Spectrum of Greed

The American people collectively own the most valuable resource of the emerging information economy: the airwaves, also known as the radio frequency spectrum. Yet our nation’s antiquated spectrum policies create an artificial scarcity that reduces innovation and competition, inhibits the rapid deployment of universal wireless broadband services, sacrifices billions of dollars of revenue, constrains citizen access to the airwaves and erodes the public interest obligations of broadcasters and other licensees.

The words above are not mine, they are found on the front of the New America website.  I could not say it any better, so I borrowed their prose.

Until such day as the FCC recognizes this and fixes the atrocity that we currently experience for a wireless marketplace, we have to celebrate the little victories.  Like the ability to take one more step toward use of narrow slivers of bandwidth that lie fallow between broadcast TV channels that are themselves on the decline as the world moves on to alternatives like satellite, cable, DVD, Netflix & online viewing at sites like Hulu. (continue reading…)

Craigs List for a cell phone - Coming to Kenya first!

According to FastCompany’s most recent article highlighting wireless innovation beginning on the Serengeti before it does in New York or Boston, trickle up is a new innovation phenomenon that will sweep the planet. Not so fast. The conclusions are incorrect for the wireless marketplace. There is a much more important reason why innovation MUST occur outside the US and then perhaps one day (if we are lucky) find it’s way here. It isn’t user choice as the article hints at with the quick references to two obscure wireless companies, insinuating they just couldn’t get customers interested.

In the US, we have a walled garden where the wireless gatekeepers don’t let innovators in because it would jeopardize a rich revenue stream for them. If they don’t get a significant cut of the pie, you can’t play ball, and they would rather just do it themselves. See a recent article from ARSTechnica on Canadian reaction to these restrictions. (continue reading…)

Slip slidin' away.... to 19th place now!

A Fast Company blog by Chris Dannon today highlighted the depressing fact that the US has recently dropped to 19th in a recent study on global internet broadband connectivity.  I found it on Digg.  The article was an interview with Emily Green, CEO of the Yankee Group, a Boston-based consultancy that specializes in connectivity.  (continue reading…)

What's wrong with this picture? Nothing! It is just what we asked for.

An amazing post on the history of South Korea’s internet has been all but unobserved by most of the internet community in the US.  This information should be part of the body of knowledge that is reviewed as a part of defining a strategic plan to get us where we need to be as a country for internet access.  Based on current projections, we are already 13 years behind South Korea, as their first generation plan to get their country online was originally conceived and execution begun back in 1995.  Fast forward to today, and they are already on Internet - generation II, while the US still sits on it’s thumbs, hoping that somehow if we keep doing what we have been doing that everything will be better.  The problem is a fundamental one:  Korea has a target of connecting their citizens to the world, and to be number one at it.  The US has a goal as well:  to provide support to existing companies that have built our internet infrastructure and hope that they do what is necessary to connect the citizens of the US.  The one complicating factor is that the companies in control of this roadmap in the US have a different motivation than getting the best connectivity for all citizens - it is called making a profit.

An excerpt from the article:

How and why did South Korea become an overlord in Internet speed? In short; the South Korean government introduced a number of policy instruments to stimulate technological learning, aimed to strengthen international competitiveness of the economy. The government launched a five-year plan to create a ubiquitous networked world in 1995, meaning that the country developed a stunning 1.5 billion dollar wireless network to stimulate the use of the Internet.

(continue reading…)