Sidecut Reports

We’re just starting to scratch the surface of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, but from our limited-view vantage points we’ve already identified a few flash points that will no doubt be the center of much discussion at next week’s big wireless trade show in Las Vegas — including a call for freeing up 300 MHz of wireless spectrum by 2015, with 120 MHz coming from over-the-air broadcasters; and a huge move toward gathering and exposing more data about spectrum license holdings and actual wireless-service metrics, which with any hope will put a welcome end to stupid Map Wars TV ads that mess up our sports viewing.

On the spectrum front — hey we told you this stuff was important! — the battle for licensed airwaves is likely to make any past wrangling over tedious topics like net neutrality look like a preschool playground when you forsee a lobbying smackdown between the big telcos (who want more spectrum) and the broadcasters (who will fight to not give their airwaves up). Attention recent law school graduates! Best to bone up on spectral-rights history, because your billable hours will soon be needed.

More importantly for the rest of us is the plan’s welcome focus on a topic we’ve long been sore about, the fudging and obfuscating that is the norm when it comes to wireless service plans. Our quick summation of the FCC’s well-reasoned quest to standardize, collect and expose wireless service parameters: When you buy a gallon of gas, you are somewhat assured you are getting the octanes you paid for thanks to government regulations and standards on weights, measurement and quality of fuels. Consumers can choose their provider based on standardized data and pricing, market forces at their best.

In the current iteration of wireless services, we are at the stage of Put a Tiger in your tank. Cloudy descriptions of “peak” service levels and confusing data/minutes/messaging plans purposely make it almost impossible for consumers to compare services or providers. Under the Plan, the FCC would change that by establishing “technical broadband measurement standards” and by publishing actual broadband delivery data — maybe even a label (see below), like the ones that tell us how many calories are in that “healthy” toaster pastry — make it so, make it so!

We also like the bit in Chapter 5 of the report where the FCC calls for the establishment of an online spectrum license search tool (unauthorized PDF grab below) that would make our lives, and the lives of telecom researchers everywhere easier by actually letting the public know who is in control of those most precious of national assets, our electromagnetic airwaves. For this bit alone, hell yes we like the plan. As Eric Schmidt says, Onward!

(image of a proposed FCC “label” for accurate broadband service data. Slap that on yer iPhone!)

(bad fuzzy image of the proposed online spectrum license search tool)

Here’s a good blog post from Comcast’s lead legal honcho Joe Waz, saying that Comcast doesn’t think there’s going to be a big stink raised by the big service providers (his company included) over the forthcoming National Broadband Plan — basically disagreeing with the take on the subject in a New York Times story from earlier this weekend.

I agree here with Joe — in talks with folks around the telco-sphere the last few weeks, it seems like Julius Genachowski, along with Blair Levin and his BBPlan troops at the FCC have done a good job of “highlighting” what’s going to be in the plan with a series of well-timed and well-thought-out news releases the past few weeks.

With few surprises left for Tuesday, when the plan will be formally announced, everyone involved on all sides has now had time to set their own strategies and have their own troops ready to march when the gun sounds for what will surely be a big marathon of political and technological tussling, one that some think will put the mud-wrestling over the 1996 Telecom Act to shame.

But maybe not, according to Comcast’s Waz, who despite sticking to the big carriers’ “no net neutrality” line (the code word for the big carriers this time around is “private investment in broadband” — meaning, that if there are net neutrality rules the private investments will dry up), does see many ways that previously warring entities can work together, with the end goal of making more broadband available. As Joe says near the end of his missive:

And if there’s going to be a “battle,” I think it should – and will – be focused on accomplishing the things on which we should all be on the same side: promoting more private investment in broadband, getting more Americans connected to broadband, and making the most of broadband as a nation to advance our economy and our society.

How’s that song go? Two out of three ain’t bad?

Stay tuned for more on the Broadband Plan this week!

One of the better ideas I found while sifting through reactions to Google’s fiber network plans was from our pal Sam Churchill, who runs the excellent dailywireless blog. Though Sam “buried the lead” a bit, if you scroll down through his comprehensive post you find the suggestion/wish that instead of dropping so much dough on a FTTH network, why couldn’t Google seed a fiber-to-WiMAX play, which could produce a lot more end-user bandwidth for the buck?

While I like Sam’s idea — and it seems to make sense, since it could help seed the field for WiMAX device and application development, which might help Google monetize its $500 million investment in Clearwire — I also think Google should proceed with the fiber-to-the-home plan as well. It’s because I agree with others, like Susan Crawford, who think that Google’s experiment will yield significant results even if it only reaches a small number of end-users.

Like Susan, I believe one of the key factors Google could uncover is the true cost of building and operating an open network — something the big telcos would keep hidden forever, to better obfuscate the reasons behind their pricing policies. I’d like to remind folks that the idea of an “open” local network isn’t new — Internet pioneer Bob Kahn advanced such an idea several years ago, of having an open central office and a public fiber-to-the-home infrastructure that any provider could use — but it was something that no telco or government was willing to try. Kudos to Google for using their market strength in a unique way.