Telecom strategy: Take it or leave it

Sometimes you have to settle for what’s available, not what’s best, because otherwise you won’t get anything at all.

That’s the basic argument in favor of giving vast deregulatory freedom to some of America’s telecommunications giants. Unless they can control who has access to their lines and at what price, say the cable and regional phone companies, they won’t deploy the high-speed data access that the nation wants and needs.

By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist

In a move as craven as any we’ve seen lately, the technology industry seems to have signed onto this corporate extortion. Since broadband deployment is so crucial to the future of the tech companies, they’re willing to jump into bed with anyone who’ll make it happen sooner than later — and the heck with the public interest.

And despite opposition from telecom competitors who fear being frozen out and do-gooders who understand the consequences, official Washington is leaning toward decisions that could make today’s media concentration seem modest.

I say we should hold out for what’s best, not what’s expedient.

What’s best? We could embark on a crash program, funded by taxpayers, to bring broadband to every home and business in America. Maybe it should be a build-out of networks using fiber and wireless technologies. Maybe it should be subsidies that allow end users to buy what they want, spurring industry innovation along the way.

This is a national security issue, if we understand it correctly. Broadband everywhere isn’t just about vast new economic opportunities. By decentralizing the workforce, we are increasing our collective safety, too.

The danger of letting the telecom monopolists control the information that moves on their lines should be equally obvious. In an Information Age, giving such power to businesses with a history of abusing it seems bizarre.

At the very least, we must have laws — and yes, that means hard-nosed regulation and enforcement — ensuring that the cable and phone companies cannot discriminate against any content. For example, SBC Communications, which has a business partnership with Yahoo to provide DSL service, shouldn’t be allowed to give customers slower access, or no access at all, to another portal site.

What would we lose by calling the telecom giants’ bluff? Maybe a couple of years of rapid broadband deployment, though what they’re deploying now — DSL and cable modem connections — runs at such a slow speed that it can only be called broadband if you stretch the definition. In South Korea and other places where deployment is going strong, speeds are much faster and prices much lower.

There’s another party at this table, by the way. Local governments can and should be building their own fiber networks, as some already have done. Unsurprisingly, the phone companies have been lobbying state legislatures to forbid this practice. We need a federal law that explicitly allows municipalities to bypass the monopolists.

Another wild card has appeared, and it’s the most exciting of all, because we might be able to give the monopolists what they’re demanding and still have genuine competition.

Enlightened policy may be coming from a federal agency that seems hell-bent on giving the cable and phone monopolies the control they crave over the wires. The Federal Communications Commission may be moving toward a rational policy on how to regulate — or, in this case, deregulate — the airwaves.

The FCC recently launched a Spectrum Policy Task Force http://www.fcc.gov/sptf to find ways to update how we handle this vital public resource. Since the 1930s, the United States has licensed specific parts of the airwaves to government agencies and private companies, based on the principle that spectrum was scarce and we had to apportion a dwindling resource.

This principle is based on old science, according to some of the best thinkers in the field. They say, persuasively, that spectrum is essentially limitless if we use it right — that is, with modern radios and transmitting devices that make yesterday’s interference problems go away.

These thinkers may well have persuaded FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who has been disturbingly willing to give the cable and phone companies what they want. What he said in a speech Wednesday http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Powell/2002/spmkp212.html shows that he grasps the spectrum issue and the opportunity it may present to spur genuine competition in broadband.

“Modern technology has fundamentally changed the nature and extent of spectrum use,” Powell said. “I believe the commission should continuously examine whether there are market or technological solutions that can — in the long run — replace or supplement pure regulatory solutions to interference.”

I can’t overstate the importance of Powell’s words. If he and his colleagues — and then a Congress that tends to bow to the interests of well-financed incumbents — enact smart spectrum policy, all the sleazy machinations of the cable and phone monopolies won’t matter.

There’s plenty of evidence that innovation would explode if the FCC frees up more unlicensed spectrum. Look at what has happened with wi-fi, a brand-new industry that went from nothing to widespread deployment in just a few years using unlicensed spectrum.

Some in the tech industry understand this well. Even as they hold their noses and support the cable-phone broadband duopoly in the short term, they’re also pushing for the emergence of competition from other sources.

If the FCC does the right thing on spectrum while local governments deploy lots of fiber, the phone and cable companies can have their wires. The monopolists won’t have the power to abuse what they own.

That’s smart public policy, and we don’t have to settle for less.
Dan Gillmor’s column appears each Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday. Visit Dan’s online column, eJournal (www.siliconvalley.com /dangillmor). E-mail [email protected]; phone (408) 920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917.

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