I don’t claim to be a Congressional prognosticator. But a series of recent developments got me wondering if Congress could resolve the battle over the Internet’s future by choosing not to impose net neutrality requirements on incumbent broadband providers, while opening up broadcast spectrum to unlicensed use that will attract the likes of Google and Earthlink, which are proposing new and more “open” access models reasonably well aligned with the goals of municipal broadband advocates.
As Cynthia discussed the other day, there are signs that Congress may end up focusing on a new telecom bill that does not include net neutrality provisions, in part because such provisions remain so contentious.
At the same time, there seems to be a rush of bipartisan support for authorization of unlicensed use of unused broadcast spectrum. As I said in a post just days before this movement emerged in Congress, unlicensed use of broadcast spectrum “has potentially big implications for the broadband policy debate and the future competitive dynamics of the broadband access market.”
Paralleling this activity in Congress, we have Earthlink and Google teaming up to propose a city-wide WiFi network in San Francisco, a project that has also attracted a joint bid from heavy-hitters Cisco and IBM, teamed up with a local non-profit focused on bridging the digital divide (as MuniWireless points out, RFP responses are posted on the city’s TechConnect website).
Om Malik discusses how Earthlink has been struggling to achieve revenue and cash flow growth in today’s duopolistic broadband access market, and may decide to spin off its muni-wireless unit “with a big cash infusion from outside investors.”
It certainly has past history of spinning out businesses. Helio, their MVNO was spun-out and has received backing from SK Telecom of South Korea. So why not Muni Wireless Business? In recent days I have heard fleeting rumors about Earthlink spinning off the muniwireless business as a separate entity, including an investment from a big investment bank.
As CNET News.com notes, Earthlink has not only won muni WiFi contracts in Philadelphia and Anaheim, CA, it is also a finalist in Minneapolis, MN; Portland, OR; Brookline, MA; and Arlington, VA. The CNET piece also quotes Bill Tolpegin, vp of development and planning at EarthLink Municipal Networks, as saying the company is in discussions with five to 10 other cities and is “considering additional opportunities on muni Wi-Fi” with Google.
According to the CNET story:
Under the plan, Google would manage the free Wi-Fi service, which will run at 300 kilobits per second, while EarthLink would offer a 1-megabit-per-second service with customer support for $20 a month or less, he said. Cable companies, telephone companies and local Internet Service Providers are expected to be charged $9 to $12 a month wholesale charges to use the Wi-Fi network for reselling their own wireless service, he said.
Expressing a fairly widespread view of the Google-Earthlink pairing, MuniWireless suggests the Google-Earthlink pairing makes sense:
I am not surprised by this move since Google is not an ISP and needs to team up with a service provider to build and run the network. EarthLink, on the other hand, has been a traditional dial-up provider that is now muscling into the broadband market traditionally held by incumbent operators and cable companies.
This pairing could be even more potent if it had 100-250 MHz of unlicensed broadcast spectrum per market to work with, instead of the far less attractive slices of spectrum currently available for unlicensed use.
And, if this Goolink alliance chose to develop their wireless access networks in cooperation with local governments, it’s possible that some arrangement could be made to use city-owned fiber to feed wireless access points in at least some portions of the build-out area. And, if we assume that, ultimately, fiber is the access end-game in terms of capacity, this hybrid network comprised of muni-fiber and Goolink unlicensed wireless access extensions could evolve over time as expanding demand for high-bandwidth services and declining optical component costs economically justified investments in deeper fiber deployments. Given the value of portability, the wireless portion of the network would continue to have value, even if and when fiber was extended to all locations in a city.
Admittedly, this scenario can’t be described as likely today (e.g., though I remain hopeful, I wouldn’t be surprised if the pending unlicensed spectrum bills get derailed somewhere along the way). But it is intriguing in terms of its potential to develop new economic models for deployment of ubiquitous, high-capacity, open-access networks that combine the benefits of Google’s ad-supported model, a more open wholesale ISP model, the benefits of fiber capacity and wireless mobility, and the public benefits of being integrated with cities’ development of IP-based public services. And it would do all that without placing any net neutrality requirements on incumbent service providers, who would remain free to explore their own economic model for IP-based service delivery.
Mitch Shapiro at 7:45 PM|Comments(1)
What we are seeing in San Francisco, Philadelphia and other communities is the rise of a competitive public alternative to telephone and cable television Internet access services. If we really believe competition is the best way to discover the future, then a public good economic model should be allowed to compete with telephone and cable company private good economic models.
Wireless is an important piece of a larger municipal solution for supplying the public with ubiquitous and open access Internet connection infrastructure. Giving the public a bigger slice of the radio spectrum for unlicensed use is sure to trigger a wave of beneficial social, economic, and technological innovation.
As Mitch suggests in his post, wireless is not the total solution to building municipal Internet infrastructures. It is just a piece of a larger technological puzzle.
We need to add a new component to municipal development master plans. That component is the municipality's plans for developing its digital landscape. Municipal governments, and no one else, are responsible for the social and economic health of their communities in a digital economy.
What role can/does wireless technology play in developing a municipality's digital landscape? How can increased unlicensed spectrum enhance a municipality's digital landscape? Finally, how can "Goolink" type alliances speed the development of a public good alternative to the private good economic models of the telephone and cable television duopoly.
These are the questions we need to be asking.
Posted by: Mike Bookey at February 24, 2006 2:41 PM
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