Re: Obama's FCC team & Wired/Wireless

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: David Lassner <david () hawaii edu>
Date: November 15, 2008 1:07:54 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Brett Glass <brett () lariat net 
>
Subject: Re: [IP] Obama's FCC team & Wired/Wireless

As a regular reader of IP, I see the pleas from Brett Glass that we  
take WISPs more seriously.  To me, this is a symptom of the problem we  
face in the U.S. when we lump together two challenges:
1) Getting today's "broadband" (as the FCC had defined it) deployed to  
more people; and
2) Making U.S. broadband competitive in rate and price with the  
world's leaders.

I don't know Susan personally, but as a reader of her blog and a brief  
recent correspondent, I am thrilled at her appointment and her  
understanding of the long-term challenge of objective #2.  That  
doesn't mean she doesn't also understand #1.  But we could easily  
spend the next 5 years working to get everyone in the U.S. single- 
digit Mbps services and completely lose sight of the rest of the  
leading economies of the world.

I agree that pure WISPs, 4G and even 3G can be competitive with many  
of today's DSL/Cable offerings and shouldn't be discounted by those  
who are focused on objective #1.  But it also seems clear that the  
deployment of advanced broadband services by world leaders (e.g.  
KDDI's recent rollout of 1Gbps symmetric consumer service for under US 
$60/mo) is based on a different approach to public policy and shared  
infrastructure than our current U.S. non-policy.  We need people at  
the FCC who understand this as well.

On the Hawaii Broadband Task Force we have had representatives of a  
WISP, the cable company and the ILEC and we have several engineers.   
In the current working draft of our Recommendations we are using the  
following language to talk about wired v. wireless:

While some propose wireless as the alternative, the Task Force  
believes that “wired
or wireless?” is the wrong question to ask.  Fiber optic cable  
provides the greatest
capability with nearly-unlimited expandability to fixed locations,  
while wireless
provides tremendous advantages in mobility as well as more cost- 
effective
deployment of basic broadband to some rural and remote locations.   
Most broadband
wireless systems rely on wired capabilities for at least some of their  
backbone
connectivity.  The Task Force believes the right answer for Hawaii is  
“wired AND
wireless.”

And we are trying to address both the short-term and long-term  
challenges by recommending:

The Task Force recognizes that achieving pervasive open-access fiber  
to every
premise will not be fast or easy.  Therefore the Task Force recommends  
that the
permanent Authority be established with a singular focus on Hawaii’s  
broadband
vision and have the authority and tools to take both short-term and  
long-term steps to
improve Hawaii’s capacity and achieve our vision.

david






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