Questioning the Fate of the White Space

In accordance with its mission to understand and promote good practices in creating the valuesof information design, CSTS participated in a public colloquium devoted to the topic of “Open Access and the New Net Neutrality”, convened June 13, 2008.  The event was organized by the Media Access Project www.mediaaccess.org, and gathered together leaders from industry and policy fields.  Two lively debates happened over the course of the day.  The first panel focused on the question ‘What does Net Neutrality Mean Today?’The urgency of this panel is based on Comcast’s recent interruption of P2P transmission.  According to some of its customers who discovered the practice, Comcast inserts forged reset packets into communications between peers in peer-to-peer (P2P) communications that terminate those communications and thus violates the FCC’s 2007 policy statement.  Readers interested in the details of the case can consult the 2007 TechLaw Journal story at http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2007/20071101.asp.The Comcast interruption phenomenon is an important one for CSTS, because it bears on philosophical and deeply pragmatic issues associated with technological innovation.  That the legal and political status of Comcast’s action are unsettled questions underscores that technology is a site for the working out of social relations of power, which are always contingent and under dispute.   Far more than a configuration of neutral instrumentalities, technology is a scene through which the social values and interests of various groups manifest.

In light of the Comcast controversy, panelists at The New Net Neutrality engaged in lively debates about the need for advanced net management technologies; they also focused more specifically on whether the private sector is capable of addressing the problem without government mandates.  Here, as in many conversations about the control of technologies and resources, debates often center around the question of which types of actors (market actors versus state actors) are in a better position to create most efficiently and democratically the parameters of technological practices.

Not surprisingly, this theme continued into the second panel of the day, which was focused on the implications of the FCC’s recent 700MHz auction. The 700MHz band is a crucial site of techno-politics because it penetrates walls fairly easily and travels well, making it perfect for either cellular or long-range wireless broadband that could provide an invisible alternative to DSL and cable. This spectrum is part of the 698-806 MHz band (“700 MHz Band”), which has been occupied by television broadcasters and is being made available for new commercial and public safety services as a result of the digital television (DTV) transition coming in 2009. Winning control over this spectrum could augment a major telecommunication company’s existing holdings with a powerful wireless network; it could also represent a lucrative new ISP for Google or some other non-telecom behemoth.

Auction 73 included 1,099 licenses in the 700 MHz Band:

176 EA licenses in the A Block
734 CMA licenses in the B Block
176 EA licenses in the E Block
12 REAG licenses in the C Block
1 nationwide license, to be used as part of the 700 MHz Public/Private Partnership, in the D Block.

The following table describes the licenses available in Auction 73.

                                                                                                                                                                                   

Block	Frequencies (MHz)	Bandwidth	Pairing	Geographic Area Type	No. of Licenses
A	698-704, 728-734	12 MHz	2 x 6 MHz	EA	176
B	704-710, 734-740	12 MHz	2 x 6 MHz	CMA	734
E	722-728	6 MHz	unpaired	EA	176
C	746-757, 776-787	22 MHz	2 x 11 MHz	REAG	12
D	758-763, 788-793	10 MHz	2 x 5 MHz	Nationwide	1*
Source	http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auction_factsheet&id=73

Verizon and AT&T won more than $16 billion of licenses, garnering most of the control over the coveted “C-Block” – the regional open access spectrum.  For more details on the auction see the Reuters full story http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2042023420080320?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews.

In the June 13th SCU Net Neutrality panel, a group comprised of auction veterans discussed their own views about the auction model in general, as well as the meaning and implications of the 700MHz auction in particular.  The 700MHz auction debate was intriguing in that while it regarded as problematic Verizon’s and ATT’s dominance in the auction’s results, it also entailed a subtle shift into what seemed to be more crucial questions about the relative benefits of requiring, or not requiring, licensing for control of broadband spectrum a such.

Over the course of the debate, two of the discussants stood out as avid proponents of a non-licensing model.  Joanne Hovis is the President of Columbia Telecommunications Corporation, which provides communications engineering consulting services for public sector and non-profit clients throughout the United Stateshttp://www.ctcnet.us/ .Marc Berejkais the Senior Director of Public Policy at Microsoft Corporation.The two seemed to become increasingly aligned on the question of licensing models for broadband spectrum, and particularly with respect to questions around the mysterious “white space” whose fate indeed becomes urgent given the results of the 700MHz band auction.

When the US completes its transition to digital television broadcasts in February 2009, much of the spectrum between 54MHz and 698MHz (channels 2 through 51) will become available.  Space that exists between the individual channels (2-51) is called the “white space”.  Some actors hope that the white space will be made available for use by unlicensed devices.  Among them is a consortium of companies including Microsoft, Intel, Dell, and Google.  The consortium has submitted a device, which would use the "white space" in the analog television spectrum for wireless Internet access, to the Federal Communications Commission for approval.  The FCC is testing the new device and is slated to have results ready in July 2008.  If adopted, the device would provide residents of rural areas easy access to broadband and give a third alternative to DSL and cable.

Offering a refreshing counter-point to free-market advocates who routinely equate social and economic value, both Hovis and Berejka advocated non-licensing models for white space use.  Accentuating the importance of keeping public interest in clear view, Hovis’ argument was that unlicensed spectrum should be opened up for communities and/or municipalities who should in turn be able to makes decisions for and govern themselves.   One panelist balked at this suggestion, drawing attention to twenty years of failed broadband service provision by municipalities.  Aren’t these failures based on a lack of participation on the part of the private sector?Hovis countered the suggestion by acknowledging some of the municipal failures over the past three years.  She also raised the point that the media attention on these failures tend to suggest that the failures hinge on the more general inability of government service to work effectively.  In actuality, Hovis explained, the failures represent some flaws from 2-3 specific efforts that had used business models based on city-wide service provision and had attempted to transfer these models to service provision in rural areas at a fraction of the model case.  That cannot work; but it does not mean that municipal spectrum is inherently or generally wrong-headed.

Berejka supported Hovis’ position on this point, and specified that recent failed efforts on the part of municipalities were related to the fact that they were working within high-frequency spectrum, which will not affect the white space anyway.  Therefore, those root problems are not likely to be an issue.

The SCU panel represents but one moment in a larger social and political process around access to wireless spectrum. Interested citizens should keep their eye on the fate of what’s called the "Wireless Innovation Act of 2007" (submitted by Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA)) which would permit the "unlicensed, nonexclusive use" of frequencies between 54MHz and 698MHz—channels 2 through 13 on the VHF dial and 14 through 51 on UHF—for wireless Internet service.

Watch that space.

Katie Vann
STS Center, Senior Research Fellow
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