A New Deal for broadband: free, wireless

A New Deal for broadband: free, wireless
By Matthew Lasar |

Imagine you were the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission. One day someone came to you with an offer:

Sell us a chunk of spectrum in the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band (1.9GHz to 2.1GHz). We'll create a fast broadband service with some of it, and with the rest we'll build a free 768Kbps wireless network, rolled out to most Americans over a ten-year period. We'll even pay the US Treasury a percentage of our revenue, and fund the service with our own capital, partnership deals, and ads.

Why wouldn't you seriously consider this idea? Your agency knows that millions of low-income Americans don't use the Internet, in large part because they can't afford broadband. You know that while your own National Broadband Plan has a set of fixes for this problem, they must walk over a long, rickety bridge of proceedings, rulemakings, and Congressional actions to reach the implementation stage, and some may never get there.

You also know that the best way to reach the promised land—universal Internet adoption—is to facilitate many experiments, even if you think some might fail.

There is a company making that offer, by the way: M2Z Networks. For four years M2Z has been asking for a chance to try its idea out. The Commission has even formally proposed (but never voted on) implementing M2Z's plan.

Now, the company is teaming up with County Executives of America. CTA represents 700 counties and has applied for broadband stimulus money. If the association gets its requested $122 million in community infrastructure funds, it will partner with M2Z to roll out the service to 13 participating counties, their residents, and the respective regional public safety agencies. From there, the venture, if it wins funding, will extend free wireless across the nation, county by county.

But there's a catch. The only way that the National Telecommunications and Information Agency's broadband stimulus fund is going to fork over this cash is if the FCC greenlights the use of that spectrum. And while the NBP mentions the free wireless concept, the FCC says it won't make decisions about the AWS band until it has completed a consultation with the NTIA that goes through October 1. That's one day after NTIA is expected to announce its last round of stimulus awards.

"We cannot get an answer from the FCC, yes or no," M2Z CEO John Muletta lamented to us on Wednesday. "We're got the right hand of the government saying we want you to build this. On the left hand the government is not making decisions."

Maybe it's time for the FCC to transmit or get off the router on this issue. Either let this project happen, or tell the company to take a hike.

Here are the standard objections to the M2Z plan.

1. Doesn't the M2Z proposal include a "family friendly" filter to block out smut?

Not any more. That was the original idea, but the concept took a huge hit from civil liberties, publishing, and Internet openness groups. Finally, former FCC Chair Kevin Martin, who first embraced the M2Z plan, announced in late 2008 that he had removed the family-friendly filter idea from the scheme.

So now the proposal is for an uncensored, open-device system.

2. Isn't the FCC basically picking winners, losers, and business models here? Isn't that inappropriate?

That was the protest you heard from various wireless companies back when the FCC first put this idea on the table. The complaint is starting to sound a little dated with the wireless industry's major trade association calling for the Commission to help broker a massive transfer of spectrum from the television bands to mobile service companies. The FCC's National Broadband Plan says it wants to do this via "incentive auctions."

"This sharing of proceeds creates appropriate incentives for incumbents to cooperate with the FCC in reallocating their licensed spectrum to services that the market values more highly," the NBP explains.

Let's face it: regulators, in consultation with stakeholders, approve and perpetuate what amount to business models. The only time the latter complain is when they think it's the wrong model.

3. The FCC's proposal would facilitate an auction favoring one company: M2Z.

Yes, and it's a legitimate concern. (Though see above re: business models. The FCC puts license conditions on auctions all the time, and it laid down some pretty strict business rules concerning openness during its last major auction.)

4. Won't this proposal interfere with neighboring bands?

In 2008, wireless companies that own spectrum around the AWS area insisted that the M2Z concept posed an interference threat. So the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology holed up around a Boeing plant in Seattle, Washington and tested the scheme for days. The OET concluded that these interference concerns could be handled. Having gotten the tests they asked for, big wireless turned around and declared that the OET was wrong.

License interference is a serious issue. But it's getting a bit wearisome to watch wireless companies denounce OET decisions they don't like while proclaiming their faith in the department in other interference fights, such as the feud between Sirius XM Radio and license holders in the Wireless Communications Service.

The evaluating and testing that everyone wanted is done. The OET should have the last word here.

5. 768Kbps? That's pretty slow Internet.

It sure isn't the speed that we want on our laptops and smartphones. We pointed that out to Muletta, who pushed back that the plan isn't targeted at us. It's aimed at the millions of low income people who desperately need to get in on the ground floor of the Internet experience—not for online movies and games, but because you can't apply for a job or go to school anymore without broadband.

"Lots of people don't subscribe to any form of broadband because of price," Muletta insists. "They're not asking for 100Mbps. They can't afford it. Free matters a heck of a lot to people who don't have basic services."

And once they get basic broadband, Muletta added, plenty of relatively low-income folks might move onto a subscription plan, putting money into the coffers of the very same industries whose lawyers currently oppose M2Z. "Let's let these low-income consumers decide if they don't like free 768 Kbps," Muletta argued. "Let's not patronizingly decide for them."

6. Can M2Z get this job done?

We've been talking with M2Z about this issue for years. "We believe in the network," John Muletta always tells us. "We believe that the network is profitable." What network, we wonder? It hasn't even been built yet, except in Muletta's mind.

But that's not a criticism, exactly. Being something of a fanatic is what it takes to get these visions off the ground, though we're certainly curious to see if M2Z (which is backed by venture capital groups like Kleiner Perkins) can deliver.

So we're back where we were at the beginning of this post, asking the same question. Why wouldn't the FCC want to authorize this proposal? Sure, it's risky. But can't that be said for about half the agency's National Broadband Plan? One of the FCC's Commissioners, former agency Chair Michael Copps, keeps talking about the virtues of public/private partnerships and the New Deal.

The New Deal was a period of experimentation. Many ideas were tried. Some failed. Some succeeded. A national free wireless service might be worth a try, providing some basic access to most Americans at little cost to the government—but if the FCC thinks otherwise, the Commissioners should finally say so and tell its advocates to move on.