we have in the present until it has ... passed us by and is no longer available. - ironic, isn't it? Joni MItchell poetically made that point and her poetry entered the popular lexicon. Here's another truth to consider. We don't appreciate what we will have, or even what we can have in the future, until we see it with our own two eyes. (Can anyone think of a song whose lyrics say that more poetically?) As Harold Feld put it in this very good, very long post on Google's rationale for bidding in the upcoming FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction on his website, Harold Feld's Tales of the Sausage Factory: But Google has one big advantage - everybody else wants the same world Google does, they just don't know it yet. That may sound absurd, elitist, patronizing, etc. But the fact is that most people don't realize what they want until someone with entrepreneurial vision thinks it up and sells it to them. .... So I believe that, given the option, people will discover they really want an open wireless network. But they have to have the option available to them first, and the only way Google can do that is by winning licenses. I highly recommend a 15-minute break to pull up this article and read it fully. Feld says in more convincing fashion what I've felt for some time, and tried to get across on this website...we won't get the future we want if we count on the incumbents giving it to us, we'll get the future they want. Google is going to go after this spectrum, not so that it can go out and compete with ATT & Verizon and other mobile carriers at their game, but so that they can use the spectrum to create an alternate Open market where many carriers provide greater flexibility, more content, and lower prices, similar to the wired Internet world of today - and force those carriers to play a new game, one more closely tied to the highly successful and popular vision that Google has implemented over the past several years. Like many of us out here, Google has no faith in the FCC ever bringing about the wireless future that many of us want. Unlike many of us, Google can actually do something about it besides wring their hands and write snarky blog posts. Here then is a quick highlight of Feld's prophecy of a Google wireless world, which he provides in four parts. 1. Google Has A Different Vision For the Wireless World It Can Only Achieve By Owning Licenses. Google needs the licenses so that it can create an Open marketplace - a "mobile broadband" industry to replace the current "wireless phone" industry. In this world, people do not buy "mobile phone service" with the option to load all manner of various features for additional prices onto their phones. People buy a wireless service contract for a "dumb pipe" similar to what they buy (now) from cable and DSL companies. ... Google would very much like to replicate this wire line experience in the wireless world. But this would require the equivalent of a slash-and-burn on the existing wireless business model. Unsurprisingly, existing wireless carriers will not become party to this radical reshaping of the industry unless they have no choice. But if consumers can chose a wireless network that gives them flat rate dumb pipe (as the basic contract, with the option to add on more customer service for additional fees), then over time they will, and the closed wireless carriers will respond to the competitive pressure by changing their business models. When you think about it, it's not altogether unlike what Steve Jobs did with iTunes and the iPod. Rather than wait for the recording industry to reform itself, he went around them with an alternate business model. Feld highlights the history of the ISP business, where in the beginning AOL sold expensive metered service in a walled garden environment, but over time, competitors forced them to abandon that model for a more open system. This is where the analysis gets really exciting! it's not just about whether Google can expand their empire to include wireless devices. If Google is not successful in getting an Open paradigm for the wireless space, there's a very real chance that the Telecoms will be successful in bringing the metered, Closed paradigm from wireless over into the wired world. And that would suck for Google (not to mention the rest of us). Consider why open source software competes against Microsoft, despite the best efforts of MS to kill it. The answer is because open source plays by a very different set of rules. Open source can't be "Netscaped" because it doesn't play by the same rules as Microsoft. So the tricks that put MS at the top of the proprietary tree and help it cut down any serious competition don't work on open source products. Here, Feld draws the comparison of Open Source software and Microsoft. Open Source advocates don't follow MS rules, but are able to compete because they play a different game. ...to repeat, the fact that Google doesn't want to run the network is a strength not a weakness. Google wants the consequences of an open network, and wants to absolutely ensure that the network will be totally and completely open. ... When you combine Point 1 + Point 2, the idea of Google being serious about winning makes more sense. They cannot get what they really want any other way. And they will avoid the doomsday scenario feared by the investment analysts. Google won't go broke if it wins this spectrum, blazing headlong into becoming a network operator. They'll get others to build and operate a network according to Google's rules, because it's Google's spectrum. 3. Anonymous Bidding Changes Everything. Dare we hope that our government is getting wise and will run an auction that can't be gamed by the big guys? For the first time, the FCC will operate under a system of anonymous bidding. Analysts really have not digested just what that means to bidding strategies and behaviors. ... Google appears to understand that under this new set of rules, a well funded new entrant has a host of new opportunities to overcome the advantages of incumbents. And at the same time, Google cannot count on a more "open friendly" bidder winning the licenses. To meet its goals with certainty, Google must acquire a national footprint. At the same time, parties trying to block Google (or other new entrants) from acquiring a national footprint will have a very difficult time doing so. It is impossible to be strong everywhere, and parties that have relied on the mutual interests of similarly situated bidders to guarantee that a new entrant will meet with stiff resistance on every front find themselves forced to rely on their own devices without assistance. ... this promises to be the single most unpredictable auction in FCC history. Such uncertainty favors bold well funded newcomers like Google, to the disadvantage of traditional winners like Verizon and AT&T. 4. When Google Commits, It Does So All The Way. Sure, Google dabbles, but when it jumps in, it does so with both feet. Consider Google's acquisition of YouTube for what some analysts judged as the excessive sum of $1.65 billion. ... Google's decision to jump into the wireless auction and take on the likes of AT&T and Verizon mirrors its decision to acquire YouTube and take on media giants such as Viacom. It's extremely high-risk, and it remains unclear to conventionally-minded analysts focused on the bottom line how Google will come out ahead. ... Mind you, I don't say that Google definitively will win. Verizon and AT&T are not slouches when it comes to getting what they want, even when they have to fight fair (they may not prefer it, but they can do it if they must). Just as I wouldn't underestimate Google in this competition, nor would I underestimate AT&T or Verizon. I think they are starting to see that they are in for the fight of their lives with Google (even if they don't fully grasp the scenario Feld laid out in his article). As I wrote this summary, it dawned on me that when municipalities seek to bring in a third-party to operate a network according to Open Access principles, whether the city owns the network or not, they are mimicking the Google strategy that Feld described. Rather than wait on incumbent broadband providers to bring in new infrastructure or business models that better serve all the public, they're brining in the infrastructure themselves and installing the new business models that will bring about robust competition and lower rates. I think it's interesting to note that no matter what happens in February at the auction, the incumbents are not going away. They are classics who have shown an ability to adapt when they have to. Much of the change we discuss on these pages can be seen as efforts by different parties to force change on the incumbents or to simply go around them. But don't count them out, not just yet. They have lots of money, political connections, customers, and technology experience, and I think they will be around and influential for years to come. They just need a 2x4 to the head once in a while and would be well advised to follow both Joni's admonition about appreciating what you have while you still have it, as well as Harold's observation that most don't know the future until it bites them in the ass. And do give the Counting Crows credit for recognizing something to appreciate after it has passed and gone on. Joni's Big Yellow Taxi is one for the ages, brought back to a new generation by the Crows... Posted on December 03, 2007 at 01:09 PM | Comments (0) The upcoming 700 MHz Follies Beg a Public Discussion on Mobile Voice and Data (and Spectrum)In practice, many innovative devices never reach the market. The Big Four tend to approve only established partners whose devices fit their business plans, which is why we have yet to see all those wireless devices that were supposed to be in our future. The firms already control what phones or devices reach Americans; 95% of cell phones are sold by the wireless carriers themselves. They strictly control phone design, blocking features that might threaten their revenue, like timers that keep track of how many minutes you've used each month. The carriers have also crippled or blocked alternative means of connecting wirelessly, like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, because they want you to burn up minutes on their networks and charge extra fees. Forbes Column on Wireless Innovation Tim Wu, Professor at Columbia Law School and author, wrote this column for Forbes magazine's May 18 edition. In this essay, as he highlights the upcoming debate over future use of the 700 MHz spectrum and introduces the issue of the "right to attach," he talks about the four major cellular phone companies. Those companies collectively control which applications use their networks and which devices can attach. Clearly, based on a historical review, their decisions are first in the best interests of their own companies and their shareholders, and only a distant second are they in the interest of their customers. If you have any experience with cellular phone companies, you probably have some understanding of what he's talkng about. He highlights the innovation that unfolded from the Carterfone decision by the FCC in 1968, which allowed the Carterfone and other devices to be connected directly to the AT&T network, as long as they did not cause damage to the system. This decision led ultimately to a standard telephone jack and the introduction of new devices like fax machines and modems, which in time led to the Internet. See, this stuff is all connected when you dig deep enough. Check out this short history of the telephone industry and regulation to see how much telecommunications history drives what we see unfolding today. It's just all happens so sloooooooowly. In fact, another column talks about a Cellular Carterfone policy, whereby cell carriers should be required to make neutral the decision on which applications and devices attach to their networks. Make it standard, sit back, open the floodgates, and watch the innovation start to happen. Don't buy into the "dissatisfied customer" storyline? Check out Six Things Customers Hate about Cellphone Service. 1) Disabled features; 2) Phones "locked" to work on only one network. 3) "Walled garden" Internet access. 4) Unreliable service. 5) Incompatible products and services. 6) Cell phones generally can't be used as laptop modems even though it's technically feasible. Put me down for 2, 3, and 4, in particular. I'm switching carriers again this month (2 years finally up!!) and my Sprint-only Treo 650 won't be worth much. How long can this situation hold out? Maybe change is coming sooner than we think? Yet the iPhone is poised to break through one technical barrier imposed by carriers on most phones--it will be capable of switching from cell mode to Wi-Fi when it detects a network hotspot. Wi-Fi - despite its wide availability and appeal - is impossible to access from most cell phones because carriers have been slow to support any wireless technology that competes with their own. For example, when Nokia released the E61 smartphone in Europe last year, Wi-Fi support came built in. But when Cingular introduced the same phone in the United States last fall, Wi-Fi support was missing. Voice over IP is another network service cell carriers have been slow to support but IT departments want. Ben Holder, CIO of Unifi, a yarn manufacturer, says his company's BlackBerry users would benefit "a lot" from both Wi-Fi and VoIP if only they could get it. "Business users are now behaving more like consumers," Holder says. "They want more of the same features and functions as consumers." My favorite part about all of this debate and potential change is to see dual use cellular phones finally break in - imagine your cellphone working like a land-line VOIP phone when you're under a Wi Fi cloud. How many calls do you make from your hometown? How many minutes could you drop from your cell plan if you could leverage the cloud? It's coming, folks. There are more news items and blogs out there starting to discuss the upcoming 700 MHz decision-making process, which we'll have to cover in the next blog. I'm running out of steam tonight. Posted on May 31, 2007 at 09:55 PM | Comments (0) New Spectrum to the RescueDare we hope that the FCC may finally act in the public interest and bring us some sound public policy when it comes to spectrum management? Spectrum Policy may well be one of the biggest barriers to popular understanding of wireless broadband. Is there a more arcane and complex topic? Check out this website, Fractals of Change, for one of the most accessible explanations of potential upcoming changes in spectrum policy that just may hold promise for us all. In his post entitled "Good News from the FCC," blogger Tom Evslin describes the events this week at the FCC, where - finally - they have laid out plans to have a real dialogue on what to do with the 700 MHz spectrum swatches that will become avaialble when analogue TV spectrum are reallocated in 2009. To find out why this is vital to our national prospects for broadband access, I encourage you to read not only Tom's current post, but also the two links he has at the tail end of his article, which provide very good background for the novice to better understand spectrum policy and the physics of radio frequency (RF). See Spectrum Serendipity from April 11, 2007, as well as Internet 2.0 is Open Spectrum from September 25, 2006. I encourage you to brew up a nice cup of hot tea and sit down for a good read. Or grab a cold brew, if that is more your speed. However you read it, you will find it time well spent. Posted on April 28, 2007 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0) In the Air Tonight ... or Some Night SoonI can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord Big sigh here. I feel this way everytime I set out to write about the topic of Unlicensed Spectrum: "I've been waiting for this moment, for all my life, oh lord..." It seems to me that when it comes to the issue of spectrum management, and more particularly, to the issue of unlicensed spectrum and the transition from an Analog World to a Digital World - it seems as if the FCC moves at a snail's pace. And the result is almost always the same - the FCC shows its preference for auctions and immediate short-term revenue gain from auction proceeds, implicitly denying the value of the innovation that comes from letting go of spectrum - making it "Unlicensed" - so that it can be used creatively and efficiently by innovators. In many ways, this particular failure of the FCC strikes me as the worst of government, but at the same time a tragic irony as well - this predilection to continue regulating when the need has evaporated is practiced by conservatives who believe in limited government. Of all people, you'd think they would want to shrink government and give the control of the airwaves back to the people and small business - that's what I call Irony! So, in this particular chapter of Bad Government, programs put in place that made sense in one era continue and take on a life of their own, becoming a stumbling block to innovation and change in another era. And all this is done with the full weight of the federal government bureaucracy and the imprimatur of officialdom, all under the heading of well-meaning regulators (I'm being charitable here) doing their job as "responsible stewards of the public trust." Can we really expect regulators to quit regulating and put themselves out of a job? I don't think that happens very often - never, in the case of the current FCC - such agencies have to be told how to act and so I'm looking to Congress for any hope I have for more unlicensed spectrum. And when does Congress act? Arguably, most of the time they act when a crisis forces them to, rarely when the Public Interest requires them to....generally, Congress acts when the selfish interests of one powerful lobby come up against the selfish interests of another powerful lobby and an external catalyst sparks action. That's what's coming up, folks, with the spectrum allotted for analog broadcast TV coming into play (Digital TV will free up valuable lower end spectrum in 2009), Big Tech has lined up against Big Telecom. This will be a very interesting battle to watch. Tom Evslin, writing in his blog Fractals of Change has two very good posts that do a much better job than I can do in describing this situation and its importance to cracking the nut that US broadband infrastructure has become. Two bills have been introduced in the Senate to speed up what seems to be an interminable FCC process. A bill from Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) would require the FCC to allow unlicensed use of this spectrum within 180 days of enactment. Another bill from John Sununu (R-NH) has a 90 day deadline but allows the FCC to reserve some of the frequencies for licensed use. Note that if you are automatically sensing unused frequencies you actually can start before 2009 when more frequencies will become available. For a great exposition of issues and a good primer on spectrum, which I won't recapitulate here, I recommend you go to Fractals of Change to check out these two articles - "More on Frequency Regulation - It Matters" and "Internet Alternatives: A Good Beginning." Take a moment and read Tom's analysis and case for unlicensed spectrum - good graphics too! And send a copy to your Congressman and Senator! Make your voice heard. Posted on March 17, 2007 at 07:33 AM | Comments (0) Time for Spectrum Reform? Well Past Time, More LikeAlthough today's FCC is nowhere near as controlling as earlier FCCs, it still treats the radio spectrum like a scarce resource that its bureaucrats must manage for the "public good," even though the government's scarcity argument has been a joke for half a century or longer. The almost uniformly accepted modern view is that information-carrying capacity of the airwaves isn't static, that capacity is a function of technology and design architecture that inventors and entrepreneurs throw at spectrum. To paraphrase this forward-thinking 1994 paper (PDF), the old ideas about spectrum capacity are out, and new ones about spectrum efficiency are in. The case for killing the FCC and selling off spectrum - Slate Magazine Oh, where do I begin? At the root of much of what ails this country when it comes to telecommunications is our government regulation of spectrum, a man-made device to manage a physical phenomenom: the various wavelengths of electromagnetic waves - what we refer to as radio spectrum. The facts are that we have learned much about radio and spectrum since one hundred years ago, when Marconi struggled to establish "wireless" ship-to-shore communication and laboriously determined how to tame radio signals into a useful new business. Back in the early days of radio, we correctly believed that we needed a government agency to manage the use of the airwaves, in much the same way we have traffic cops, traffic signals, stop signs, and rules-of-the-road that regulate the flow of cars and pedestrians and ensure that we don't kill each other and get snarled up in hopeless traffic jams. Back then, we had stupid devices - whether it was radios for communications, radios for listening to broadcasts, or TVs for watching broadcasts from national networks - without regulation, we couldn't help but fall over each other. We needed to be protected from ourselves, because it would have been bedlam if all the players weren't separated by broad bands of dead zones. Noise is the enemy of radio signals. While that may have been the case in the early days, and the FCC and its regulatory scheme may have been an improvement over market solutions, that is no longer the case, and you would be hard put to find anyone who knows anything about radio to argue differently. As is often the case with government, it lags behind reality. Our elected leaders too often need to be led. This article makes that cogent argument very well: technology has zoomed past the traditional regulatory scheme of radio spectra and the FCC management is ham-handed, at best. But while it makes that argument well, it leaves the reader short, because it begs the question: "OK, so why does the FCC and its regulatory scheme still exist if its so patently obvious that its not needed?" The depressing answer is that our government and our society, indeed, our culture, is not rational, even though we wish it would be. Government solutions often overstay their welcome, generally because they develop a political constituency that enjoys the protections afforded by government and works to maintain the status quo, often way past its usefulness. Farm subsidies for corporate farms, anyone? Surplus milk turned into cheese for the poor? And the bigger the incentive to maintain the status quo, the slower reform happens. And it's hard to imagine a more cozy relationship between big business and big government than the current spectrum regulation at the FCC. Big Business likes spectrum auctions because it keeps the competition out. When it takes billions of dollars to win a spectrum auction, only the big guys win, and the little guys are left penned into their ghetto of unlicensed bands - free to innovate, but not free to grow large and threaten the established players. And Big Government gets the billions from the auctions to fill the government tills and finance the war in Iraq. Pardon me if I get a little cynical here, but I don't see this situation changing in the near term, even if it makes even more sense than it already does. Corruption favors the powerful and maintains their hold on power and this, folks, can only be described as a corrupt and inefficient system. We won't even go into the current relationship between FCC commissioners and staffers and the industry they "regulate." Still, for the serious student of metropolitan broadband, an understanding of spectrum operations and spectrum management by the federal government is important. For a great primer on spectrum, and an inspiring treatise on the potential of unlicensed sprectrum (and a similar argument about the cure being worse than the disease), see this white paper by Kevin Werbach, a former senior staffer at the FCC and now a wireless guru Radio Revolution: The Coming Age of Unlicensed Wireless. This seminal document, at over 50 pages, inspired me to get into this field a few years back. Want to dig deeper? See this more brief review that shares the optimism but is much shorter at 6 pages: The Coming Spectrum Explosion — A Regulatory and Business Primer. Finally, for the municipal reader, it is worth the time to look at a particular band of spectrum focused on public safety, with good potential for favorable treatment and opportunity to leverage for your municipal network: Broadband Public Safety Data Networks in the 4.9 GHz Band: Potential, Pitfalls & Promise. So, how to stay sane and pleasant, amidst this overwhelming corruption and inefficiency? Well, besides having a bottle of wine now and again, I recommend this advice to overcome any cynicism. Get back in your sandbox. Get an education. Investigate what you can do to push out the envelope, within the current boundaries of federal regulation, no matter how lame you may believe that regulation to be. Let's all keep hoping for better service from our government, we have to do that, don't we? But for now, let's also focus on what we can each do to leverage what we do have to work with - Wi Fi Mesh in the unlicensed bands. These technologies offer us much potential to do good for ourselves, and each new successful project becomes one more piece of evidence to throw back at the FCC and the Congress, challenge the status quo and motivate reform. Posted on February 16, 2007 at 08:08 AM | Comments (0) Wi Fi, Congestion, and Playing Well With OthersBack to those rules we learned in kindergarten ... Remember that bestseller about 20 years ago: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum? Well, its back off my bookshelf and open on my desk. A while back, a colleague asked me how Wi Fi Mesh networks deal with the issue of congestion. I thought it was a good question - here's what I found out below in this blog, by leaning on Internet resources and local experts. The bottom line is that for a network that uses unlicensed spectrum to work, there needs to be coordination and cooperation between network operators using the unlicensed spectrum. In other words, we all need to get along, follow some rules of good behavior, and Share with our Neighbor - just like in Kindergarten... Tech Republic, by the way, gives a good overview of unlicensed spectrum use and constraints, including the diagram below.
First Question: How much unlicensed spectrum is available and how is it used? And, given that the DSL and Cable network operators are moving in the opposite direction of being neutral hosts (last summer, the Supreme Court Brand X decision allowed cable operators to run a closed network and then the FCC decided soon after that to apply the same conditions to telcos) - closing their networks to third parties as their existing contracts expire - creation of such a neutral host model fills an emerging need and is a likely direction for the municpal wireless industry. This becomes a motivation of municpal RFPs - to create a neutral third network that third party providers like Earthlink (Echostar, DirecTV, etc, etc) can use, or that multiple smaller players can use to develop small niche markets. Entry by a large player into the unlicensed space at some point would indeed be disruptive, however, and would raise the congestion issue again. But that doesn't appear likely in the near term, given how many other opportunities there are to spend energy in more constructive ways, and I've always assumed that such competitors would sooner use licensed technology then compete, or buy subscribers than enter a market, than they would be to enter a market and compete with similar technology to kill off a smaller competitor. Given that there's a current, compelling need for last mile broadband in spots throughout even a very-well-served market like Austin, a cooperative model for market development that would rationally and deliberately deal with early-stage congestion issues makes the most sense. Posted on July 12, 2006 at 02:29 PM | Comments (0) Spectrum ResourcesRadio Revolution I think that this comprehensive whitepaper by Kevin Werbach did more to give me the perspective on the potential of smart radios and a new way of looking at wireless spectrum than anything else I've read. This is a great place to start to begin to understand radio, wireless, and why there is so much potential in this area. Spectrum Regulatory and Legislative Primer The changes before the FCC are laid out in this whitepaper. What happens in this area in the next several years will go a long way to determining how much we are all able to take advantage of the potential of wireless broadband technologies. Broadband Public Safety Data Networks in the 4.9 GHz Band:Potential, Pitfalls & Promise Tropos authors drill down on the potential of using the Public Safety spectrum to bring wireless broadband to a community. Four Scenarios for TV Spectrum In this intriguing analysis, David Isenberg explores different scenarios based on how the spectrum currently allocated to analog television broadcasters is treated by the FCC. What will they do to open up this new territory? In a sense, we are at a threshold not unlike when the federal government looked to open up new geographic territory in the development of this country one hundred years ago. 1994 Keynote Interview on Spectrum Availability This intriguing interview by the founder of Metricom, a company before its time that tried and failed to provide wireless broadband at the end of the Millenium, will take some time to get through, but it's like one of those dusty finds from up in the attic. When I found this on Google and read through it, I thought I should share it with you - for those who really want to dive deep on this topic. Posted on February 03, 2006 at 06:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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