Communications Insights: Trends and Cool Stuff

It is not often that my work squarely lines up with Presidential politics; however, it seems that work I am currently doing relates to statements made by Sen. John McCain on the campaign trail. I am en route to the 19th European Regional International Telecommunications Society Conference in Rome. Of the two papers I am scheduled to present, one is a paper chronicling the history of the US FCC’s Part 15 rules. These are the set of rules which enable devices such as Wi-Fi in the United States. Based on my research for this paper, Sen. McCain’s recent statements from the campaign trail are demonstrably false.

In a written response to Science Debates 2008’s questionnaire for the two major party’s Presidential candidates, the McCain campaign stated:

I am the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The Committee plays a major role in the development of technology policy, specifically any legislation affecting communications services, the Internet, cable television and other technologies. Under my guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology that enables Americans to surf the web while sitting at a coffee shop, airport lounge, or public park.

While the first two sentences are factually correct, the assertion that Sen. McCain’s “guiding hand” led to these policies is false. The policies which led to the creation of Wi-Fi (the IEEE’s 802.11 suite of standards) were a set of rules originally crafted in a 1985 FCC Report and Order. This rulemaking permitted low power, unlicensed use of spread spectrum radios in the 2.4 GHz band in which the standards 802.11 b & g currently operate.  (The 5.8 GHz band, which 802.11a uses, was opened by the Commission in a 1996 proceeding).  The first commercial spread spectrum product was a radio LAN which was introduced by Telesystems in 1988. The IEEE did not ratify the first 802.11 standard until 1999.

While it is true that the FCC is an independent regulator with delegated rulemaking authority from Congress, it is completely specious for Sen. McCain to claim credit for these rulemakings.  At the time of the 1985 rulemaking Sen. McCain was not Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Indeed, in 1985, Sen. McCain was serving in the House of Representatives.  Further, the 1985 Order was based on a 1979 consultant’s report commissioned by the FCC.  MITRE, the firm which drafted the report, recommended permitting the technologies which Wi-Fi uses in certain spectrum bands (the ISM band).  This was certainly not Sen. McCain’s idea, but Wallace C. Scales, the report’s author.

Similarly, Sen. McCain’s the claim that he guided the Congressional policy making which lead to the widespread adoption of cell phones is equally bogus.  The original cellular telephony spectrum licenses were allocated and assigned by the FCC in the early 1980s.  However, the true stimulus which, “spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones,” was the 1993 Omnibus Spending Act.  This law granted to the FCC the power to assign spectrum licenses by “comparative bidding” - auctions.  Through these first auctions the FCC allocated and assigned Personal Communications Services (PCS).  These licenses were designed to compete with the pre-existing cellular licenses and let to the fantastic success of mobile communications.  While this law was in fact drafted by Congress, it was done so by a Democratically controlled one.  Thus, in 1993 (and 1985) Sen. McCain was not the head of any Senate Committee.  (Just as a historical footnote, Sen. McCain was the only Republican in both the Senate and the House to vote against the 1996 Telecommunications Act).

Insight: Most candidates stretch the truth, embellishing their records or being one of the many fathers to success.  However, the absence of penalties for a candidate’s false statements distorts the electoral process - even those little tiny deceptions which go unnoticed by except by the wonkiest of policy wonks, like me.  The highest office comes with it the fiduciary duty.  Thus, we must hold candidates, “not to mere honesty alone, but a punctilio the honor most sensitive,” as Justice Cardozo admonishes us.   Allowing our candidates even the most minor of misstatements and misrepresentations creates a giant incentive for politicians to try to con us.  This leads to the “adverse election” of unqualified candidates who, once in office, establish bad policies.  We deserve better from our political process and should hold our candidates for elected office to the highest standards of “truthiness”.

My article Unlicensed to Kill: a Brief History of the FCC Part 15 Rules has just gone to press and will be published in the journal Info.  I originally gave the paper at The Genesis of Unlicensed Wireless Policy conference organized by Tom Hazlett at George Mason University Law School.  (Yes, dear reader, Tom Hazlett hosted a conference on unlicensed.  The Seventh Seal is broken and the End of Days is truly upon us.)

The conference looked at the origin and evolution of the FCC’s Part 15 rules.  There were several interesting takeaways.  Most of these are lessons which we already know, but all too often take for granted.  Keynote speaker Michael Marcus reminded the audience that people frequently act in their short term interest, in a way in which they foreclose long-term opportunities for themselves.  Dr. Marcus described the regulatory battles of the 1980s during the FCC’s rulemakings where cordless manufacturers fought fiercely, opposing certain rule changes.  These rules now enable most of the cordless phones these manufacturers now sell.  The closing keynote, Dewayne Hendrix pointed out how spectrum policy the cognitive dissidence spectrum policy faces in affording interference rights.  We allow licensees to “whine” about interference when they use decades old technologies which do not have the ability to reject unwanted signals which more modern gear does.

Insight: In the US, there is no such thing as unlicensed spectrum.  Rather, and this is an important distinction, the FCC allows low power operation on a sufferance basis, proved the devices cause no harmful interference and accept all received by them.  Operators have a right, but not a vested right to continued operation.  The FCC has historically viewed the radio energy emission from these devices as not rising to a level sufficient to call “spectrum”.  This has left me wondering if there is no such thing as spectrum at all.  Spectrum is a legal and engineering construct to control for an immutable fundamental physical property.  When multiple electromagnetic waves, used as carrier waves to transmit information are incident in time, harmonic in frequency, and alight on the same reception antenna, they degrade one another’s ability to transmit information.  Next generation radio policy will focus more on solving the coordination/congestion problem, and not on “spectrum” per se.  (I also gave a really cool PowerPoint.  (Click to start, click to advance each slide after the animation stops).

Google’s Larry Page spoke at a recent New American Foundation event, calling for “Wi-Fi on steroids” for the TV White Spaces.  Every time I hear this, I cannot help but think, “Oh great, a radio that is hyper-aggressive, muscle-bound, and impotent.  Why would I want such a technology?!” All joking aside, I approve the sentiment, but a little more careful analysis is need.There is here a unique window of opportunity to allow new uses of the TV spectrum which is currently inefficiently used.  For the past 9 decades, the FCC has regulated high power uses of the radio spectrum, such as broadcasting.  The FCC has also for the past 7 decades permitted low power uses, with increasing success.  The TV White Space presents the opportunity to permit medium power uses of the spectrum - something between Wi-Fi and TV.  However, neither the high-power of low-power paradigms seems to fit.  Licensed approaches typically allocate use to a single entity which makes decisions about use.  As a result, much remains unused at any given time.  The rules created are hard to change and do not afford much flexibility in terms of decisions regarding use by the licensee.  In contrast, unlicensed approaches strictly limit the radio energy which a device can radiate into the ether.  By controlling the emissions, the rules limit the possibility of harmful interference.  These rules create a much more flexible set of permission, but due to the stringent power limitations ranges of the radio devices can be extremely short.  What is needed is a new form of coordinating spectrum uses for medium power applications, which holds the benefits of both approaches while minimizing the potential downsides.

Insight:  Fortunately, some of the FCC’s best and brightest have been working this issue.  In a previous Cool Stuff, I wrote about my FCC Working Paper, which lays out ideas for the implementation of economic congestion etiquettes which would allocate spectrum use in real time to its highest monetary value uses.  This approach could significantly improve the value society receives from the use of the radio spectrum, without the need for dangerous pharmaceuticals.