Standards committee turf wars

This item, a dispute and "turf war" between two standards committees, is nothing new in this relatively fractured world of standards development. Liaisons between committees help, but, as this article shows, doesn't always solve the problem. IETF is a relative upstart in this world, so it isn't surprising to me that such a dispute would have occurred. It wasn't the first and won't be the last.

CATV vs television manufacturers

Speaking of standoffs ... there is an interesting one that is brewing. Under the auspices of Docket 97-80, the FCC has been seeking competition in the set-top box market. The initial approach has been to require a retail market for set-top boxes through a standardized interface. This was successful in the telephone CPE market and resulted in "Cable Cards", which currently are one-way and do not support interactive services and limit the way in which cable companies can manage cable spectrum, especially in light of increasing demand for high definition television channels. There are two strategies for overcoming this: one proposed by the consumer electronics industry and one by the cable industry. In the Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC-07-120, dated 29 June 2007), the FCC sought to move the parties to conclusions. In this article Brian Smith of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) compared the consequence of the approaches:

Cable does not want their services "disaggregated," i.e. allowing the CE device to become, in their view, a filter for the way they present and market services to the consumer. For example, they do not want their UI to be modified by the CE products, and they want everything on the UI to be available for the consumer to order and pay for. Cable wants copy protection and output control flexibility that they say is necessary for them to compete with other service providers.

CE and IT manufacturers believe that customers should have a choice in the blend of capabilities that they pay for in their products. They don't think that the combination of OCAP middleware and future cable conditional access software should totally control the TV and its access to other services/peripheral devices, or the home network. They don't think CableLabs should be able to unilaterally establish or change the specifications for what constitutes an Integrated cable ready receiver or the test process for approving them. CE wants all downloaded Cable applications to be thoroughly tested on CE devices for robustness.

The comment period for this has now come to an end, which (presumably) prompted this article in Forbes. Quoting the article:

The federal government may be forced to intervene in a long-running dispute between cable companies and the consumer electronics industry over how Americans will someday use their television sets to buy movies, shop and access other services.

The two sides have been at an impasse for nearly four years. And the stalemate continues despite several rounds of negotiations between individual companies and the two industries' powerful Washington lobbyists.

"We have absolutely no agreement with cable right now," said Julie Kearney, senior director at the Consumer Electronics Association. "As far as we are concerned, there is still a huge gulf between our position and what cable envisions."

On one hand are the large cable providers such as Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and privately owned Cox Communications Inc.

They are pitted against household electronics names such as Sony Corp., Pioneer Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd.

Both cable providers and television makers believe that controlling the digital programming guide, effectively a television's menu system, is key to guiding the viewer towards products and services they can buy. And both refuse to give up that control.

By the way, this was foreshadowed in this FCC report (Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video Programming).

So, what action, if any should the FCC take? Do you see similarities between these actions and developments taking place in the wireless industry?

Muni WiFi Takes A Beating

This article from TechDirt does a nice job of summarizing the recent negative news about Municipal WiFi (I have blogged about this before here). This article, from CNet underscores this and adds a bit of analysis. Then there is Om Malik's post on the topic. ...

If you're into forecasting, you may wonder whether this news signals the beginning of the end of this phenomenon, or if it is a temporary downturn as municipalities and operators figure out workable systems implementations and business models. The contrarian in me believes that the public analysis bandwagon has shifted ... I will most certainly be posting more about muni wifi in the future ...

M2Z and 2.1GHz

This article, posted over at Ars Technica, is interesting. It describes a proceeding before the FCC by M2Z networks. What is interesting is that M2Z is proposing that the up-front payment for the spectrum (which is the policy in the US) be substituted by a payment of 5% of gross revenues. In essence, the US becomes an investor in the network, and stakes its return on the success of M2Z's business plan and its management's ability to execute it.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this for stakeholders (eg. government, M2Z, M2Z's competitors, and US taxpayers)? If this plan is adopted, should the US government have a voting role in M2Z's board? If so, who would do this?

Update (2007-09-10): While this may be old news at this point, CNET reported that this proposal was voted down by the FCC.

Update (2007-09-24): The Washington Post had this article about M2Z's system.

US Broadband

There are no shortage of articles like this one in the Washington Post. The theme of these articles compares the state of broadband in the US to Japan and South Korea, where access speeds and prices are better. Quoting the article:

Broadband service here is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States -- and considerably cheaper. Japan has the world's fastest Internet connections, delivering more data at a lower cost than anywhere else, recent studies show.

Accelerating broadband speed in this country -- as well as in South Korea and much of Europe -- is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.

The reason for this is given to be (again, quoting the article):

Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say.

The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the United States. This is partly a matter of geography and demographics: Japan is relatively small, highly urbanized and densely populated. But better wire is also a legacy of American bombs, which razed much of urban Japan during World War II and led to a wholesale rewiring of the country.

In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire. In sharp contrast to the Bush administration over the same time period, regulators here compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers.

In short order, broadband exploded. At first, it used the same DSL technology that exists in the United States. But because of the better, shorter wire in Japan, DSL service here is much faster. Ten to 20 times as fast, according to Pepper, one of the world's leading experts on broadband infrastructure.

Indeed, DSL in Japan is often five to 10 times as fast as what is widely offered by U.S. cable providers, generally viewed as the fastest American carriers. (Cable has not been much of a player in Japan.)

Perhaps more important, competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and still Japan's largest phone company. With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower-capacity copper wires obsolete.

This article (as do others of its kind) raise a number of questions that are interesting to consider:

• Can you really compare developments in Japan and South Korea to the US?


• The article mentions that the developments in Japan and South Korea are the result of government subsidies. Is this efficient?


• The article discusses local loop unbundling as one of the supporting policies. These policies have been in place in the US since the mid-1990s, although recent decisions have exempted newer infrastructure builds from this policy. Telephone companies have argued that the rates that were set were non-compensatory ... that is, amounted to a subsidy of their competitors because they were below cost. It turns out to be difficult to determine the truth of this. There were many competitors in the US in the late 1990s ... many of these collapsed during the dot-com bust ... was that due to poor business decisions or changes in the rates charged by telephone companies?


• Does the US need a different broadband policy? What should it be? There are many opinions on this (see, for example DACA on the one hand and this on the other, though there are many other proposals as well)