Very US-centric and so pre-knowledge economy, but the main argument is still valid. We need to free up spectrum in a major way. There no need to take cues from the FCC. The reforms can start right here in Asia.
Op-Ed Contributor – Why Bandwidth Is the Oil of the Information Economy – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com
The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of the wasted spaces. Anyone, so long as he or she complies with a few basic rules to avoid interference, could try to build a better Wi-Fi and become a broadband billionaire. These wireless entrepreneurs could one day liberate us from wires, cables and rising prices.
Such technologies would not work perfectly right away, but over time clever entrepreneurs would find a way, if we gave them the chance.
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Abu Saeed Khan
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has written an article – Who Should Solve This Internet Crisis? – in the Washington Post on July 28, 2008. There he said, “At peak times, 5 percent of Internet consumers are using 90 percent of the available bandwidth because of the P2P explosion. This flood of data has created a tyranny by a minority. Slower speeds degrade the quality of the service that consumers have paid for and ultimately diminish America’s competitiveness globally.”
He also said that last summer, a new nongovernmental organization, the P4P Working Group, was formed to find a solution. The group has already field-tested dramatically increased delivery speeds of P2P content over cable networks (up 235 percent) and other networks (up 898 percent in some cases). It is working with industry and consumers to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”
Commissioner McDowell warned, “If we choose regulation over collaboration, we will be setting a precedent by thrusting politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions. Another concern is that as an institution, the FCC is incapable of deciding any issue in the nanoseconds that make up Internet time. And asking government to make these decisions could mean that every few years the ground rules would change based on election results. The Internet might grind to a halt in such a climate. It would certainly die of clogged arteries if network owners had to seek government permission before serving their customers by managing surges of information flow.”
His full article can be viewed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/27/AR2008072701172.html