How the Glocom Spectrum Symposium went...

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
> To: A New Politics Discussion List Greater Democracy <ANP () listserv pulver com>,
>   Open Spectrum <openspectrum () media mit edu>

> I believe that the Glocom Symposium on Spectrum Policy
(http://w3.glocom.ac.jp/project/wireless/ if you read Japanese) went quite well.
There were somewhere around 200 - 300 people from telecom companies, Internet,
vendors, government and the press there. All the presentations are on the
website, but in Japanese. I will see if they can make the English versions
available (they exist, just not at the website). The Symposium was
simultaneously translated in English and Japanese.
> Besides Faulhaber, Farber and myself, there was Professor Randy Katz from UC
Berkeley who gave a very good overview keynote on the "Evolution of Broadband
Wireless Tech and Community Access.
> Masanobu Suzuki, President & CEO of NTT Communications gave a talk on Wireless
Broadband, though it was really a state of the Japanese broadband industry and
NTT Comm's vision of a personalized Internet service that is independent of
transport. NTT Comm is rolling out a pretty aggressive 802.11 HotSpot (They own
the trademark for HotSpot in Japan). NTT Comm (which is the long distance and
other services portion of NTT when NTT was split similar to ATT/RBOC split)
seems pretty progressive in many ways in their vision, but I think they still
want to be vertically integrated and offer a One-stop-solution. Its not clear if
that is one-stop for transport, security and related layers 1 - 3 or so or
includes content (i.e. all layers). I believe the former.
> Lindsay Schroth of the Yankee Group gave a presentation on the state of
Broadband Wireless with a focus on licensed technologies.
> Then Gerry Faulhaber gave his keynote which was basically a PowerPoint subset
of the Faulhaber/Farber paper. He did bring up an issue that we in the Open
Spectrum "camp" should address which is how will policy or etiquette or whatever
we call the rules that facilitate the commons, will be set and coordinated?
(Some of these issues might be power levels, infringement on property or
property infringement on commons if we have the easements, etc). How do we avoid
having the FCC step into that role and maintaining a regulatory regime?
> I proposed that the technically related issues such as power levels, any need
for coordination of modulations or protocols could be done through the IETF or
an IETF like process (rough consensus and running code). And I'm sure the courts
will get in there one way or another for the easement stuff...
> Then I gave my presentation which I called "Not Time for a Big Bang" where I
mainly focused on how it is not appropriate for us to jump right into turning
all spectrum into pure private property, but instead look at it as a transition
period where we need to not permanently block any future solution and yet must
move forward and start deploying new technologies. You can download a copy of my
presentation at http://www.ibd.com/presentations/NoBigBang.pdf.
> Hajime Yamada from Toyo University / Glocom and who I work for here at Glocom
gave a paper that shows what the policy trends are within the Japanese FCC
equivalent. They are going much more slowly. The good news is that they don't
want to jump into turning spectrum into property via privatization. The problem
is that they don't want to abandon the "command and control" structure ether.
They are though calling for investigation into new spectrum techniques and seem
interested. But I would say that they are moving much slower than the FCC in
ether direction. (This is my interpretation, it may not be correct!)
> Sunao Takatori , president of Yozan Inc I Japan gave kind of a strange speech
(He spoke in Japanese, so I heard it through translation. Don't know how much
that made it strange) His published talk looked very interesting about his
service which offers IP wireless service via 802.11 and PHS, but he only talked
about how the Japanese people should trust their government bureaucrats and not
question authority.....
> And then Dave Farber followed up with commentary on all of the above. (Gerry
Faulhaber had to leave to catch a plane so there wasn't really a debate).
> I did get to talk with Gerry and Dave for a while and even though there are
obvious differences, primarily Gerry's strong support for a significant position
for private property, I got the feeling that their approach is more of a way to
make something happen that breaks the "GOSPLAN" style of spectrum allocation. My
interpretation is that they also strongly support the commons and they believe
that their proposal is a way to make it politically possible. There is probably
more we have in common with them than with people who want a pure commons....
> I also think that Faulhaber likes to argue :-)

[ indeed he does as do you and I. DJF]

> If there was anyone else who attended the symposium, please put in your views
of how it went as well..
> Rob
>
> --
> Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
> In Tokyo as Glocom visiting research fellow through April 2003
> Cell: +81 80-3121-6128 Work: +81 3-5411-6613 http://www.glocom.ac.jp
> eFax: +1-408-490-2868 rberger () ibd com http://www.ibd.com

------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To unsubscribe or update your address, click
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/