IP: Imagine: world with unlimited airwaves

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Comments welcomed

Dave

Posted on Sun, May. 19, 2002

Imagine: world with unlimited airwaves
By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist

It's long been an article of faith that the airwaves are a scarce resource.
On this notion rides the existence of the Federal Communications Commission,
which regulates the airwaves, not to mention the ownership of great swaths
of the spectrum by a variety of public and private interests.

What if the scarcity turns out to be an artifact of history and outmoded
technology? That's not a new thought, but it's back on the table for
discussion in tech and policy circles. If scarcity can be overcome, the
implications are both exciting and disruptive -- a cornucopia of
communications that foreshadows woes for some of our biggest
telecommunications companies. Late last month, David P. Reed gave a
provocative talk to the Federal Communications Commission's Technological
Advisory Council. He told the group of experts, in effect, that the FCC's
fundamental mission is flawed, maybe obsolete.

Reed is no newcomer to the tech scene. He holds a Ph.D. from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught computer science and
headed the Laboratory for Computer Science's Computer Systems Structure
Group. He was chief scientist at Lotus Development and Software Arts, two of
the pioneering software companies, and worked at the now-closed Interval
Research, the Paul Allen-funded think tank in Palo Alto. Lately he's been a
consultant, entrepreneur and researcher.

He's been involved in Internet technical details for several decades, and
even has a ``law'' named after him. ``Reed's Law'' isn't as famous as
Moore's Law, but it's a big one. The importance of the Internet, under
Reed's Law, is at least as much about the formation of groups that
communicate and collaborate as about person-to-person contact.

In a panel discussion and interview last week at the O'Reilly Emerging
Technology Conference in Santa Clara, Reed put in plain English some of the
concepts he discussed at the FCC and which he has put online at his Web site
(www.reed.com/dpr.html). Simply put, he said, we have to start looking at
spectrum as an almost limitless commodity, not a scarce one.

The current regulatory regime that allocates spectrum ``is a legal metaphor
that does not correspond to physical reality,'' he said.

Why not? First, he said, the notion of interference has more to do with the
equipment we use to send and receive signals than with the physics of radio
waves.

``Radio waves pass through each other,'' Reed said. ``They do not damage
each other.''

In the early days of radio, the gear could easily be confused by overlapping
signals. But we can now make devices that can sort out the traffic.

The second way that reality defies the old logic is what happens when you
add wireless devices to networks. I won't go into the details of Reed's
argument, which you can find on his site, but he contends that you end up
with more capacity -- the ability to move bits of data around -- than when
you started.

``In principle, the capacity of a certain bandwidth in a certain physical
space increases with the number of transceivers in a given space,'' he said.
Yet the FCC regulates the airwaves as if the capacity was a fixed amount.

Yes, he said, this is counter-intuitive. And, to be sure, there are experts
who disagree with him.

But if he and others in his camp are right, we have a lot of work ahead to
fix a hopelessly broken regulatory system. And if that happens, the sky is
literally the limit for future communications -- but the consequences for
some of the most powerful companies in our economy may be grim.

Reed wants the FCC to open up some spectrum for these more open wireless
networks, giving entrepreneurs a new public space in which to innovate and
create value for the rest of us. He's not sure who'll make money in this
space, but surely equipment manufacturers and other companies, especially
software companies, will be in the middle of a wave of innovation.

Software is a key, perhaps the key, to the future Reed envisions. Most
radio-like devices using today's spectrum -- radios, televisions, mobile
phones and the like -- are based on the old way of doing things, constrained
by hardware to receive and transmit signals in specific ways and in specific
places of the airwaves.

To get the capacity multiplier effect, he said, we need devices with fairly
generic but powerful hardware components. ``Software defined radios'' will
be vastly more adaptable, and useful, than their old-fashioned cousins,
according to Reed and others who are promoting the concept. The military has
been using these devices, also called ``agile radio,'' for some time;
civilian availability is getting closer as costs come down.

Who stands to lose? Apart from regulators whose jobs might be largely
unnecessary, consider the potential plight of the phone companies. Their
business model is based on economics that Reed's notions, should they become
reality in the marketplace, would shred.

Getting from here to there is a huge, perhaps insurmountable task given the
business interests that would object to changes in the rules. Some
regulation would still be necessary in at least some areas, no doubt.

Imagining this new world has another attraction. It conjures a boost for a
civil liberty we take for granted in America but which has been dampened
under the current regulatory scheme.

I'm talking about free speech. Regulation of the airwaves has specifically
included curbs on speech, such as the FCC's commands to the nation's TV and
radio broadcasters about what may or may not be said on the air.

Restrictions on speech have been justified under the idea that the spectrum
is a public and limited resource. If that is not true, there's no reason to
regulate speech in this way. Maybe, someday, the First Amendment will mean
something when people broadcast their views, not just when they put them on
paper or on the Internet.

The worst direction for the FCC to move right now, Reed said, is to keep
giving or auctioning spectrum to ``monopoly owners'' that won't use it
efficiently. A new kind of open space is all about the public good, he said,
and there's a fine analogy in recent history.

``We need to do for spectrum,'' he said, ``what the Internet did for the
network.''

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Gillmor's column appears each Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday. Visit
Dan's online column, eJournal (www.dangillmor.com). E-mail
dgillmor () sjmercury com; phone (408) 920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917.


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