NTIA hearing May 13 (long report)

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Sat, 14 May 94 07:19:27 -0700
From: Steve Cisler <sac () apple com>


Innovation and the Public Interest: Open Access to the Information
Society


The NTIA held a hearing in Sunnyvale, California, on May 13. This was
co-sponsored by the California Public Utilities Commission. It was run by
Larry Irving, Asst. Secretary of Commerce for Communications &
Information, and Administrator of the NTIA.  Also present were Dave
Barram, Deputy Sec. of Commerce, Andrew Barrett, FCC Commissioner; Norman
Shumway and Jesse Knight, Jr., Commissioners for the California Public
Utilities Commission.


The meeting room held about 200 + people. There were empty chairs, so
everyone who was able to get there could attend. Several TV cameras were
in evidence for the duration, and there was a short press conference
during a break. KPFA-FM in Berkeley was taping it as well.


It was a very diverse crowd, a good mix of industry, government, and
non-profit groups. Small business as well a mega-media firms were allowed
to speak. Libraries and schools were invoked every few presentations, but
nobody representing libraries was on a panel. The California Library
Networking Task Force left a four page draft of their "Network
Telecommunications Program" on the crowded hand out table. I picked up 33
fliers or position papers. There were a number of people I knew from the
Net or from the recent Ties That Bind conference on community networks
that we held in Cupertino May 4-6. I liked the chance to meet people who
don't usually go to Washington or national conferences, but most of the
time was devoted to the actual hearing. We had about 20 minutes for
lunch. I took notes during the whole meeting, but given the length I did
pace myself, and there are fewer comments about the afternoon session. My
apologies for those who feel slighted. Very few of the testimonies or
hand outs included electronic mail addresses, so I'm not including any
points of contact.


Mayor Frances Rowe of Sunnyvale emphasized the role of cities in building
the NII. She wants regulatory power over all organizations providing
communications services in cities.


Each panelist gets 5 minutes and each audience member gets 2.5 minutes.


David Barram, Deputy Secretary of Commerce.


We don't want the NII to look like the Winchester Mystery House. Only a
modest show of productivity gains after spending a trillion dollars on
computers. InfoCal will have 100 kiosks for motor vehicle and other  info
and other government info.  He mentioned ease of inter-connections that
are needed, the city networks in Palo Alto, Cupertino, and Sunnyvale.
These hearings are about open access: removing obstacles to providing it.




Norman Shumway, California PUC.


Jesse Knight, CPUC.  California wants to foster relentless innovation;
diversity in services and provider; affordable access to those networks.
Monopolies can't provide innovation.


Andrew C. Barrett: FCC.


Panel 1
Who has access? Who doesn't? Is the current environment supportive of open
access goals? What effect has this had on innovation in the information
marketplace? What benefits can greater access bring to peope and their
communities?




M. Strata Rose, Virtual City Network Project.She is working on a
numbering scheme for the Internet that will support universal access. Her
company will release a public-domain Internet node kit later this year,
as well as other products.


Rex Mitchell, VP of regulatory planning,  Pacific Bell: Time has come to
remove legal and regulatory barriers; let the marketplace decide winners
and losers.  What is the state of open access to market today. State of
interoperability is moving forward. What should be standardized to
facilitate this? Pac Bell will offer 150 channels of digital video. With
the lifting of provision of information sources, their market has
expanded (600,000 voice mailboxes , for example).


Dan Pulcrano, President, Virtual Valley, Inc. 7 weekly local newspapers
and a BBS.  We are a community information system. He is worried about
competition from large players and being denied access by America Online
and services from Pacific Bell. VV is providing free access to local
black, Hispanic, and gay community leaders. We are not asking for
subsidies, but we are asking for a fair shake. The system can't help just
the larger competitors.  We have to provide more local solutions, not
just on the Internet.


Leslie Vadasz, Intel Corp. The personal computer is the most important
access point for the information infrasturture of the future.Stress on
economies of scale. Expensive cpus drive down the price of 486 machines.


By 1996, 42% of the computers would be used in the home. "The access
point is already there." But the bandwidth is not. We need an end-to-end
digital connect to broadband.  At minimum we need ISDN capability and
later, broadband.


Milton Chen, KQED San Francisco. What are the purposes of these new
channels for? Community building. There is a real crisis of community in
our country.  Public broadcasting is dedicated to community building.
Public right of way legislation.   Leo Bogart "American media system and
it commercial culture" writes about the overwhelming commercial nature of
media in this country.  Better access for schools, libraries, and
community centers such as this. Notes that projects fail when the focus
is technology rather than social issues.


Kari Peterson, Davis (CA) Community Television.  Secretary, Alliance for
Community Media and president of Davis Community Network. Noted the
achievements of  public access television over the past 20 years. Only
government will assure public access: They want 10% of the bandwidth for
public use. Dedicated facilities for government and education use.


Mr. Henry Der, Chinese for Affirmative Action: affordable access to
intelligent access.  Package of services deemed by law to be essential to
everyday life. mentioned his participation in the Open Network Task force
of Pacific Bell. Computers are in 30% of homes but only in 5% of low
income home.




Larry Irving opened the questioning with a few comments: 1300
applications for $26,000,000 in grants from NTIA. There will be more than
a thousand disappointed applicants, and they will go forward without
federal money to carry out their dreams.


Dave Barram: I'm sure we agree that our society can't move into the 21st
century if we can't move everyone with us.  How are we going to fund the
enlightened public policy? General fund? Should there be a tax?


Chen, KQED:  Spectrum fee for public broadcasting.  License fee in
Britain was mentioned.  $120/year in BBC land and $1. Irving said there
is no way they could get that from Congress.


Kari Peterson:  Cable model has some inherent flaws, but one means of
revenue is the kind of tax added to cable fees. We will use it to support
our community network and feel the community will back that.


Rex Mitchell, Pac Bell noted that univ. service was funded by internal
mechanisms already in place.  Small surcharge on all users help pay for
Universal Lifeline Services in California.


Pulcrano makes the point that if he makes money on the network, he can
also provide free services.  Don't rely on Mosaic and just the Internet.
Encourage entrepreneurship.


Larry Irving asked what interface they should be backing. He saw  kids in
Harlem navigating all over the  world using Mosaic. They would not be
doing that with ftp. <This is fine if you have the bandwidth to use
Mosaic. It's more available in cities than in rural areas.>


M. Strata Rose: tax breaks for helping build a community network.  How
about a checkbox on the 1040 for the NII instead of the presidential
campaign? <applause>


Shumway: should we delay the technology until the social infrastructure
is in place?


Irving: In Chicago 2.5% of the customers of a bank had a computer and
modem.  Far less than in Silicon Valley. Even with a 3:1 student to
computer ratio, those kids won't get much time on a good system. How can
we keep them from being 'sort of haves'?


Harvey Lehtman, Institute of the Future noted that there is a disparity
between the public access people  who want subsidies and fees and the
computer people who believe the technology will be the liberating and
equalizing factor.


Irving: Libraries are in constant danger of closing and the smaller
libraries are not having the same chance at connecting to the Internet.


Audience participants took their turn: W. Valley Community College will
be doing a demo with Pac Bell and ISDN lines.


Wireless Information Forum stressed the universal access benefits of
wireless access to the network.


-Need to advance medial literacy.  If we have a society based on game
boys, we will suffer in the internationally competitive environment.


Rural CA cable provider: My testimony comes from the weed patch off the
shoulder of the highway. My cable station has low density 16 subscribers
per cable mile does not allow us to build the stylish network that you
can in urban areas.  There may not be a large appetite for open access in
our rural area, esp. when the subscriber gets the bill to pay for those
services. We need to tune our rates by the reality of the rural
marketplace but we are constrained by law.




The second panel addressed this: "What factors would help or hinder
network access for information providers and users?" Witnesses from Sun,
Smart Valley Inc, Adamation, Cellular One, San Jose Mercury News, and
World Disability Institute.


Jeff Rulifson, Sun Microsystems.  We need freedom from intellectual
property constraints.  There has to be open access for information
providers. The interfaces have to be open.  The government should use its
buying power to open up the interface.


Leslie Saul, Smart Valley Inc.. Public institutions should be the focal
point for the public to have access to the NII. Two initiatives:
developing a countywide public network, Smart County Public Network for
free public access.   Smart Schools initiative: assess community interest
to provide our schools with access to the Internet. 3 groups: Smart
Valley Inc., 21st C. Ed. initiative, and the San Jose Education Network
are coming together to that. Connectivity, training, and producing
measurable achievement are components.


We have to address the issues of what kids can access on the Internet.
Lack of expertise is a big problem. There are no easy solutions to the
problem of equipment.




Stephan Adams,  Adamation. Hee wants a uniform protocol standard.
Increasing cost worries him. A tiered structure is needed.


Susan Swenson, Cellular One. Infrastructure makes it any place, any time.
Cellular is another on ramp.


Deborah Kaplan: How the NII will have an impact on people with
disabilities. Prevailing plan is to adapt available products to the
disabled.  This is very costly, and by having a new policy, universal
design, technology for the disabled will be included from the beginning.
This is an inclusive design.  We have not yet identified good cross
discipline curb cuts in the info highway.  The administration should
nurture and develop good guidelines for developers.




Norm Shumway: there is no central regulator, and we have a fragmented
situation and many groups not regulated. What do we do?




Dinah Neff: City of Palo Alto MIS. They chose to be an information
provider. Steep ramp up for the technical staff is an issue.  Our public
network is separate from our govt. network.  How do you have a graphic
interface for someone with a 1200 bps modem.


Denis Engel, College of the Siskiyous (CA).  Rural access is extremely
expensive.. Decrease in costs for computers have not been matched in the
drop of telecom charges rural areas. The Internet is the key to rural
communities having connectivity.


Panel 3: What is govenment's role in ensuring access and spurring
innovation? How would increased competition among local access providers
affect the delivery of information? What safeguards, if any, would be
needed to ensure effective competition and equal access? What are the
legal and regulatory hurdles to open access?


David Holub, hooked  cheap Internet access with a graphic interface for
$2.00 or less for anywhere in America.




Jim Bidzos, RSA: people won't put critical information without the kind
of protections that his crypto forms can provide.


Ed Spivak, First Pacific Networks Hybrid Fiber Coax network dealer.  The
technology is here, and it's affordable.  20,000 units will be shipped to
the UK cable TV Telewest for subscribers there.  Cost is about 1/2 that
of a copper wire telephone network. Maintenance is about half also, he
claims.


Elaine Lustig, GTE California.  Advocating common carrier status for
hybrid networks.


John Siegel, Chris Craft/United Televison TV has the best record  in
providing free access to the underserved.  Lots of anti-telco language,
and the NTIA rep held up the end of time flag for several minutes, but he
kept on going and going.


Dale Bennett, TCI of California. Government should back off from
regulation and seek parity with the telcos. Pretty standard John Malone
fare.


John Gamboa, Latino Issues Forum: 19.6% of latinos don't have access to
the phone.


Q&A


Larry Irving: mentioned the need for schools and libraries to get
information out, not just get info from another source.  Get Sega to open
up the design and platform for educational use.  Don't have barrier
interface disincentives, i.e. make it easy for a developer to design for
Sega or Nintendo (or other computer companies).


TCI hopes that the most powerful home computer will be the set top box
that will drop in price from $300 to $150 with wide adoption.


Audience statement: Though the crowd was thinning by the end of the day,
I was able to make a couple of points: There is a lack of attention to
training and support for  new network users and information providers.
Although I'm from a hardware and softare company, I think NTIA programs
need to focus on this as  as much as hardware and transport.


Second, there is the lack of attention devoted to designing interfaces
that will work for low bandwidth connections that are so prevalent in
rural areas. The people designing WWW pages are used to fast direct
connections and large monitors running on fast workstations.  The
converging companies are focusing on broadband connections; that's where
the money seems to be and that's what interests companies and
reseearchers being funded by the government. I urge the government to
support scalable projects that pay attention to the user experience for
those who won't have ISDN or a T1 or a fiberlink.


Steve Cisler
Apple Library
sac () apple com
May 13, 1994