Thomas W. Hazlett and Vernon L. Smith in The Wall Street Journal: Don't Let Google Freeze the Airwaves
A scheme to keep precious spectrum underutilized
The Wall Street Journal, Friday, October 3, 2008
Google is now pushing a "free the airwaves" campaign, rallying to open TV band frequencies for new wireless services. This is a superb idea, one suggested by South Dakota Republican Sen. Larry Pressler in 1996, just before he was targeted by broadcasters and defeated for re-election.
But something has been lost in translation as Google cofounder Larry Page presses the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to act before the Nov. 4 election. Google's proposal would actually freeze the airwaves allocated to television prior to World War II. Innovative services would be lost for yet another generation.
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The Gore Commission, 10 Years Later: The Public Interest Obligations of Digital TV Broadcasters in Perfect Hindsight
A mini-conference on Friday, October 3, 2008, at 8:30 a.m., with three experts intimately familiar
with the December 1998 report of the Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters, commonly referred to as the “Gore Commission.”
This report recommended a minimum standard of public interest requirements set by the Federal Communications Commission, including five minutes airtime per night for "candidate-centered discourse in the 30 days before an election" -- which would be set to commence this election cycle on Sunday, October 5, 2008.
Featuring GIGI SOHN, President of President of Public Knowledge, and a former member of the “Gore Commission," NORMAN ORNSTEIN, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former co-chair of the Gore Commission, and HENRY GELLER, the retired General Counsel of the FCC, who also served administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under President Carter.
Thomas Hazlett in FT: FCC should leave net neutrality to anti-trust courts
FT, Tuesday, September 30, 2008
US regulators have dropped the net neutrality bomb on Comcast, the country's largest cable operator that supplies broadband service to14.4m households. The Federal Communications Commission ruled in August that the firm had secretly throttled certain "peer-to-peer" applications, such as Bit Torrent, that gobble bandwidth.
The motive for the scheme, said the FCC, was not to optimise spectrum sharing but to "unduly squelch" an "open and accessible internet," excluding products competing with Comcast's own video-on-demand (VOD). Finding the cable operator a bad actor, it ordered the company to abandon its existing practices and to better disclose its network management methods to customers.
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Consensus FCC Reforms and the Communications Agenda for the Next Administration, the National Press Club, September 16, 2008
Panelists Kathy Brown of Verizon, Peter Pitsch of Intel, Robert Pepper of Cisco Systems, Blair Levin of Stifel Nicolaus, and attorney Ken Robinson, speak on a panel moderated by Drew Clark, Assistant Director, the Information Economy Project. (Left)
Former FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy speaks with current FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, and former FCC Chairman Bill Kennard, during a break. (Right) (Photos by Gary Arlen)
Former FCC Chairmen Michael Powell and Bill Kennard, during discuss moderated by Amy Schatz, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal.(Photos by Drew Clark)
This mini-conference of the Information Economy Project at George Mason University brought together two former chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission – William Kennard, who served under President Clinton, and Michael Powell, who served under President George W. Bush – with top former officials familiar with the agency's agenda, structure, and day-by-day operations.
Also speaking at the event were Peter Pitsch, chief of staff to Dennis Patrick, FCC Chairman, 1987-1989;Robert Pepper, former chief, Office of Plans and Policy, FCC, 1989-2005; Ken Robinson, senior legal advisor to Al Sikes, FCC Chairman, 1989-1993; Blair Levin, chief of staff to Reed Hundt, FCC Chairman, 1993-1997;and Kathy Brown, chief of staff to William Kennard, FCC Chairman, 1998-2001.
See other upcoming events.
A Debate over Municipal Broadband
Prof. Hazlett interviewed on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, July 15, 2008, "The Future of Municipal Broadband," WAMU 88.5 FM, Washington D.C. [MP3 files]
A Debate over Spectrum policy in the George Mason Law Review
Professors Philip J. Weiser and Dale Hatfield of the University of Colorado debate Thomas W. Hazlett about spectrum property rights in the most recent issues of the George Mason Law Review . Read the papers here.
Perhaps of related interest
Babette Boliek, Net Neutrality Regulation in the Mobile Telecommunications Market: A Cautionary Tale from the Era of Price Regulation (to be presented at the September 2008 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, Cornell Law School, Ithaca, N.Y., May 2008).
Thomas W. Hazlett, Optimal Abolition of FCC Spectrum Allocation (PDF), 22 Journal of Economic Perspectives 103 (Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 2008).
Martin Cooper, Personal Communications and Spectrum Policy For the 21st Century,
Telecommunications Policy, Vol. 31, Issues 10-11 (Nov.-Dec. 2007).
David Porter & Vernon Smith FCC License Experiment Design: A 12-Year Experiment, Journal of Law, Economics and Policy (Vol. 3:1, 2006).
Recent Events
Unleashing Unlicensed: How Wi-Fi Got Its Regulatory Groove
An Information Economy Project Conference: THE GENESIS OF UNLICENSED WIRELESS: How Spread Spectrum Devices Won Access to License-Exempt Bandwidth (April 4, 2008).
Andrew Odlyzko Discusses 'Technology Manias' and Bubble 2.0
Big Ideas About Information Lecture Series: "Technology Manias: Comparing the 1999 Internet Bubble with the 1840s Railroad Mania" (March 18, 2008).
Remembering Clay T. Whitehead