Dana Blankenhorn

Freedom2Connect: Ray Gifford and Gigi Sohn

The last afternoon of Freedom2Connect opened with a political panel featuring Ray Gifford, who heads the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a conservative tech think tank, and Gigi Sohn, who runs Public Knowledge, a liberal advocacy group covering the same subjects.

They were interviewed by David Isenberg, who apologized because, due to health reasons, scheduled interview Jeff Jarvis could not be with us.

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Ray Gifford, president, PFF

Isenberg (I)– I was looking forward to a conversation between Jeff Jarvis and Ray. Jeff had a health problem.

First describe PFF.

Gifford (G) – we’re conservative-libertarian

I – You care about having a healthy robust network. Why?

G – Our board chairman, Jay Peters, who was at Hewlett-Packard in the late 80s, thought connected computing was the harbinger of an economic, political and social revolution. That’s bearing fruit. Those waves of creative destruction are happening before our eyes and will continue to happen.,

I – Does PFF put as much weight on the creative side as the destructive side? How do you see creative destruction?

G – We can’t quite make out what is going on. I think most of what is happening is creation. The destruction is the old communications monopolies, old cable monopolies. Traditional means of delivering media are gone. It’s good for consumers and for creators.

It presents fundamental problems of what is the business model. In the time of the Internet Bubble, one thing no one figured out was how to monetize and pay for this stuff. That is a fundamental question of network economics I am fascinated by.

I – You have several old monopolies as members.

G – And we love them dearly.

I – But I see Google has joined, and Apple is a member. There must be robust intramural discussion.

G – There is. We find ourselves opposite many of our supporters on some issues. Google and Microsoft aren’t happy with us on net neutrality. On cable franchising our cable people aren’t happy. That’s the problem with being corporate-funded.

My position on network neutrality. The answer is maybe.

I – That seems to be the consensus

Freedom2Connect: The Muni Tsunami

At Freedom2Connect, it was clear that attendees preferred the idea of competition from WiFi and open spectrum to any legislation as a solution to threats against the Internet's net neutrality.

This made Ron Sege, CEO of Tropos Networks, a conference sponsor, a very popular fellow. He spoke to the group on the second day of the conference.

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I am often asked why the Muni Tsunami, and why now?

I’ve been blessed to be in the muni WifF movement for two years now. I wasn’t a plitical activist, and wasn’t in the carrier business until Tropos. I spent most of my life at 3Com, in the enterprise business. It has been an eye opener.

The open first mile is under threat.

I have learned three things in the last 2 years:

1. 1The movement is about the desire for a competitive first mile. A lot of mayors and city councillors share our frustration about the duopoly, the high prices and lousy service.
2. Muni wireless is about the means for a competitive first mile. What has changed is that new technology like wireless mesh give us the means for an open, competitive first mile.
3. It’s the confluence of the desire and means that are fueling the Muni Tsunami

Three things are getting in the way of progress:

1. There’s a lot of disinformation about these networks, how well they work or don’t. The incumbents will try to pervert those facts to kill this movement.
2. To the extent we can do anything in DC, we should promote pro-competitive legislation
3. We need to encourage new entrants and funding sources in New York, where the money comes from.

I see many hundreds of cities of demand, and only 100 cities of funding sources.

Freedom2Connect: Rick Boucher

Rick Boucher, a Democratic Congressman from Virginia, has become one of the more knowledgeable Democrats on tech issues over the last several years.

He was introduced to Freedom2Connect by Jonathan Askin.

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Askin  – I need some serious solutions about getting our message to Congress. Who was at the House hearing on the Barton bill? You missed a wonderful moment in Congressional history. There are a couple of people in Congress who actually know technology and are comitted to deploying the Internet and realizing its promise. We are fortunate to have one of those handful. That’s Rick Boucher. He wasn’t always on the page of the CLECs, but things have changed because of Moore’s Law and IP technology. I perhaps have moved closer to him.

We need to build a mutually virtuous cycle.

Opening statements on the Barton bill are due at 5.

Tomorrow is the full mark up. A lot of people like the Bells pay people to line sit, and go really early in the morning.

Rick Boucher

We are marking up a total telecommunications bill.

Note: The Network Neutrality language Boucher discussed on Tuesday was voted down 23-8 by the committee on Wednesday.  It will not be part of the final bill, which now moves to the full House.

Boucher: The biggest potential problem is the current network neutrality language, which is a net minus from the status quo.

When this is done it moves to the full committee after a two week recess, with the promise it will be on the House floor in May. By mid-May this will have been debated and passed in the House. The Senate is on a somewhat different track.

The bill creates a national franchiise for multichannel video providers seeking to enter the Cable TV market as competitors. First on for this will be the telephone companies. For telephone companies this is a have-to case. Cable is well positioned to carry three valued services – cable, broadband Intenret, and telephony. It’s a tougher lift for telphone companies to compete with that bundle. “that consumers want to have.”

Research is now being done to do video switching and deliver cable in the home, offering several channels at once with rapid switching. From the consumer standpoint it seems a lot like the cable TV experience, with potentially even better quality. From a technical standpoint they have a solution. Verizon has announced a fiber to the home project. I think Verizon is doing the right thing, and it will not have capacity constraints.

All of them face a common problem. Verizon has 10,000 local franchising authorities in its service territory. It would need 10,000 franchises. Verizon tried for two years to get franchises, and were getting 15 a year.

A change is necessary, and I support this change. I think there’s a broad consensus this change should occur.

Freedom2Connect: Dave Hughes

Dave Hughes is an Internet legend. A career military man from Colorado Springs, he got involved in Internet issues over 20 years ago, starting with his Old Colorado City BBS. Later, he got involved in wireless, and he's still involved in wireless.

He was introduced by Gordon Cook, Editor of The Cook Report.

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Gordon Cook

Forget Washington. In my opinion it’s hopeless. It’s collaboration and cooperation.

It’s not pretty please Mr. Duopoly may I run my applications on your network.

Let me introduced two books.

The first is Michael Bookey’s  America at the Internet Crossroads – written to explain the Internet to the average city councilman and explain why it’s a road system that is vital to the community, LANs that connect out. Someone needs to print a million of these in paperback and distribute them.

The second is Tom Vest's The Wealth of Networks . This is the most important stuff I’ve seen in the 15 years I’ve done my newsletter. IT’s a specific study of what happens in an Internet ecology if you do it right. It’s how the U.S. becams the leading Internet nation in the 1990s. If you look at his methodology you will see we have done a u-turn and we’re going into the direction of the kind of network they have in mainland China, a state-controlled system

It’s time to build networks and let Ivan and Ed suck on empty pipes. Twenty years ago Dave threatened a 20 million modem march if the Feds screwed it up, and they have screwed it up,

Dave Hughes

Citizens have a right to communicate. It’s a right of speech. To the extent the Internet is an extension of our speech we have a right to it.

Tom Paine would have published Common Sense on a pirate bulletin board and I don’t want any government King Georges treading on my cursor. We must have absolute freedom of electronic speech. I said that 20 some years ago.

Engineers know how. I know why.

I had to do unlicensed, and went into the literature, and found someone I knew, Hedy Lamarr, had invented what we know as WiFi. It was a patent from 1942. She used a paper tape and piano roll to synchronize signals. She wanted to work as an inventor, she didn’t want to be an actress. I nominated her for an Electronic Frontier Foundation award, and she got fame at 83. Because this was classified, military spread spectrumm until 1985, when in a fit of absent-mindedness, the FCC got into it.

They wouldn’t let, for 40 years, the Defense Department have spread spectrum frequency hopping on commercial radios. They didn’t want bad guys on the East Coast hearing bad guys on the West Coast in a way that couldn’t be intercepted.

It was unlicensed, free FREE. FREE!

Michael Powell at Freedom2Connect

Former FCC chairman Michael Powell was one of the featured speakers at this year’s Freedom2Connect conference.

Powell was FCC chair until last year. It was on his watch that the cable-phone duopoly was formed, although he was quick to note he did not vote in favor of either decision.

He was interviewed by Jonathan Krim  (K)of Washingtonpost.com, with some questions from the audience.

K – I think Powell is perfect for this conversation because in my time covering tech policy for the Washington Post he was one of the few who both understood the technology and was willing to engage in the philosophical issues.

K – In 2002 the FCC spectrum policy task force released a report calling for shifting spectrum to licensed and unlicensed use. Since the FCC has done proceedings to follow through, but while those giving spectrum to incumbents have been completed, those with unlicensed have been sidetracked. As a result there is less spectrum available today than 2002. Do you agree with that? What’s going on.

Powell – You are talking about a radicalization of the spectrum management model, which is built entirely on the history of broadcast TV. Its legacy is television. So the 700 MHz and DTV transition take a lot more effort today.

I’ve beena big fan of open spectrum. We did try to strike a deal finding more.

Why does it get harder? Well, what do you want to talk about? There’s little in the government closet that’s easy to dispense. But spectrum requires mind numbing coordination. I have scars from the military on WiFi, and transportation spectrum, trying to free that up. To these people it means people we can’t find when we need to.

K – Why are we making more rapid progress with flexible use to incumbents than unlicensed? It would seem those conflicts exist across the band.

Powell - Increasing spectrum for uses that exist is easier. A lot of the companies that came to us urging new service rules were new companies. They wanted to come to auction. Sometimes the models are quasi-experimental.

My view of spectrum is it should be like a driver’s license. To me that’s flexibility, just as much for innovators as incumbents. Most of the heat we got came from incumbents.

Freedom2Connect: Searls and Weinberger (Weinberger and Searls)

Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead. But Freedom2Connect did have David Weinberger  and Doc Searls .

They staged a colloquy, a dialogue of their own, before the assembled crowd. And the crowd joined in. A Q represents a statement or question from someone in the audience.

Searls: A few days ago I realized there were several moral systems that seem to be operating in the context of the Net. One is the selfish interest model. Second is pure exchange. Third is the market of generosity. In the marketplace you develop a relationship, and at the end of the conversation you may want to pay him more, he may want to charge you less.

Relationships are based on generosity, which is not related to the market of the net.

So much of what we’ve done to enlarge the net has been done by individuals and small groups, not the operators.

Flickr comes to mind. At eTech someone showed me a new company that lets you do Photoshop in a web browser. Flickr is generous with their APIs, he said, and he proceeded to move everything in my Flickr collection over.

His point was the reason we use Flickr, the reason we use some of these companies, is because there is inherent generosity.

What you make with open source is something no one owns and everyone can improve. Over the last years we’ve seen a lot of that happening.

Weinberger – The generosity of the Web is based on links. In big sites all the links point in. The rest of us are happy to send people away. Please leave – it’s a little act of generosity. That’s the moral nature of the Web that has always made me verklempt.