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Physical Layer
Physical Layer
11:00 am
May 13, 2004
Yochai Benkler
If we understand the framing device – the analytical devise Larry and john worked this morning regarding porn…
(hmm… computer taken to get connected)
(A few moments later)
The Internet model introverted the model of the network so that all the intelligence is at the edges rather than in the center…
(He’s reviewing points from the dvd lecture)
Covering the stakes of architecture
- Political
- Democracy – everyone a pamphleteer
- Autonomy :
- Who gets to design the window through which you see the world
- Increasing transition from Consumers to users..
And he presented a layered view of the information environment
Why does it matter if we have licensed or unlicensed spectrum
Why does it matter if we have a particular mode of filtering…
He is going to talk about the physical layer – requiring spectrum or wires…
In order for communications to be free, for people to be users instead of consumers, in order for people to innovate, we must have some substantial portion of information environment free from controls. If any layer has closer – then the entire system is compromised.
Wants to map the state of play at the physical layer
- Towards a a duopoly in wires
- Open wireless networks
Discussing how MPAA, Hollywood are driving FCC rules to make the PC more like a TV – fits better within the broadcast model that Hollywood can control.
…
FCC says high speed is “receiving” at 200 kbps
FCC says and “advanced network” is “sending” at 200 kbps or better.
Important distinction here – isn’t the ability to speak the more important matter?
So, looking at FCC report from December 2003 – wireless and power line have not grown – may have shrunk. The growth was in ADLS and Cable – and Cable is not great at bi-directional
Where do the advanced services go – not to home and not to small offices – perhaps the institutional sector…
Homes and small offices are completely served by telephone lines and cable and nothing else.
Two years ago 66% of homes got high speed from cable – 30% from RBOC, 2% from other and 2% from non-ILEC
Then (June 2003) – FCC no longer differentiates non-ILEC from other Lec and the numbers are 63% CABLE –33% RBOC – and 4% OTHER.
- Historically: Communications a natural monopoly
- More efficient
- License/franchise plus price and service regulation to prevent abuse
- 1990’s Multiple Wires to the home
- Contingency
- Convergence requires upgrade of previous monopoly legacy infrastructures already in most homes
- Cable and telephone will compete
- Second-best
- As regulation fails to alleviate monopoly problems, competition becomes preferred second-best
- 1996 Act and early implementation
- Aggressive regulation to required sharing of bottleneck inputs to create intra-modal competition to telcos
- But forbearance from cable
- Early local efforts re: cable overturned by courts (allowed broadband without competition) (remember local requirements for cable to open access – court said locals that controlled franchising couldn’t do that – only FCC)
- AOL-Time Warner Merger Conditions – FTC condition set to allow firms like Earthlink to offer competing services.
- Since 2002
- Drift to sole reliance on intermodal competition, with substantial retreat from access/unbundling for intra-modal competition (i.e. cable – telephone competition)
- Slouching towards duopoly?
Do two pipelines a competitive market make? (no)
So, what are the fixes?
- Municipal fiber to the home… (hmmm SB 445 kills that! The legislation makes it very difficult for municipalities to engage in building information networks)
- Open wireless networks
Talks of Bristol, Virginia
- Like rural electrification
- Public good, rather than progit
- A natural monopoly after all?
- Longer return horizon?
- Chicago, Palo Alto, other cities considering
- Municipal Service
- Dark fiver and conduits with future expansion
- Permit others to light up strands on a non-discriminatory basis
Hurdle
- Incumbents
- Abilene, Missouri
- State legislatures are removing home rule authority to provide telecoms
- Supreme court affirmed March 2004
- Congress did not preempt state’s power to limit municipal utilities from offering telecoms
- Result – state capitols become locus of political action
- At stake: an open municipal physical transport network with competitive services vs. two closed proprietary networks.
Describes Open Wireless Network
Which emphasizes displacement, not interference. Describes systems that live along with each other.
The theory of state spectrum management is destabilized by
- Cheap high capacity processing
- Shannon’s information theory
- Communication as a probability of correct decoding at a distrance
- Cheap computation enables processing gain through wideband communication
- Multi-user information theory and network architecture concepts from Internet and proprietary wired networks
- Cooperation/diversity gain attainable
Systems designed to increase capacity via adding users…. Representing a radical change from what went on before..
- Repeater networks: intuitively, like adding infrastructure to add capacity, more cells
- BUTL adding users adds capacity
- Multi-user information theory
This displacement theory is local, dynamically changing, depends on found and built environment, including actual deployed base and technology of others… (sort of like Ethernet – listen, broadcast, correct for collisions).
So Displacement means
- There is no such thing as spectrum
Transaction costs
Are we better off without a market…
Recap
- Market in infrastructure rights vs market in equipment not market vs nonmarket
- Relative total equipment cost of either approach not a priori clear but capital investment structure predictable
- OWL networks likely to have more capacity with given investment and to grow capacity more quickly
Other considerations
- Innovation – on the end-toend model
- Welfare optimization
- Flexible adaptability in the face of rapidly changing preferences and option sets
- Security
- Robustness based on redundancy
- Non-detectable and encrypted
- Ubiquitous secure dual-use backup network for public security communications
Packet Hop doing experimentation with Golden Gate safety network which is meshing formerly non-interoperable public safety voice / video networks
Structural Effects
- Shift from centralized/controlled organization to distributed cooperation
- Capital: concentrated to distributed investment model
- Value: concentrated capture becomes distributed capture
- Organization: controlled system to design for localized, dynamic cooperation
Wrap Up
- Stakes of Internet model are both political and economic
- Sustaining an open environment requires openness at all layers
- Physical connectivity layer highly concentrated
- Municipal FTTH promising, but an uphill political battle
- License-free wireless offers the primary avenue towards a robust, freely useable physical layer, owned by its users and biased in favor of none.
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