OECD Ponders Wireless Connections in Broadband Rankings

The rankings by the Organisation for Economic Co- Operation and Development could stir even more contention than they do now, speakers said. U.S. wireless connections added through the NTIA and RUS stimulus programs may not end up improving the country’s international broadband ranking, an industry source said.

Ford said Portugal is among the countries raising the matter. “In Portugal, for example, over half the connections are mobile broadband connections, so you can imagine they're upset with the lack of completeness with the OECD data,” he said. “Portugal took a hit” in its ranking after arranging broadband subsidies to make most of the connections mobile.

The OECD has been counting WiMAX and Wi-Fi connections in figuring broadband penetration. “Now they're talking about splitting that into a wireless group with mobile connections,” Ford said. “The question becomes what do they do then with it. Is it landline divided by population? Wireless divided by population? Separate? Are they perhaps handled together in some way to get a number -- which is going to be a big problem because mobile connections are typically purchased by an individual, not by household or business, so you've got scaling problems, a dimension problem.”

Ford said finding a solution could be difficult. “It’s going to be really interesting to see how this thing plays out in terms of ranking countries,” he said. “Maybe if we're really lucky, it gets so messy that we stop doing that, since it’s such a royal waste of time and energy.”

David Gross, the State Department’s former coordinator for international communications and information policy, called the OECD an “extraordinarily important player in policy debates” but called its rankings problematic. The problems “are as difficult on the wireline side as they are on the wireless side,” Gross said. “There are huge problems of data, particularly with regard to sharing of broadband connections and the like.”

Also speaking on the international panel, John Giusti, the FCC’s acting International Bureau chief, said international dynamics are increasingly important in U.S. discussions. “We very much work in a global marketplace now,” Giusti said. “It’s fair to say it’s not only domestic implementation decisions that affect deployment, but also international dynamics . We can just look at the recent World Radio Communication conference and some of the outputs from that.”

The U.S. made significant progress at WRC 2007, Giusti said. “We managed to expand and make a more inclusive definition” of International Mobile Telecommunications, to include “WiMAX among the other technologies so that companies, operators, governments, as they're looking to make their decisions, have a range of options before them.” The U.S. also built a “consensus for identification of spectrum” to include in IMT the 700 MHz in the U.S. and elsewhere and protected 2.5 GHz spectrum from foreign satellite interference.

“What’s happening internationally does matter to deployment domestically,” Giusti said. “What’s happening across our border in Canada and Mexico, what’s happening at the ITU, what’s happening in the European markets, the Latin American markets, really does have an effect, direct or indirect, on what we do and how successful we are in the U.S.”

Gross said presentations at the convention made clearer than ever the huge role that data must play in wireless policy. He pointed to reports on the use of wireless technologies in medical care. “I'm concerned when my calls get dropped because of capacity constraints when I'm talking to my son or my wife or my father,” Gross said. “It’s a whole different set of issues when you've got a heart monitor and you're being remotely monitored.”

Gross warned that the wireless industry has often “severely” underestimated demand. “Whatever it is we think is going to happen understates that which will happen and that will put tremendous stress on the entire system of the provision of these services.”

The FCC has four broadband proceedings, Angela Giancarlo, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell’s chief of staff, said on another panel. In one, the Wireline and Wireless bureaus have sought comment for a report on rural broadband. “I don’t expect that to be something the commission will vote on, but rather will just be sent over to the various congressional committees,” she said. Second, Congress told the FCC to give the NTIA technical advice in developing its broadband grant program. “There are terms NTIA needs to define and we would expect that the FCC would be part of that consultative process -- unserved area, underserved area, definition of broadband, which is not something the FCC has done previously,” Giancarlo said. The FCC will also weigh in on nondiscrimination and network interconnection obligations on projects receiving grant money, she said. “It’s not clear to us how formal or informal that [advisory] role will be,” she said.

The FCC is providing similar advice to the RUS on its broadband grant program. And on Wednesday, the commissioners will vote on a notice of inquiry on a national broadband plan that the FCC must send Congress next year. “There is a very comprehensive notice of inquiry draft that we're all studying now,” Giancarlo said. “It’s to me kind of confusing because there are a lot of different things going on . Nonetheless, this really is front and center, and I think there will be a lot of opportunities for all sorts of stakeholders -- industry, states, localities -- to get involved and share their thoughts.” -- Howard Buskirk

CTIA Notebook…

Processors aren’t fast enough to give consumers the experience they expect, mobile-device executives said at the CTIA show in Las Vegas. Regardless of whether the industry eventually puts everything in the cloud, short term the emphasis will remain on improving processing to run multiple applications, industry analyst Avi Greengart said. “Consumers want the desktop experience on the phone: Multiple windows and programs you can go back and forth between.” But Senior Director Andrew Bocking of Research In Motion said: “You have to look through the eye of the end user. As processors’ speed increases, as Moore’s law says, there is a constraint. We have to be careful we don’t get rid of some of those experiences because the device’s battery won’t last through the day.” Nokia Vice President Ian Laing said navigation, music and e-mail will be pivotal. “The most important thing about a cellphone is its mobility.” He said the market is polarizing. “We're seeing high-end products sell well, and the entry-level device will always be there. It’s the products in the middle getting squeezed.” Nokia research shows that consumers care most about battery life, Laing said. Motorola General Manager Steve Lalla said battery power alone, though, isn’t a cure-all for cellular devices. “Power-management systems will be key in future models,” he said. The industry hasn’t made “the experience as good as they could,” Lalla said. “For example, switching to a 3.5 mm jack would vastly improve the experience of consumers.”