[Note: This item was originally posted on Esme Vos' excellent Muniwirless site.]

What We Want

In network utopia, everyone will be connected across the digital divides of economics and geography. In network utopia, everyone will be connected with enough “bandwidth”—enough bits—that there will no longer be any impediment to innovation. Reaching network utopia may be possible by looking at where the most bits are: radio spectrum. Although spectrum has been treated like a scarce resource for almost one hundred years, today’s emerging technologies are altering this perception. There is actually an abundance of spectrum—more than enough for everyone.

Where We Are

Today’s communications technology is moving toward a world of all-digital transmitters and receivers. These advances in technology, combined with the swift evolution of mesh-based transmission and switching protocols, are opening up a new set of possibilities for unique new services utilizing intelligent wireless networks. These networks will contain smart transmitters, receivers, and switches. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently coined a term to describe these types of wireless devices: cognitive radios (CRs). Today’s Internet is perhaps the best example of a self-regulating structure that embodies these new technological approaches to communications in the networking domain. However, to date, many of these innovations have not moved into the wireless networking arena.

Continues on MuniWireless

Susan Estrada
President, FirstMile.US
http://www.firstmile.us

Big Broadband Bill of Rights

Preamble

During the last 20 years, the main tenets of Internet development included building and sustaining an open, interoperable, scalable network of networks that robustly supports a variety of applications and devices. As we look forward to a ubiquitous big broadband environment, these basic philosophies still hold true.

To understand how big broadband should evolve, it is essential to understand the three distinct portions of a big broadband connection.

The first is the pipe — essentially the path, street or highway connecting you to the rest of the broadband network. These can be wireless or wired or a combination of the two.

The second portion is the applications – this is what you can do over the broadband pipe. These are sometimes software-based, but may be built-in to certain devices.

And, finally, there are devices and computers that you need to attach to your pipe that provide specific functions to help you more readily access applications.

These articles will best ensure the benefits of big broadband for all members of the American public.

Across the street he stood And he played real good On his clarinet, for free…Eliot Spitzer announced today that Sony/BMG has “agreed today to stop providing lavish gifts, free trips and other giveaways in exchange for airtime for its artists on radio stations…Perhaps the same applies to politics in the age of the broadcast soundbyte

As Paul Krugman put it in a recent NY Times op-ed: How did our political system get to this point?

Could it be that the central challenge in a mass market consumer society is to fulfill the very human need to experience belonging to something greater than oneself? Interestingly, the act of belonging implies participating which requires something more than simple consumption. The “something more” includes elements of creation, distribution and control of our personal environment. “The Darknet” is the leading wave of the tsunami of change that is about to sweep over us. For example, J. K. Rawlings latest book is now on the darknet in both electronic book form and as several forms of audio.

“Disentangling morality from theology was an important achievement of the Enlightment, and [Benj.] Franklin was its avatar in America. In addition, by relating morality to everyday human coinsequences, Franklin laid the foundation for the most influential of America’s homegrown philosophies, pragmatism.”

Benjamin Franklin, An American Life by Walter Isaacson.
Page 491.
Simon & Schuster, New Yor, 2003