Alec Saunders is a great guy, with a grin permanently etched on his face. I enjoy each chance to chat with him and lately, to engage in a blog discussion about the future of wireless spectrum.

Late last week, Alec [and likely some other readers] missed the sarcasm in the second paragraph of my August 8 posting. As a result, he accused me of pulling his leg, but in his post, I believe he is pulling mine.

Part of the problem may be that the NY Times has now placed its editorial behind its pay wall. As such, I suspect many did not see the NY Times closing paragraph and therefore didn’t understand my reference to the US wireless market as being primitive. The Times said:

The closed nature of America’s wireless networks is the main reason that its cellphone technology is so primitive compared with Europe’s and Japan’s. The F.C.C.’s new rules go part of the way to solve this, but unfortunately, American consumers have once again been denied a truly open and competitive cellular market.

Regardless of the source of the confusion, Alec wrote a paragraph worth examining further:

By not imposing use of spectrum rules, allowing consumers choice, and demanding that consumer be treated fairly by the very monopolies which they have created through their auction process, the US regulator has allowed a confusing mish-mash of technologies and anti-consumer behaviors to hold back the progress of the wireless industry. It’s ironic, given the US viewpoint that they are technology and free market leaders.

I disagree with Alec on the pejorative tone of allowing a ‘confusing mish-mash of technologies.’ It sounds like a criticism of the FCC and Industry Canada for not picking a single winner in the digital mobile technology sweepstakes.

Let’s face it. Had governments picked a videotape winner, we might all be stuck using Betamax. The free market picked VHS, not because of better picture quality, but (among other reasons) because with a 6 hour tape, one could record a whole week’s worth of soap opera episodes on a single tape. [Beta only offered a maximum of 4 hours of recording.] Consumers, faced with a choice, selected the winner.

Would GSM have been government’s first choice of digital standard?

Sure, there may have been some consumer confusion created between 3 competing technologies. But doesn’t that mean that customers saw competition and choice?

Is the software applications world any different? Competition and confusion between Windows and Linux? Firefox and Explorer? Pick the instant messenger. Name your choice of social networking service: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn. It is all so confusing.

Surely no one would argue that there should have been a single mobile wireless technology, any more than we would want to preordain a winning software application.

For the same reasons that both Alec and I want the freedom for entrepreneurs and kids to innovate and create new applications “without having to pass through the carrier’s approval process,” wouldn’t we want carriers to have the freedom to build networks that respond to the marketplace?

I’d suggest that markets are better at picking winners than governments.

How do you read the news on your Blackberry?

For that matter, how do you keep up with all the insights that I provide on this blog?

I use Viigo from Virtual Reach, an application that can be downloaded for free onto your Blackberry or many other mobile devices.

This week, Virtual Reach announced that it has added over 1,000 new channels of internet content to its Viigo Channel Library. You’ll find this blog under “Gadget and Mobile News“.

One of the easiest ways to manage your Viigo feeds is to provide access to your desktop news aggregator (such as Bloglines or My Yahoo). Viigo will then automatically add all the feeds that you see on your desktop. Alternatively, you can scan through the Viigo channel library or add feeds one at a time, either from your mobile device or from My Viigo.

On his blog, Peter Nowak bemoans the FCC leaving Canada in the dust, but he and a few others appear to be confused about some of the facts behind the FCC’s recent statements on wireless frequency allocations and the ability to roam between networks.

Let’s start by looking at what the FCC actually did say on on July 31. Their statements affect the 700 MHz band (currently used by UHF TV channels 60-69). This is a band that has not yet been designated for advanced mobile services internationally, but this FCC endorsement makes it highly likely that other countries will follow suit.

However, it is going to be 4 years before those frequencies are available in Canada which has set a deadline of August 31, 2011 for analog TV to vacate the band (the US will be clear just 18 months from now in February, 2009).

The current Industry Canada consultation is for a very different band – in the 2GHz Range. The FCC had no open access requirements for the spectrum that is currently under consideration.

Despite the fact that so many people (including my friend Alec Saunders) are concerned that the current (and seemingly each) auction is for “the last remaining beach-front property”, the 700MHz band is evidence that there is more spectrum continually being cleared for applications, such as mobile services, as demand warrants. [I’ll have more to say about Alec’s recent jabs in a follow-up post]

Further, the posting confuses open access with technical realities:

In other words, if a consumer buys a mobile phone, it will work on AT&T;’s network, on Verizon’s network, T-Mobile’s network, etc.

Sorry. CDMA phones will still not be able to magically operate on GSM networks and vice-versa. Further, there is nothing I have seen from the FCC that will prevent carriers from continuing to lock subsidized phones – I have written about this problem in the past and questions of who owns my phones continue to trouble me.

What the FCC actually said is that for one of bands being auctioned, customers will be able to attach the device and run the applications of their choice, subject to reasonable network safeguards:

The licensees of the Upper 700 MHz Band C Block of spectrum will be required to provide a platform that is more open to devices and applications. This would allow consumers to use the handset of their choice and download and use the applications of their choice in this spectrum block, subject to certain reasonable network management conditions that allow the licensee to protect the network from harm.

Commissioner Deborah Tate’s statement helps clarify the purpose of the these network safeguards.

We should not underestimate the value of reasonable requirements established by a network operator to protect its network and allow for compliance with its regulatory obligations, such as an obligation to provide e911 service.

None of us would want an e911 call to go unanswered because it could not find its way through a maze of movie and music downloads, or malicious software. Thus, the network operator must be able to reasonably manage the foreign applications on its network.

By the way, there is also nothing that prohibits someone from doing this to existing spectrum or using any of the other blocks in the 700 MHz band to be opened up the same way.

As attractive as an open access set-aside may be for a portion of the spectrum, Industry Canada needs to reject suggestions that it delay the AWS auction rule making.

Consumers shouldn’t have to wait.

Heritage Minister Bev Oda announced yesterday that former RDI broadcaster, Michel Morin, has been appointed as a Commissioner of the CRTC.

In the news release, he is described as having strong broadcast industry credentials:

Mr. Morin is recognized for his talent as a natural leader with remarkable skills in persuasion and delegation. He is a seasoned journalist, and his broadcasting credentials will make a strong contribution to the CRTC

The CRTC could be losing a number of Commissioners over the course of this year including Barbara Cram, Stuart Langford, and Andree Noel, all with terms expiring before the end of 2007. By mid-2008, another 3 commissioners will complete their appointments.

We are still watching for a replacement to be named for former Vice-Chair of Telecom, Rick French. That seat has been vacant since the end of June.

Consider this: almost all the Commissioners, including the Chair, could be new to the CRTC over the course of about 12 months. It is a tremendous level of turn-over.

In keeping with the teachings of Bob Dylan:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

The rest of the song contains a number of other messages for the new Commissioners trying to come to grips with regulating in today’s environment.

And a message for some of us mortals: Just don’t criticize what you can’t understand.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, Commissioners

I thought that so many people were pointing at the US as a model for Canadian wireless. So many have looked south of the border, longing for Cingular-type plans and services or Apple’s iPhone to be launched here.

But the apparently, the US wireless market is primitive, and doomed to stay that way, according to an editorial in the NY Times. [Thanks, Michael for the tip.]

An open auction means that anyone can purchase spectrum and use it in a way that allows them to determine how to best get a return on their investment. Adding rules amounts to constraining the flexibility for companies risking billions of dollars on a business plan, thereby increasing risk. Increased risk translates into an increased cost of capital.

As I wrote before, there are questions that could arise with terminology as imprecise as “open access“. It seems to me that FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell‘s July 24 “Broadband Baloney” Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal has some appropriate messages for wireless markets as well.

In the next few years, we will witness a tremendous explosion of entrepreneurial brilliance in the broadband market, if the government doesn’t micromanage. Belief in entrepreneurs and a light regulatory touch is the right broadband policy for America.

With wireless services, the grass always seems greener elsewhere.