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.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 7:45 PM | Print | Comments (1)A Silicon Valley-backed group called the Technology CEO Council today urged the Bush Administration and Congress to rethink the government’s approach to spectrum use and allocations.
The Council issued a report called “Freeing Our Unused Spectrum: Toward a 21st Century Telecom Policy,” which contains ten recommendations for spectrum reform. Among the recommendations is a call for the NTIA and FCC to conduct “band-by-band” analysis to determine if regulated spectrum is being used efficiently and whether any empty spectrum exists. Another recommendation suggests the FCC should reduce service and technology restrictions on wireless licensees.
The Technology CEO Council is a public policy group composed of…technology CEOs. The companies represented on the Council include Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Dell, Motorola, EMC, and Unisys, among others.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:51 PM | Print | Comments (0)
As I’ve said before, net neutrality advocates had better be prepared to compromise somehow, because bandwidth bottlenecks are sure to happen…sooner or later. I offer as Exhibit One this piece from CNET’s John Borland on the rise of vendors looking to pitch their bandwidth management technologies to service providers.
The culprit, of course, is the rise of Internet video, which threaten to clog broadband pipes as the number of Apple iTunes downloaders and P2P file-sharers escalate. Borland’s piece focuses on mostly smaller companies, such as Itiva and CacheLogic, who are pitching technology to help speed video throughput.
Business and entertainment content worth billions of dollars now flows over ordinary ISP networks. Internet voice calls, which can be garbled by any network congestion, are increasingly common. Serious online hiccups could be as irritating, and potentially economically damaging, as persistent L.A. traffic jams. Already, according to network infrastructure company CacheLogic, more than 60 percent of Internet traffic is being taken up by peer-to-peer swaps, and about 60 percent of those swaps involve video content.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:32 PM | Print | Comments (0)
According to the Mercury News, city officials said Tuesday that Google and EarthLink have teamed up to submit a proposal to create a city-wide wireless Internet network for San Francisco.
The bid was one of six San Francisco city officials said they received Tuesday evening. Other proposals were submitted by MetroFi, Communication Bridge Global, NextWLAN, Razortooth Communications and SF Metro Connect, which is an alliance of SeaKay, Cisco Systems and IBM. City officials did not release any details of the actual proposals or make them available Tuesday. They said a panel will review the bids and make recommendations by early April…The city will post information about the bidders at www.sfgov.org/site/techconnect.
Given that Earthlink has already secured two major muni-WiFi projects, in Philadelphia and Anaheim, it’s teaming with Google should make for an especially strong contender for the San Francisco project. And it will be particularly interesting to see the business model proposed by the two companies which, up to this point, had been proposing notably different models.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:12 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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