Which Broadband Nation?
It was the threat of Japan's rise in the 1980s that spurred the course toward digital television that the United States still follows today. Washington committed wide swaths of spectrum to digital television, leaving U.S. mobile-phone providers with less bandwidth than they needed and only about half the amount of their European counterparts. The entire effort assumed that Americans would continue to watch television shows broadcast over the air. Yet over the past two decades, more U.S. consumers have begun to watch cable and satellite television, undermining the rationale for this expensive policy, which has also delayed innovation and imposed unjustifiable costs on the nation.
Meanwhile, the European regulatory authority decided that the advent of digital, second-generation cell phones required governments to promote the technology known as the global system for mobile communications, or GSM, to ensure a compatible system throughout Europe. Wisely, the United States refused to favor any given technology and instead allowed marketplace experimentation to guide development. That strategy yielded the superior code division multiple access (CDMA) technology developed by the California company Qualcomm, which uses spectrum more efficiently. The transition to the next generation of mobile telecommunications standards (which are based on CDMA technology) will be much smoother for those U.S. companies that have adopted CDMA, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS, than for their European counterparts.
Bleha also urges Washington to commit to supporting the installation of ultra-high-speed fiber connections to one-third of U.S. households by 2010. But his proposal may be foolhardy: even though fiber appears to be a promising technology today, such technologies have failed in the past for a variety of reasons, leaving investors with little to show for their money. (Remember digital audio tape recorders?) The U.S. government should be leery of endorsing particular technologies -- or even certain transmission speeds -- before it knows more about them and whether the market can support them.
SAFE AND SOUND
Bleha correctly identifies an important and often overlooked concern: the critical role of technological development in the economy. The Bush administration has done too little to promote broadband development and adoption. But even though it should do more to support the migration to digital broadband technologies, the government should avoid picking and choosing among technologies. Instead, it should educate consumers about the opportunities that broadband presents and facilitate the development of new technologies (such as WiMax and software-defined radio) by reforming spectrum policy and funding basic research. Some government support may ultimately be necessary to help drive broadband, but the government should not rush to judge where, when, and how to support a particular technology. After all, Americans are adopting broadband faster than they have adopted almost any other technology in history. About 80 percent of Americans connected to the Internet already enjoy broadband access at work, and more subscribe to broadband services than to narrowband at home. Last year, the number of U.S. consumers and businesses adopting broadband jumped by 34 percent, to about 38 million lines.
To be sure, some aspects of U.S. regulatory policy are antiquated, and they may not be updated soon enough. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 did not even address the development of broadband. Although the FCC is working to create a regulatory framework that would promote technological innovation, it remains to be seen whether the effort will succeed. The commission is also trying to encourage flexibility and dynamism in spectrum policy, but its hands are tied by congressional decisions that, among other things, continue to support broadcast television that few Americans watch.
Over the next few years, Congress will revisit the decisions it made in 1996. To the extent that Bleha's argument spurs thoughtful deliberation and an appreciation for the significance of broadband technology, it will serve U.S. policymakers well. Unfortunately, it could just as well spark efforts, much like the sponsorship of digital television in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that could prove counterproductive.
PHILIP J. WEISER is Associate Professor of Law and Telecommunications at the University of Colorado and a former Senior Counsel at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a co-author of Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age.
Bleha Replies
Philip Weiser and I agree on some basic matters. We both believe that broadband and wireless policies are important. We agree that these technologies can drive economic growth. We both think the Bush administration has done too little to promote broadband in the United States. And we agree that spectrum policy needs reform. Weiser did not address my central conclusion that Japan and its Asian neighbors will lead the broadband era and be the first to enjoy its economic and quality-of-life benefits. So we may agree about that as well.
Still, we have significant differences. We assess the FCC's record under Powell differently. As Weiser states, Powell did favor, although secondarily, promoting DSL competition. But it was Powell's failure to convince a majority of his fellow commissioners to go along with him that left the country with what Weiser calls (and I agree) "a policy mess." The mess was made worse by the Bush administration's refusal to appeal a court case that might have preserved some DSL competition. It was made still worse by a recent Supreme Court decision (in the case National Cable and Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services) that ruled out competitive access to residential cable television lines.
