Again, I'm traveling this week, attending ISPCON in San Jose, California. On Thursday, November 7, from 10:00 to 11:00 (Pacific), I'll be leading a Keynote panel discussion titled WISPs: Alive and Kicking (
www.servicenetworks.com/fall2002/attend-keynotes.asp), which will I'm told will be webcast live on TVWorldwide.com -
http://www.tvworldwide.com/event_021105_service_networks_fall.cfm.
While traveling, I'll be posting to the BWIA Weblog using Radio Userland's "Mail To Weblog" feature. Apologies for the inevitable formatting gaffs.
My ISPCON Keynote Panel Session is a pretty big deal, to me, as ISPCON was one of the first trade shows I began attending at the beginning of my writing career, not to mention being the affiliated trade show of Boardwatch Magazine, where I wrote the Wireless Data Developments column, launching my writing career.
But to me, the biggest event on November 7, 2002 won't be my Keynote panel discussion. The biggest event that day will be the release of the FCC's Spectrum Policy Task Force Report. The report, officially released at the FCC's Open Meeting, is likely to be a watershed event in the history of spectrum allocation.
The report, by itself, is "just" a report - input to the FCC for the purpose of forming effective public policy on spectrum and telecommunications industry matters.
In reality, it's much, much more than just a report, to be read, considered, filed, and forgotten like so many other such reports. This report has very serious weight, with the FCC itself, the telecommunications and wireless industries, policy advisors, and the public as a whole. For the first time in my memory, in a contest between incumbents and non-incumbents, the FCC will give very serious consideration to the non-incumbents. I feel that the reason for this huge break from past practice has several causes:
1) The incumbent spectrum holders have not realized the promised and expected new services,
2) For the first time, there is a credible, demonstrated alternative - "Open Spectrum" policies, amply demonstrated by the economic activity and new services emerging in the existing license-exempt spectrum
3) The public (at least, enough of the public, that matter to the FCC) really, actively care about the outcome of this rather esoteric debate on spectrum allocation policy.
I predict the "mean-time-to-howls-of-protest" from incumbent spectrum holders to be only a few hours [more like a few minutes - the Cellular Telephone and Internet Association - CTIA, had its rebuttal out seemingly within an hour], and the resulting position papers undoubtedly will be entertaining reading. I expect to have more than enough such material to keep me busy on the flight from San Jose to Seattle Thursday evening.
Of course, I'll be spending much of the evening hours polishing my presentation, and hoping that the FCC releases the complete text of the report on their web page before, or at least concurrent with their meeting. That would allow me a few hours to read it, to tweak my presentation, and to offer an "up to the minute" perspective on "WISPs: Alive and Kicking." at ISPCON. Wish me well!
Steve Stroh
Copyright © 2002-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my original Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on Radio Userland.