The Communications Commons

I have a few thoughts on the June 26th article in NY Times reported by Ken Belson: What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It?

The missing conversation on the policy side of the municipal wireless issue is whether or not it is important to preserve the hub and spoke organizational model for our communications paradigm in order to preserve "billing" by "providers". Of course this also reinforces the regrettable notion that we the people are merely unequal consumers locked into an asymmetrical relationship.

Or should we look at another policy option, namely that wireless communications should be seamless, always on Big Broadband publicly operated as an element of the commons in order improve public life, promote innovation and the efficient use of end user capital? In this case, billing is a mute point, just as billing for street lights, snow plowing, police services, fire services etc are not billable events. In this case, we are allowed to view we the people as all of citizens, producers, distributors, and consumers.

It is wise to remember that the very successful PC revolution was largely funded by end-user capital when we upgrade our PCs every few years for $3,000 an upgrade.

As I wrote earlier this month:

The issue is do we want a connectivity environment that takes full advantage of all of the things we have learned since the founding of the FCC in 1934?

Or do we insist on remaining locked into the 20th century Hub & Spoke architecture [Master/Slave] in order to preserve the "customer" model supported by "billing"? IE, do we want to invent the future looking in the rear view mirror?

If, on the other hand, we want a network of equals for the 21st century, a model congruent with our professed political values, then we need to not only allow sharing of connectivity, but to actively encourage it. This suggests that we need a completely new billing model. More accurately, a no billing model!

If we want a modern communications paradigm, it would appear that public entities are the best, perhaps ONLY, entities to run it. Why? Because they do not have requirements to bill every user every month for every bit. We are not individually billed for police and fire protection, nor for street lights, nor public education and so forth. Thus government, which generally DOES work, has an proven and existing model for public services, such as public access to the internet, that can only work if sharing is leveraged for cooperative gain, not billed for private gain.

From another pont of view, if I were a stock holder in one of today's incumbent connectivity providers, would I want my company to invest its scarce human and financial capital in very low margin bit hauling? Or would my investment be better served if my company invested in high margin, innovative, products and services delivered over commodity bits? Do I want the cost of bits to be a barrier to my high margin products and services?

The conversation has been distorted by the recent notion that everything should be a market function and the false premise that anything a government does automatically and unfairly competes with the "sacred" private sector. Rubbish.

The private sector loves externalities that allow them to shift costs to others. Bit hauling should be seen as an opportunity for a magnificent externality that allows them to re-allocate resources to more profitable operations. In this light, it is, in fact, in the self interest of the incumbents to work with the municipalities to create the very best possible bit hauling externality. Consider: Did the proponents of the market object to our tax dollars building the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system that has allowed them to externalize so many transportation costs? Or that out tax dollars subsidize airports that benefit the business traveller the most? Or that our tax dollar created the internet in the first place?

So the win win here is a robust publicly operated network of equals operated by municipalities. Such a network will allow the private sector to externalize low margin operations in order to improve their bottom lines while enabling an innovations commons to support our emerging 21st century world.

For perspective on the appropriate role of government, consider what Frank Rich wrote in the June 25th NY Times:

"Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, the very model of big government that the current administration vilifies, never would have trusted private contractors to run the show. Somehow that unwieldy, bloated government took less time to win World War II than George W. Bush's privatized government is taking to blow this one."

I suggest government has a significant and appropriate role in building wireless networks that are "free" from direct billing.

The only question is this: How long will it take creative citizens to invent applications that saturate the network? In Mongolia it took about 1 week. As long as the architecture of the network is scalable, this is not a problem. Consider that a modern fiber cable has 144 strands, each strand can carry 70 lamdas, each lambda is 10 gigabits. The backhaul capacity is available to support very big broadband -- if we enable it.

As James Burkes said:

"The other general thing to be said about how change comes about through innovation, and especially about the rate at which that changes occurs, is that the easier you communicate, the faster change happens."

James Burke. Connections series 1, program 10 at 19:00 into the show.

Finally, it is worth re-reading a few paragraphs from the March 4, 1933 First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt

... Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Bring on the publicly created municipal wireless projects. We need every bit of innovation we can get.

Posted by Jock Gill at June 26, 2006 2:07 PM | TrackBack