As the pressure mounts on the FCC to come up with a policy that makes Net Neutrality advocates happy -- and will probably be overturned again by the courts -- it occurs to me that our shared spectrum summit known as Super Wi-Fi is probably pointing to the indicators that will tell the whole story about whether the new rules are working or not.
To me, the big issues come from the history of the public network. The public switched telephone network [PSTN] that served Plain Old Telephone Services [POTS] had Rate of Return guarantees associated with build-outs. In the ‘90s when the FCC was moving away from Rate of Return regulation, NJ Bell (now Verizon NJ) and the state commission worked out a fiber to the home strategy that took the incentives and associated them to their fiber build-out. Bruce Kushnick has been pointing out that the incentives that were given did not have their intended consequences, and he has been further pointing out that the data-friendly fiber network has always been part of the FCC’s jurisdiction.
Now we have a lot of converged issues, a history of subsidized build-outs, an indirect relationship to the incentives and achievements, and confusion as to whether data access and Internet access are synonymous.
In the late ‘90s when VoIP was considered a threat to the carriers, Ed Whitacre, the then-CEO of SBC, would advocate that if the goal was competition then the competitors should be building out their own infrastructure. In some ways that was supposed to be the BTOP (Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program) incentive strategy to get more data-friendly fiber networks out into the market. Unfortunately, like NJ Bell, much of the incentive ended up building out a better core network that supported the edge.
If the FCC is going to monitor access to the Internet as part of its jurisdiction, it may have to look at the packets, because that is the level of suspicion that is being thrown out there by Net Neutrality advocates.
However, there are alternative access methods and most of them are represented in the work going on with shared spectrum strategies.
Reaching the end user is expensive, and the outside plant has maintenance requirements that make it labor-intensive. However, TV white space and the 3.5 bands plus some others can represent a local loop alternative that would have scared Ed Whitacre if they had been available at the time of his reign.
Understanding the economics of using TV WS, 3.5 and other alternative access services would make them reposition the discussion from theoretical “bogeyman” to real talks. It would also lay the groundwork for rethinking alternative services.
Rather than looking to put together rules that will make the lawyers rich in the courts, the FCC should be taking advantage of the opportunities they have to enable the public good with spectrum.
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