[too long and off-topic academic rant, delete now unless you have strong stomach]
On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 12:45:32AM -0500, John Scrivner wrote: I see you have made your introduction K. :-) I think you guys will find this lady's enthusiasm toward policy change to be no less than revolutionary. She has an eye toward a complete rework of the FCC (as in destroy it and rebuild governance of spectrum and policy from the ground up) to allow for more progressive spectrum and related policy. I have explained that we are all still attempting a more standard approach to working within the framework of our existing system a little longer before we are ready to start burning the FCC at the stake. While there would be a certain pleasure in seeing the system rebuilt from scratch it would be of little use if it ended up being rebuilt by people who do not care about our needs as an industry. At least some policy bodes well for us now or we would not even be talking here today. john, you overestimate my enthusiasm. <s> revolution isn't the goal, congruence (between policy and our-best-understanding-of-the-world, aka truth) is the goal. i don't know enough about the fcc to foment revolution, and frankly, i'm not even sure what revolution means this decade. i admit i have heard gentlemen talk about low power squatting on channel 2 to broadcast local city/state public governance proceedings, w tagline: "this is your democracy, on unconstitutionally licensed spectrum. any questions? http://openspectrum.<city>.<state>.us". but i don't know anyone who actually wants (or plans) to break federal law. if i were going about that i would try to get city and state law behind me first (california has some history of state legislation that is 'empirically ahead' of federal legislation, e.g., props 71, 215, tax breaks for alternative energy investments. actually, california's opening up some spectrum for public sector research and experimentation would be tame compared to what california has effectively said to the feds on several other issues...) [for a good 'broadcasting is unconstitutional' rant, see http://www.frankston.com/public/writing.asp?name=20050923-0460 ] alas...i have learned this month that many underground groups are already using 'licensed' spectrum for their own unlicensed private purposes so i reckon the only way to be innovative there would be to do something in support of the public sector. conveniently, there is great need there. inconveniently (and correlated), there is less monetary payoff there... but whatever its instantiation, revolution is a last resort, and it's not clear to me that we have exhausted other options. i know several quite bright, progressive, enthusiastic people at the fcc (seriously!), among other agencies (i admit i know noone at fema). what they lack is irrefutable empirical (or analytical, or realistically simulated) evidence that proposed changes have extraordinary quantified (in $$$, or hours, or lives, or, bandwidth, or coverage, but probably mostly $$$) advantages over the status quo. but john's got the spirit of my passion quite right -- i am witnessing a deeply widening gap betweeen policy and our best understanding of the world, and i am [wearing myself out] trying to put scientific resources toward narrowing this gap. i'm not sure what specific data to ask for at the moment because have little insight into what data i could get. my exceedingly pie-in-the-sky and yet apparently unusually pointed questions are: what's the most effective, economic way to provide for the nation: * a layer of 'cellphone' bandwidth across the country? (that might mean a long-haul backbone to tie together regional wifis -- let's figure out what that costs too. e.g., if you all had an oc192 optical fiber backbone connecting WISPs all across the country to eachother, how many WISPs could pay the access fees to connect to it? or, what would those access fees have to be for you to be able to afford what-you'd-need? * a layer of communication for emergency services across the country? (as you want to define it) * N Mbps (e.g., 100Mbps) worth of digital communications bandwidth to each building? each person? [all backed up by compelling economic and engineering analyses] i know these are hand-wavy, but they are also the numbers that ultimately should inform enlightened public policy for digital communications. so, given that we might actually need to build and measure some wireless testbeds to validate/refine cost and throughput models, i think WISPA data could go a long way here in helping the academic sector Imagine the [most cost-effective] Possibilities. another key question for researchers trying to build new technologies for you to deploy: what measurement support do we need to build into network architecture to assess and track the costs of resulting infrastructures for a given set of performance and coverage constraints? what technological (e.g., radio) and regulatory (e.g., spectrum control) developments are needed to support testing and experimentations with proposed architectures? you folks know better than i do that as a society we still haven't gotten our heads around treating digital communications bandwidth as critical infrastructure, which means we are procrastinating the required change in the nature of our thinking about everything from consumer protection (FTC) to spectrum stewardship (FCC) to network science policy (NSF, DARPA, NIST). it's a long road ahead of us, but the more i learn the more concerned i am at the lack of empirical data supporting /any/ given position. tim you're exactly right that the power of lobbying is daunting, currently much stronger than the power of objective analysis from independent sources, and you're also right that it's ultimately an economic problem (they have more money to lobby than we have to fund objective research and analysis. takes a lot to make ma bell look good, but there we are...). not that it will help much or soon, but there are actually several potential sources of small amounts of federal funds (google for "SBIR") that WISPA folks might qualify for (i don't know enough to judge), and, on the science and R&D sides, here is NSF's valiant attempt to help move the world (of communications) forward in face of all odds against it: http://www.nsf.gov/cise/geni/ if anyone's looking for a job (they tend to but not always require a phd), NSF is looking for a manager of this new program. more importantly, this initiative is a place that WISPA folks should consider applying for funding once the actual solicitation comes out (not sure when that is, things are up in the air and, ironically, the recent re-prioritization of federal resources has a decent chance of killing this program before it even gets funded). at least you should consider offering to be on a peer review panel (send them your qualifications or talk to me about it if you're interested but not sure what it entails) so you can help guide more enlightened science policy yourselves -- this decade science needs all the help it can get. with endless respect for all of you, (sorry this got so long) k -- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
