Tech Policy Summit blog

NPR's Take on Tech Policy

I was driving through Southern California on a business trip last Friday, listening to National Public Radio (NPR), when I heard that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officially concluded that Comcast had engaged in discriminatory?network management practices.

The news has been well-covered since then, but I've been wanting to share a link to the NPR "All Things Considered" report because it's a critically important story and, selfishly, it featured three of the speakers from Tech Policy Summit '08 (and we always enjoy hearing from prior speakers): Progress and Freedom Foundation's Adam Thierer, Comcast executive Joe Waz and FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell were among the individuals who gave their reactions to the FCC's order.

You can listen to four-minute podcast here.

p.s. Coincidentally, that same NPR broadcast had a segment about the presidential candidates' technology policies. Former FCC chairman Michael Powell spoke about Republican candidate Sen. John McCain's plans, while another former FCC chair William Kennard addressed Sen. Barack Obama's tech outlook.

Philly's Muni Wi-Fi Network Down for the Count

After months of speculation about the future of Philadelphia's once-enviable plan for a municipal Wi-Fi network, EarthLink has confirmed that it will shut down the city's network on June 12th.

Ars Technica quoted a statement by EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff, who described the situation as follows: "EarthLink has worked diligently for many months to transfer our WiFi network to a new owner--at no cost...Unfortunately, our hope that we could transfer our network to a nonprofit organization that had planned to offer free WiFi throughout Philadelphia will not be realized."

Ars goes on to recount EarthLink's muni Wi-Fi woes, which culminated in Mr. Huff's announcement last November that he was trying to sell off the company's muni Wi-Fi business. According to the Associated Press, the Philly network has less than 6,000 subscribers, out of a projected minimum of 100,000, and EarthLink claims that it has been losing up to $200,000 each month to operate the network.

EarthLink will soon pull the plug on muni Wi-Fi in New Orleans as well, and it's moving forward with plans to turn over control of other networks to cities like Milpitas, Calif. and Corpus Christi, Texas.

The future of public wide-area broadband was the topic of one of the breakout sessions at Tech Policy Summit '08 in March. You can listen to the podcast here.

Clearwire 2.0 Renews WiMAX Push

It's official...Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are joining forces to create a new -- and, they hope, improved -- wireless broadband company under the Clearwire brand.

After a rocky partnership that was put on hold last November with the announcement that the two had ended their agreement to develop a nationwide WiMAX network, Sprint and Clearwire are once again on the WiMAX bandwagon together. And they're not alone.

The "new" Clearwire has help in the form of a $3.2 billion investment from Intel, Comcast, Google, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. According to the Associated Press, the deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter with Clearwire founder Craig McCaw serving as chairman and the chief execs of Sprint, Time Warner Cable and Comcast getting board seats. Clearwire's CEO is Benjamin Wolff and Sprint's CTO Barry West will serve as president (Sprint Nextel will have a 51% equity stake in the company). 

AP reports that Clearwire's targeting 120 million to 140 million U.S. customers by the end of 2010.

UPDATE: Google, which contributed $500 million to the new venture and will partner to offer apps and services to Clearwire customers, has high hopes for its investment. In a post on the company blog this morning, Googler Larry Adler explains: "As we've supported open standards for spectrum and wireless handsets, we're especially excited that Clearwire intends to build and maintain a network that will embrace important openness features."

News From Who's Who

Below is a quick roundup of recent press releases from Tech Policy Central's Who's Who, which profiles nearly 100 think tanks, coalitions and trade associations.

• Net neutrality adovcate group Free Press published the testimony of its policy director Ben Scott, who was among the witnesses at this morning's net neutrality hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Mr. Scott joined NCTA chief Kyle McSlarrow, RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol, Christian Coalition vice president Michele Combs and others who appeared before the Subcommittee to discuss Chairman Ed Markey's (D-MA) proposed bill, H.R. 5353, The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008. We shared brief notes from the hearing via Twitter.

• In response to today's hearing on H.R. 5353, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released a statement by its technology policy analyst Cord Blomquist opposing the proposed net neutrality bill. According to Mr. Blomquist, "this bill does more than prohibit bad actions that will never happen. It also prevents ISPs from employing sensible network management that is vital for addressing the growing demands of Internet users."

New Bill Links P2P Monitoring + Internet Safety

The issue of online child safety was raised several times during yesterday's FCC hearing on broadband network management practices.

For example, in her opening remarks, Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate emphasized the need to keep Internet safety in mind when considering regulatory actions that would encourage greater openness of the Internet. She expressed concern about the role of P2P networks in enabling illegal content distribution, including child pornography. Others at the hearing defended P2P technology as a neutral protocol, explaining that it's how it is used and not the technology itself that is the problem.

As it turns out, while we were watching the FCC meeting at Stanford, there was a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about online child exploitation taking place on Capitol Hill. And P2P again was part of the discussion. According to a report by News.com's Anne Broache, Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) called for passage of a bill known as the Combating Child Exploitation Act that would authorize $1 billion over the next eight years.

Among other things, the money would be spent on expanding use of a Wyoming-based monitoring system called Operation Fairplay that is being used by law enforcement officers fighting child pornography to "conduct undercover operations involving peer-to-peer file-sharing applications, chat rooms, Web sites, and mobile telephones." For more details on how Operation Fairplay works, and what the legislation would do, check out News.com.

(Not) Live Blogging from FCC's Stanford Hearing

Live blogging has its merits but isn't our usual Tech Policy Central fare. So, with modest delays, we will be posting updates on today's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hearing on broadband network management practices. Welcome remarks are underway and the first panel will start soon. Instructions on how to get audio and video of the hearing is available at the FCC's site.

Here are some notes from FCC chairman Kevin Martin's introductory remarks:

--Thanked everyone at Stanford Law School and the Center for Internet and Society for hosting today's hearing and all of the panelists for participating. Pointed out that Silicon Valley represents some of the best of American ingenuity and its entrepreneurial spirit is critical as we're trying to debate network neutrality principles. Wanted to make sure that he's clear before we start today's panels that it is important that we hear from a variety of different folks. The FCC did reach out to the carriers, including Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and all declined to speak at the Stanford hearing. FCC reached out to Comcast and Pando Networks again after they announced their P2P bill of rights and they declined.  The Commission did try to make this as open and transparent as possible. Several of the carriers suggested individuals to participate today and they are involved in the panels.

Looking Back at the 700 MHz Auction

Hindsight may be 20/20, but that doesn't mean lawmakers and regulators are seeing eye to eye when it comes to assessing the outcome of the 700 MHz auction. In fact, one of the few points that everyone seemed to agree on at yesterday's Congressional oversight hearing was that the public safety D block auction was a disappointment.

Figuring out what to do with the D block spectrum going forward? Not as much agreement.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, opened the hearing by describing the recently completed auction as "the best of auctions and the worst of auctions simultaneously."

He congratulated the five FCC commissioners, all of whom were present to testify, for the auction's $19.6 billion haul and for the successful sale of the C block (Rep. Markey was among those pushing for the C-block's open access rules). However, like others at the hearing, he was disappointed that there wasn't a buyer for the D block.

Rep. Markey was also critical of the auction's two biggest winners, AT&T and Verizon, saying "the wireless third pipe to compete with the telephone and cable industry is proving either elusive or simply allied with one of the two existing providers in much of the country. This is too cozy and not nearly competitive enough."

For his part, ranking member Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) was less enthusiastic about the total amount raised, citing a study by the Brattle Group that suggested the government could have netted billions more if the auction rules had been structured differently.  Rep. Stearns also made news when he said companies like Google got a 'free ride' because of the open access rules.

As for the question of how to best reauction the D block? A variety of suggestions were proposed, including lowering the reserve price and modifying the build-out requirements, but the issue is far from resolved.

For more info, you can check out write-ups by RCR Wireless News and The Wall Street Journal (sub required), and you can download an archived Webcast at the House's Web site.

FCC's Stanford Hearing: Is This Just A Beginning?

In advance of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) next hearing on broadband network management practices, which will be held Thursday on the Stanford campus, professor/blogger Susan Crawford has written a post called "Retrograde Inversion" in which she contends that the FCC is asking the wrong question.

She writes:

"What is reasonable network management" isn't the question we should be asking. Instead, we should be asking ourselves "Why do the dominant network operators always win?" We don't need retrospective fault-allocation - instead, we need a prospective legislative/structural plan for digging ourselves out of the hole we're in...

So even if the Commission says something sharp to Comcast about what practices amount to reasonable network management, that will not be a victory. It will just be a beginning. We need a thoroughly revamped approach to communications law: a revised statute that treats internet access as the general communications network it was supposed to be (as the framers of communications law thought telephone networks should be); a revised approach to judicial review, embedded in that statute, that revitalizes the role of the courts in telecommunications law; and far better information about what network operators are actually doing. The entire post is available here.

In a twist of tech policy fate, Professor Crawford and Comcast exec Joe Waz recently participated in a roundtable discussion together at Tech Policy Summit about broadband innovation in the U.S. (along with M2Z Networks' founder Milo Medin and Ambassador Richard Russell of President's Office of Science and Technology Policy). You can listen to the podcast of that and other TPS '08 sessions.

Note: While Professor Crawford was on the advisory board for the 2008 Tech Policy Summit, she has no involvement in TechPolicyCentral.com and her opinions/writings are just that: her opinions/writings.

Global IT Rankings Out: Denmark Keeps Top Spot

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and INSEAD have released the results of the 2007-2008 Global Information Technology Report, its seventh annual Networked Readiness Index (NRI).

This year's report compared the IT capabilities of 127 economies around the world across 68 different variables, with Denmark and Sweden retaining the No. 1 and No. 2 spots for a second consecutive year. The United States, for its part, moved up a few notches to rank fourth overall, and Korea broke into the top ten.

Here's a quick look at this year's top 10; you can compare that to last year's list.

2007-2008 NRI

1. Denmark                                          
2. Sweden                                          
3. Switzerland 
4. United States
5. Singapore
6. Finland
7. Netherlands
8. Iceland
9. Korea
10. Norway

For more info, check out the video interview with WEF senior economist Irene Mia in the Media Vault. You can also read excerpts from the report on INSEAD's site, and Ars Technica's Nate Anderson has this analysis (others are far more skeptical).

As you may remember, we had planned to unveil the report at Tech Policy Summit on March 26th, but the WEF delayed the release date.

Tech Policy Summit '08 Podcasts Available

We're happy to report that the podcasts from the 2008 Tech Policy Summit, which took place at the Renaissance hotel in Hollywood last month, are now available for your listening pleasure. You can find audio of all 24 sessions in the Media Vault, along with photos from our conference photographer Terry.

They're posted in chronological order, so be sure to click through to the second page for more podcasts, including the March 27th keynote by FCC commissioner Robert McDowell and the one-on-one interviews with craigslist founder Craig Newmark and BitTorrent president Ashwin Navin.

Even if you were at this year's Summit, you'll find something new in the podcasts since there were six concurrent breakout sessions on the opening afternoon that are definitely worth checking out. 

Those topics include:

• Using Social Media as a Policy Tool
• The Role of Privacy and Trust in the Innovation Economy
• Building a More Effective Public Policy Organization
• Copyright in a Converged World
• Maintaining a Competitive Edge: [How] Can the U.S. Tech Workforce Stay on Top in a Flat World?
• The Future of Wide-Area Public Broadband

Enjoy!