On Tuesday Brett Glass gave a lunch talk entitled Lessons from Laramie: Broadband Innovation on the Wireless Frontier. The following is a summary of the talk based on notes that I took. The full video is available here and his slides are available here if you want more information after reading my summary.
Disclaimer:
This write up is based on notes I took during the talk. It is entirely possible that I got some of the details wrong. I’ve probably missed some important points as well. A video of the talk has now been posted to the Berkman web site . I’m posting my notes in hope that they will be useful for those who don’t have the time to watch the full talk and as a way to help people determine if the talk is something they would be interested in watching. This summary is not intended to be a substitute for watching the full talk. Also, I’m a computer scientist but not an electrical engineer nor an expert on networking. It is entirely possible that I’ve misunderstood important aspects of radio transmission, the electro-magnetic spectrum, or other technical issues.
Brett Glass talked about his experience building and running LARIAT an ISP in Laramie, WY. LARIAT is notable because it was arguably the world’s first WISP (terrestrial, Wireless high speed Internet Service Provider). LARIAT was founded in 1992 as a 501(c)(12) non-profit co-op to serve unserved/underserved areas in and around Laramie, WY in 1992. Glass took LARIAT private in 2003 at the request of the membership. In terms of geographic coverage area, LARIAT has been growing by about the size of the island of Manhattan each year.
The big advantage of wireless Internet for a rural area such as Laramie is the low deployment cost (around $100 per square mile). LARIAT uses residential roof mounted antennas to provide Internet access. They offer houses in prime locations such as hill tops free Internet in exchange for allowing LARIAT to mount roof top antennas which are used to provide Internet access to other homes.
Glass discussed the legal and regulatory environment LARIAT operated in and bemoaned policy decisions made in the absence of science. In particular he argued that policy needs to be made based on Shannon’s Law. Shannon’s Law says that capacity increases linearly with bandwidth but only logarithmically with signal to noise ratio. Essentially this means that while very crowded spectrum is difficult to use efficiently, having exclusive access to spectrum is only marginally better than lightly shared spectrum. Glass’s problem with the current spectrum allocation regime is that there’s really only unlicensed spectrum and exclusively licensed spectrum. Exclusively licensed spectrum is currently prohibitively expensive to obtain and unlicensed spectrum is polluted by consumer devices. He argued that we need a non-exclusively (“lightly”) licensed spectrum which is not polluted by consumer devices and unburdened by needless regulatory requirements. Shannon’s Law tells us that lightly licensed spectrum would be almost as good as exclusively licensed spectrum and vastly better than unlicensed spectrum that is crowded by consumer devices.
Glass detailed the reasons why a small ISP such as LARIAT is essentially forced to use unlicensed spectrum. Currently the FCC only auctions off spectrum rights for very large geographic areas. For example, there were auctions for the spectrum rights to all of Wyoming but not for the right to just Laramie. Another problem according to Glass, is that the foreclosure value of spectrum always exceeds it’s utility value. In other words, the value of the monopoly rents from blocking your competitors is likely to be greater than the ability to profit from the spectrum directly. This is a flaw in our current auction process.
The problem with using unlicensed spectrum such as the 2.4 GHz band to provide Internet access is interference from consumer devices. For example, Glass described an incident he called the “Biki Problem”. A customer reported problems with Internet service only on bright sunny days. The problem turned out to be the customer’s daughter sun bathing with a 2.4 GHz cordless phone in front of the antenna for wireless Internet.
Another issue that LARIAT faced was high bandwidth cost. The Incumbent telecoms charge LARIAT 10 times their cost for bandwidth but LARIAT has no other option. Backbone providers would charge a minimum of $15,000 which would mean that in a town of 28,000 LARIAT would need near 100% market share.
Glass made a number of policy recommendations. With regard to spectrum, in addition to increasing the geographic granularity of spectrum licenses and creating non-exclusively (lightly) licensed spectrum, he bemoaned the fact that much of the spectrum in Laramie is currently unused by it’s licensees. But the licensees are unwilling to rent out this unlicensed spectrum to others. He suggested applying the doctrine of “adverse possession” to spectrum or allowing “homesteading” on spectrum. Essentially if owners of spectrum are not willing to use it productively “squatters” should be free to make use of it. He spoke out against unnecessary regulation and net neutrality regulations in particular but did advocate fixing the broken “middle mile” (special access) market for upstream bandwidth.
Glass’s objection to network neutrality was interesting particularly since most of the Berkman community supports network neutrality. He was concerned that one of the plans that LARIAT offered would not be allowed under come of the current net neutrality proposal. This plan offers customers a guaranteed 256 kbs connection for $30 but does not allow them to run a server and certain file sharing programs. (256 kbs may sound slow but keep in mind that this is a guaranteed minimum. Glass said that the actual speeds will bounce up to 512 during times light times but will never drop below 256 even during “prime time”. By contrast Cable and DSL providers usually advertise a maximum speed which you would be unlikely to obtain in practice.) Glass pointed out that LARIAT was able to offer this plan because it could buy asymmetrical bandwidth cheaper from its upstream providers and that the restrictions on file sharing programs were necessary ensure that bandwidth usage was asymmetrical (e.g. download traffic was larger than upload traffic).
In the Q&A, I suggested that WISPs were a rarity and asked Glass if his policy recommendations – particularly with regard to net neutrality – made sense for areas such as Cambridge where there was only essentially a single choice for Internet. He replied that WISPs are more common than most people realize. Many WISP’s hide to avoid being squashed by big ISPs and a lot of WISPs don’t need to advertise. Glass cited D.C. Access — a WISP that operates in Capital Hill – as evidence that WISPs can and do exist in urban areas. Unfortunately, as far as I was able to determine Comcast seems to be the only option for those of us that live in Cambridge.
I found Glass’s description of LARIAT interesting and his policy recommendations on spectrum seem to have merit. However, I’m unconvinced by his arguments against net neutrality. The sad reality is that for most of the country the market for high speed Internet is a duopoly at best and a monopoly at worst (as in Cambridge). Until we have a truly competitive Internet the potential danger from traffic interference is simply too great not to have net neutrality protections.
UPDATE: 23 Feb 2010. I contacted CWISP on Brett Glass’s suggestion in the comments to see if they could provide home wireless service to me in Cambridge. I received a reply asking for my address and the type of service I was looking for. I provided that information but received no response. I send a follow up email after a week for still received no response.
Yeah, Glass’s objection to network neutrality was interesting particularly since most of the Berkman community supports network neutrality..
David:
Thank you for blogging my talk. It seems that we agree on most things other than the desirability of “network neutrality” regulation.
Perhaps you’d be more comfortable with the idea that there is no need to regulate Internet service providers if you recognized that (a) there is, indeed, robust competition; and (b) regulating would actually harm that competition by destroying small, rural, and independent providers, leaving only the large ones behind.
Even in my small town of 28,000 souls, there are 9 facilities-based broadband providers — and there are doubtless at least as many in Cambridge. Besides competitive DSL providers and cellular carriers, Cambridge also has CWISP, at http://www.communitywisp.com/, which covers the entire greater Boston area. And I believe that there are at least one or two others. But as I mentioned during my talk, current regulatory policy creates barriers to entry for new competitors, and more regulation would create even more.
Unless you would prefer to make a regulated monopoly or duopoly inevitable, please consider the possibility of advocating policies that would increase competition, rather than onerous regulation that would strangle it.
–Brett Glass
My assumption has been that for many communities the only choices are the local phone company and the local cable company. However, I would certainly be interested in seeing data on the average competitiveness of broadband markets in the United States. Cambridge may be a bit unique — since according to people I’ve talked to the city government imposes restrictions on new entrants. Perhaps for this reason Verizon offers DSL but not FIOS. I just emailed CWISP to see what plans they offer to Cambridge. (CWISP didn’t show up when I searched for Internet alternatives a year ago. The alternatives to Comcast that I found such as speakeasy seemed to be targeted toward business rather than residential users.)
On the policy side, the big concern I have is large companies such as Verizon or Comcast abusing their market power. At the very least, I think there should be regulations that prevent ISPs was shaking down content providers. At minimum, there are a number of nightmare scenarios that I think we need regulation to prevent. For example, ISPs demanding that web sites pay them or else they will block their customers from accessing them.
David, shouldn’t policy be based on actual data rather than “assumptions?” As CTIA noted in its recent report (commissioned by the FCC), WISPs serve more than 2 million accounts nationwide (some of which include entire office or apartment buildings) and have a nationwide footprint. (See the interactive map at http://www.wirelessmapping.com/Google%20Maps3.htm) And no city, including Cambridge, can stop a WISP from operating. Such service is governed by Federal regulations, which trump any municipality’s efforts to block it (though why one would want to is beyond me; broadband options are an important component of quality of life). About all a municipality can do, if it is foolish enough, is try to stop WISPs from mounting antennas on buildings or erecting towers — and its power to do that is limited by Federal regulations too.
As for your concerns regarding the abuse of market power: no ISP, large or small, has ever attempted to “shake down” content providers, and none ever will. (If the ISP dared to block content, customers would leave for competitors in an instant.) Given that the problem you fear is not only nonexistent but implausible, why impose regulation that — besides not solving any problem — will destroy competition and outlaw many ISPs’ most consumer-friendly rate plans?
On the other hand, content providers HAVE attempted to shake down ISPs. ESPN360, for example, has demanded that ISPs pay it a per-subscriber fee before it will allow ANY of the ISP’s subscribers to view its content. (Customers who try to view ESPN360’s content — and it has substantial market power when it comes to regional and local sports — via an ISP that has not paid it “ransom” are told to switch to another ISP to get the content!)
I think that once you learn more about what’s actually happening, you will be more concerned about misbehavior by content providers with market power (e.g. Google) than by ISPs. Just think of what would happen if Google began to “strongarm” ISPs, forcing them to pay it for access to its search engine or YouTube (which has a monopoly on online video)….
Minor typo above: “CTIA” should be “CITI”.
Broadband internet, a phrase popular pertaining to on the internet entry which is more quickly (no less than 10 x) compared to the typical phone line modems, that generally functions about 56Kbps (Kilo portions for every next). Using high speed broadband, it is perfectly normal to chat when it comes to Megabyte per second (Huge pieces every next). In certain nations around the world, they’re actually by now speaking with regards to Mb / s (Ultra Bytes every 2nd) the place where a Byte is equivalent to 8-bits. Consequently, in case you obtained 10MBps accessibility, which is equal to expressing you still have 80Mbps accessibility velocity.^
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