Re: Obama's FCC team & Wired/Wireless

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: November 15, 2008 2:43:59 PM EST
To: David Lassner <david () hawaii edu>, dave () farber net
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Obama's FCC team & Wired/Wireless

At 11:07 AM 11/15/2008, David Lassner wrote:

> As a regular reader of IP, I see the pleas from Brett Glass that we
> take WISPs more seriously.

Mr. Lassner:

Please do not characterize me or other WISPs as "pleading" with anyone.
To do so would be to deprecate us and our livelihood. We are very proud
of what we've been able to do under adverse conditions: Not a shred of
spectrum dedicated to wireless broadband; no antitrust enforcement
despite blatant anticompetitive tactics; government subsidization of
our competitors (but not of our own operations); regulations that put
more constraints than us than on the large corporations with which we
compete. We believe that it is a disservice to the country when we
are ignored or dismissed by lobbyists who favor policies which would
prevent us from continuing in business.

Our customers already do take WISPs very seriously. We cover hundreds
of square miles that are not served by cable or DSL, and we make it
possible for those customers to live where they do comfortably and
productively. The only barriers to our growth are capital,  
anticompetitive
tactics by other carriers, and inappropriate government regulation.

> I agree that pure WISPs, 4G and even 3G can be competitive with many
> of today's DSL/Cable offerings and shouldn't be discounted by those
> who are focused on objective #1.  But it also seems clear that the
> deployment of advanced broadband services by world leaders (e.g.
> KDDI's recent rollout of 1Gbps symmetric consumer service for under  
> US $60/mo) is based on a different approach to public policy and  
> shared
> infrastructure than our current U.S. non-policy.  We need people at
> the FCC who understand this as well.

Do you have 56 HDTVs in your home? It would take this many, all playing
1080p streams simultaneously, to exhaust 1 Gbps of bandwidth (not
that you'd want to foot the bill for that much bandwidth, which would
cost more than $6,000 per month -- not $60 per month -- at wholesale at
a major hub of the Internet). To deprecate wireless because we do not
currently provide the absolute highest speeds available in the world
(though we could, with current technology, if we had the spectrum) is
akin to saying that no one should drive because supersonic airplanes
exist.

> While some propose wireless as the alternative, the Task Force
> believes that “wired
> or wireless?” is the wrong question to ask.

On this we agree.

> Fiber optic cable
> provides the greatest
> capability with nearly-unlimited expandability to fixed locations,

On this we do not agree. The cost of running fiber is too often  
prohibitive,
limiting its expandability. And cutting into fiber to provide service to
a single location can be prohibitively expensive. Wireless is far more
cost-effective not only in rural settings but in urban ones, where many
WISPs (including our own) compete gamely with the telephone and cable
companies. And, again, the capacity of our links to our customers is
limited not by the technology but by regulatory barriers. As an  
electrical
engineer, I can say with assurance that if I had about 2 GHz of clean
millimeter wave spectrum (3 or 4 would be ideal but we want to have room
for multiple providers), I could engineer -- with existing technology --
equipment that would blow FTTH away in terms of cost/performance.

--Brett Glass





-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com