| NB: http://tech.ashoka.org/node/4418 www.weforum.org/ictforgrowth
Bright B. Simons
January 18, 2010
The Chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warned a few weeks ago of a looming “spectrum shortage” in the United States. What is even more curious in this affair is the admission by senior legislators in the US that they are largely ignorant about the precise distribution of the airwaves and their uses, much less about the best means of optimizing said distribution.
The FCC Chairman (and to a lesser extent, the NTIA Director who performs similar roles for the US federal government in an advisory capacity), whose primary mandate is telecommunications and electronic broadcasting regulation, therefore faces the uphill, and thoroughly disorienting, struggle of rallying concern about the accelerating scarcity of a resource that the vast majority of Americans are blissfully nonchalant about. And how many of them today even find it relevant that when 3G was first touted in the United States one of the most credible threats to the idea at that time was spectrum politics? (Compare).
And Americans are not alone. Throughout the globe, no aspect of the revolutionary telecommunications phenomenon is considered more arcane, and therefore as neglected by the lay public, as the issue of spectrum rationing. “Spectrum”, as used here, generally means the radiation enveloping us that we exploit for communication purposes, especially radio waves. It is thus considered very courageous for a commentator to go beyond trying to make a case for the relevance of spectrum management to the growth of telecommunication industries in a general, ambiguous, way, and to attempt to establish the importance of rational spectrum allocation to ICT for Development (ICT4D).
After all, it is not very fashionable in the ICT4D universe to follow the perennial squabbles of civil regulators and military engineers at world radiocommunications conferences (WRC) over the equitable distribution of the spectrum resource and to draw from said chronic conflict any insight about the mainstreaming of such once arcane concepts as network neutrality and open access initiatives in the ICT4D conversation. Not when more mundane infrastructure and affordability concerns remain unsorted.
The truth of course is that concern about efficient use of infrastructure and worries over the crowding out of future growth in innovative services by the fast expanding need for spectrum for present-day use in high-bandwidth offerings such as television streaming and other utility data transfers, all relate in a very similar way to the growing convergence of traditional top-down regulation, commercial cooperation, user-generated content, open networking, and the multi-stakeholder view of broad-spectrum, bottom-up, approach to standards development and setting.
In the spectrum-use debate for instance, the military is quickly discovering that the days when they could easily hide behind ambiguous references to national security to maintain spectrum privileges are fast disappearing. They are having to broaden their worldview about the earth’s electromagnetic endowment to more forcefully emphasise crisis management (a topical example being Haiti), human security, peace keeping, and next generation R&D with dual-use potential.
They are confronted with the sticky reality of convergence, both metaphorically and literally. The sharp distinctions between military and civilian imperatives are disappearing even as fast-moving technological and economic currents mix up domains of applicability and compel a reimagining of socio-technological possibilities. Aviation security comes to mind. Half of the critical systems onboard a typical airliner requires their own dedicated spectrum channel, and when disruptions occur, as anyone who has seen the second installment of the “Die Hard” series could well attest, the results are usually catastrophic. One supposes that any aeronautical analysis of spectrum security issues is just as likely to raise aviation safety issues as it is to identify threats to geosynchronous satellites operating in overcrowded bands. And therein lies the insight.
Consider but one landscape of the new reality: for the first time in the history of organized armed forces, the primary enemy is in civilian garb. In the clefts of the Hindu Kush and in the slums of Mogadishu, the world’s mightiest fighting machines discover the permeability of their notions of war and peace, combatant and refugee, radio burst and dial-tone detonators, and this process of reimagination referred to above becomes simpler and more sharply focused. Discussions about a holistic rendition of the nature of the spectrum resource – not via the false lens of the erstwhile civil-military dichotomy – become richer and more productive. Other considerations are admitted, thus bringing us closer to the global development view of electromagnetism.
Conventionally speaking the focus of spectrum management in the supposedly post-modern enlightenment era of the 21st century has been “interference-free communications”. This worldview of the subject had been considered global in scope and orientation, such that the United States Airforce has considered the matter critical enough to incorporate spectrum management programs in its meager technical assistance to the militaries of African countries.
If one is entertaining the notion, however, of attaining the ICT4D threshold with this new emphasis on spectrum, then “interference-free communications” won’t cut it. Not when it is not clear how compatible such a technically narrow ideal will be with the most popular ICT4D theory in the game today – “leapfrogging”. It seems obvious that places like Africa are more likely to follow in the footsteps of more technologically advanced countries in this regard than it is that they shall upset the pattern of global innovation in some restricted technical space. The view changes when one looks at the matter more broadly, taking into account a fuller range of contextual advantages likely to facilitate technology diffusion within a larger context of social-experimental openness.
Unlike is the case in the so-called developed world, African policymakers and other elites have fewer vested interests to contend with in the whole electronic space (though this won't last forever). Their military structures, a major factor in spectrum politics, tend to suffer less from legacy straitjackets. While it is true that professionalization remains an issue it is also true that military forces in the third world are already more blessed with opportunities to better appreciate the blurring of the civil-military dichotomy and the rise to prominence of human security and other such latter-day constructs than are their counterparts in the richer hemispheres. In many African countries, the military are an integral part of the fight against armed robbery and other violent crimes, for instance. In this sense, and in view of many other considerations, one might be able to approach this whole issue of spectrum economics in a radically fresher way. Pursuing the same logic from an alternative angle, one may safely conclude that African commercial interests have also yet to develop that retarding symbiosis with the regulatory process that spawns stagnant lobbies and unscrupulous political hitmen.
The western-developed paradigm of the radio frequency spectrum with its rigid demarcations and corresponding technology silos, its disproportionate sensitivity to military demands, and its domination by a priesthood of detached experts is clearly thus baggage on the back of developing country reformers that must be tossed aside. And as I say above, it can.
Developing countries, including those in Africa, are more likely, when prompted, to embrace revolutionary ideas about optimizing bandwidth use through forward-looking policymaking that compels regulatory allocation to match pace with new technologies and new concepts of frequency ownership, tradability, collateralization and congruence. Big words that simply mean that the holy cows shall be kicked out of the electronic meadows so the cross-pollination of new ideas can sprout better visions.
For many years, frequency assignation has been viewed as a hardware matter and siloed as such. But so-called cognitive software, say, coupled with novel standards on interoperability and the fuller recognition, as discussed above, of both technical and sociopolitical convergences, are a great example of illustrative elements, of the aforementioned “visions”, that opens up a new horizon for developing countries. Especially those developing countries most eager to exploit the generous natural endowment that is the electromagnetic resource.
If only they would!
PS: If you are wondering where my newfound passion for spectrum management within my declared mandate on this blog (tech.ashoka.org): the political economy of “cloud computing for development”, your curiosity is fully justified. Over the past few months, I have had the privilege to contribute to a study that is now out (www.weforum.org/ictforgrowth). I think this study is extremely significant and should receive serious consideration in the developing world. A great deal of the issues it raises are well established in
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