Year: 2015

My Insanely Long Field Guide To the LTEU Dust-Up Part II: A Storm of Spectrum Swords.

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The Vorlons have a saying: “Understanding is a 3-edged sword.” In this case, the three edges are the Wi-Fi dependent, the LTE dependent, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

 

Last time on Spectrum Game of Thrones (hereinafter “SGoT”) I spent 6500 words discussing the first two edges of the sword. The Wi-Fi dependent side has strong reason to suspect the LTE-U crowd of either reckless indifference or actual malice toward deployment of Wi-Fi based streaming services in the newly refurbished U-NII-1 band up in 5 GHz. Even if the Wi-Fi Dependents could trust the motives of the LTE-U crowd, what happens if everyone is wrong about the ability of the two technologies to co-exist? Under the current structure, the Wi-Fi dependents would be screwed, and they could do nothing about it. So the rational Wi-Fi Dependent must fight tooth and nail against deployment of LTE-U.

 

It doesn’t help that the Wi-Fi Dependents know that this is an utterly impractical solution for the long term. Unless there is a way to answer the two questions central to the survival of Wi-Fi streaming in U-NII-1 in the face of LTE-U (what happens if something goes wrong, what happens if somebody deliberately does something bad post-deployment), rational Wi-Fi dependents have no choice but to fight deployment.

 

The LTE-U crowd, for its part, has good reason to want to deploy LTE-U and has a legitimate gripe that Wi-Fi Dependents cannot keep saying no without defining the conditions for yes. If we admit the possibility that we can deploy LTE-U consistent with reasonable use of Wi-Fi (which everyone does), then there has to be some way to actually deploy it. And while I savor the fine irony of seeing licensees in the same position I have been in countless times, it is still crappy policy. Also, unlike me and other would-be new entrants, the wireless guys and Qualcomm have enough political muscle to make the current stalemate untenable. Eventually, they will get to deploy something.

 

Which brings us to the third edge of the Vorlon sword of understanding – the FCC. As I shall explain below, government actually is the solution here. Not by imposing a standard or a rule, but by providing both sides with a process for resolving the problem. As a happy side effect, this will also help resolve the general class of problems that keeps coming up on how to manage more and more intense use of the airwaves. Just like we all learned in high school math, and most of us forgot about 30 seconds after the exam, you solve an intractable problem by trying to break it up and simplify it into solvable problems.

 

The only problem is, and I know most people are not going to believe me, the FCC actually hates asserting and clarifying its authority. Yes. Really. Which gives rise to the question of whether the FCC actually has the willingness to do what needs to be done and create a general solution, or if they will continue to try to do the minimum possible, what I call the “Snow Goons Are Bad News” approach immortalized in this classic Calvin and Hobbes strip.

 

So, as we get to SGoT 2: Storm of Spectrum Swords, we come to another dramatic turning point. Will the Wi-Fi Dependents and the LTE-U Dependents see the wisdom of allowing the FCC assert authority over the land of Spectrumos? Can the FCC be persuaded to fulfill its destiny and its duty? And will the anti-Regulatory Zombies from beyond the Wall crash the party and devour both Wi-Fi and LTE-U because of their hatred of the FCC?

 

More below . . .

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Avatar Results

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Some terrific initial results of our Avatar IK. This is not from post-processing of someone wearing a motion-capture suit with a bunch of ping-pong balls stuck to it.  All the movement is instead driven by a (developer’s edition of a soon-to-be-retailed) gaming VR headset (capturing head position and orientation in 3D), and two (somewhat dodgy) gaming hand-controllers (capturing each hand’s position and orientation, plus a trigger). As described here, we interpret these 3 measurements to trigger an appropriate underlying base animation, which then provides more measurements to drive a realtime inverse-kinematics skeleton.

My Insanely Long Field Guide To The LTE-U Dust Up. Part I: Spectrum Game of Thrones.

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I keep reading about the LTE-U/LAA dust up and deciding that, as I predicted back in January, this has become the epic Spectrum Game of Thrones. Which means it’s time for an epically long series of Insanely Long Blog Posts.

 

For those just tuning in, I can sum up this issue as follows: should we worry that wireless carriers are looking to deploy a protocol developed for the 4G licensed world (LTE, or Long-Term Evolution) over unlicensed spectrum (called “LTE-U” for LTE over unlicensed or “Licensed Assisted Access,” for reasons I explain later) will “kill” Wi-Fi — for various values of the word “kill.” You can read some stuff on this from my Public Knowledge colleagues here and here.

 

Let me give you the headline version:

 

  • Can you build a version of LTE-U that plays nicely with Wi-Fi? Yes!
  • Can you build a version of LTE-U that looks like it should play nicely but when you deploy it over hundreds of millions of devices it would stomp all over Wi-Fi and crush it flat totally by accident? Absolutely!
  • Can you make and deploy a version of LTE-U where it plays nicely unless the mobile carrier decides it doesn’t like competition from Wi-Fi first providers of rival mobile video and voice services? You bet your sweet patootie!

 

A lot of the argument you see in the press and from the LTE-U supporters has to do with whether the LTE-U Forum (more on them later) have the best interests of wireless users at heart, have gone to great lengths to make sure LTE-U will play nice with Wi-Fi, have released their specs on the LTE-U Forum website, etc. etc. But none of this addresses the points above. What happens if you put this out there and stuff goes bad, either by accident or intentionally.

 

To understand the thinking here, imagine Qualcomm and the rest of the LTE-U Forum are Iran building a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes. Google and the Cable industry (and us public interest types, for all that anyone notices) are Israel and the Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Iran/LTE-U forum maintains they are building their nuclear programs for peaceful purposes. GOOG/Cable asks how they can be certain, given that the same technology might (a) screw things up accidentally; and, (b) give the carriers the capability to screw things up intentionally, if they ever start to feel the competitive heat. Qualcomm, LTE-U Forum, et al. are shocked, hurt and offended that anyone could even suspect such a thing, despite everything Qualcomm has done in the last 3 years to turn LTE-U into a “Wi-Fi killer”, and despite some of the biggest global carriers telling 3GPP to shut out non-carriers from first generation of LTE over unlicensed. According to Qualcomm, the only reason anyone would question the peaceful intentions of LTE-U Forum is for anticompetitive reasons.

 

But here’s the complicated thing. As I’ll explain below, it’s not like LTE on unlicensed is intrinsically bad. There are lots of really good pro-competitive reasons for carriers to start using LTE on unlicensed. Heck, it may ultimately turn out that a stand alone version of LTE on unlicensed is as useful (or even more useful) than Wi-Fi is today. Who knows? That’s the beauty of the unlicensed band — innovation without permission and all that good stuff.

 

This puts the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a rather awkward position. On the one hand, the FCC recognizes the real problem of LTE-U, accidentally or intentionally, messing up Wi-Fi. Additionally, while Wi-Fi is in the unlicensed band and must therefore accept whatever interference comes its way, is only ONE of many, many protocols, etc., you don’t let companies with the obvious incentive to screw up Wi-Fi develop and deploy a potential Wi-Fi killer with no safeguards. But since the success of the unlicensed space comes from its flexibility and easy deployment, how do you not ultimately approve some version of LTE-U/LAA? Are we going to lock in Wi-Fi as the protocol for unlicensed the way LTE is the protocol for mobile wireless? That could be just as awful for the future of innovation as letting LTE-U/LAA trash the place.

 

To make sure all you Tales of the Sausage Factory Readers know what’s going on, I bring you yet another in my occasional “Insanely Long Field Guide” series. Below, I cover everything from a brief refresher on what the heck is “unlicensed spectrum” v. “licensed spectrum,” the history of what’s going on here, and why I focus on Qualcomm rather than the wireless carriers as the chief bad guys here. However, as this is too long even for me, I will need to break this up into two insanely long pieces. In Part 2, I’ll explain about the FCC, why it got involved, why this is so complicated from the FCC’s perspective, and what the FCC can do about it.

 

But first, our insanely long background briefer below . . . .

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High Fidelity Avatars: Interpretive Motion IK

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meryWe’ve come up with something that I think is quite cool for conveying presence though our avatars. Interpretive Motion IK is a technique in which all kinds of inputs drive a small set of animated motions, and then the animation results and additional inputs both drive an Inverse Kinematic system. This gives us a rich set of built-in avatar behaviors, while also making use of an ever-evolving set of input devices to produce a dynamic and life-like result.

Why Aren’t Avatars More Like Us?

From static “head shots” in a text chat, to illustrations in a book and famous faces in a movie, avatars give us an intuitive sense of who is present and who is doing what. The story of an animated movie (or high end game “cut scene”) is largely shown through the fluid motion of anthropoids. A movie studio can hire an army of artists, or record body actors in motion capture suits. But a virtual world does not follow a set script in which all activity can be identified and animated before use. Avatar animation must instead be generated in real time, in response to a world of possible activities.

This challenge leads some systems to just show users as simplified images, or as just a head, a disembodied “mask and gloves”, or a mostly un-animated “tin can” robot. This may be appropriate for specialized situations, but in the general case of unlimited high fidelity virtual worlds,  the lack of whole-body humanoid animation fails to provide a fulfilling sense of personal immersion.

When it works well, the interpretation of motion is so strong that when another avatar turns to face your avatar, we describe it as “YOU can see ME”. In fact, the pixels on the screen have not turned, and cannot see. Think of the personality conveyed by the Pixar desk lamp hopping across the scene and looking at the camera, or the dancing skeletons of Disney’s early Silly Symphony. Unlike Disney and Pixar, High Fidelity aims to capture this rich whole-body movement as a realtime result of dynamic user input. Alas, today’s input devices give us only incomplete data. Interpretive Motion IK allows us to integrate these clumsy signals into a realistic sense of human personality and action.

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Turns Out Our Mobile Broadband Is As Mediocre As Our Wireline Broadband.

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It is time once again for folks to file comments in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) annual Notice of Inquiry on the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Services, aka the Section 706 Report (after Section 706 of the 1996 Act) aka the data (which along with FCC Form 477) which forms the basis for the FCC’s annual “State of the Broadband” report. You can read this year’s notice here. This year’s notice is particularly good, as (befitting a more mature broadband industry than we had when we started running this in 1998), so of course all those who would prefer we set the bar low enough to give ourselves a gold star for showing up hate it. See, for example, Pai dissent here, comments of NCTA here, USTA here.

 

Which makes these two reports on the state of broadband particularly timely. According to Akami, we rank 20th in global broadband speeds. Before the broadband industry and their cheerleaders counter that we have the best mobile broadband/most extensive LTE deployment in the world, I point to this new report from OpenSignal that finds we rank 54th in global mobile network speed.

 

20th and 54th. I’m so proud. USA! USA!

 

I unpack this a little bit below . . . .

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Phone Industry To The Poor: “No Privacy For You!”

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Back in June, the FCC released a major Order on the Lifeline program. Lifeline, for those not familiar with it by that name, is the federal program started in the Reagan era to make sure poor people could have basic phone service by providing them with a federal subsidy. Congress enshrined Lifeline (along with subsidy programs for rural areas) in 1996 as Section 254 of the Communications Act. While most of the item dealt with a proposal to expand Lifeline to broadband, a portion of the Order dealt with the traditional FCC Lifeline program.

As a result, the wireless industry trade association, CTIA, has asked the FCC to declare that poor people applying for Lifeline have no enforceable privacy protections when they provide things like their social security number, home address, full name, date of birth, and anything else an identity thief would need to make your life miserable. Meanwhile, US Telecom Association, the trade association for landline carriers, has actually sued the FCC for the right to behave utterly irresponsibly with any information poor people turn over about themselves — including the right to sell that information to 3rd parties.

 

Not that the wireless carriers would ever want to do anything like that, of course! As CTIA, USTA, and all their members constantly assure us, protecting customer privacy is a number one priority. Unless, of course, they’re running some secret experiments on tracking without notifying customers that accidentally expose customer information to third parties. Oh, and it might take longer than promised to actually let you opt out once you discover it. And in our lawsuit against the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules, they explicitly cite the inability to use customer information for marketing, the inability to sell this information to third parties, and the requirement to protect this information generally as one of the biggest burdens of classifying broadband as Title II. But other than that, there is no reason to think that CTIA’s members or USTA’s members would fail to respect and protect your privacy.

 

So how did the Lifeline Reform Order which most people assumed was all about expanding Lifeline to broadband became the vehicle for the phone industry to tell poor people they have no privacy protections when they apply for a federal aid program? I explain below . . .

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DISH DE Debacle Part 3: What Happens Now?

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In Part 1, I explained at considerable length what happened with the whole DISH DE Debacle and Why DISH owes the FCC $3.3 billion despite not having actually violated any rules. In Part 2, I explained how the FCC came to the conclusions it came to in the Order denying SNR and Northstar their DE credits but granting them their licenses.

 

Here, I will explain why (as readers have no doubt noticed) I have sympathy for DISH and why I would have done things differently – although I can’t say Wheeler was wrong. Heck, as I’ve noted many times before, I have the luxury of being neither a Commissioner nor a party with skin in the game. So take my Monday morning quarterbacking for what it’s worth.

 

More below . . .

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DISH DE Debacle Part 2: So What Did The FCC Actually Do?

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In Part 1, I gave a rather lengthy explaination of the factual background why DISH now owes the FCC another $3.3 billion dollars more than the $10 billion it already owed for licenses won in the big FCC spectrum auction at the end of last year (the AWS-3 auction). Here, I give my analysis of the Order denying SNR and Northstar applications for designated entity (DE) credits. Some thoughts on broader implications, what may or may not happen next, and my personal opinion on whether the FCC was right or wrong, I save for Part 3.

 

More below . . .

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New D.C. Circuit Decision Knocks Fairly Large Hole In Anti-Net Neutrality Case.

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Every now and then, the D.C. Circuit throws you an interesting little curve ball. This opinion issued last week would appear to knock a serious hole in the argument made by the cable and telcos against the FCC’s reclassification of broadband as a Title II telecom service.

 

The case, Home Care Association of America v. Weil (HCAA) addresses the legal question that takes up about a quarter of the main brief for petitioners: does the Brand X decision that the Telecom Act was “ambiguous” mean that the FCC gets deference under the Chevron Doctrine when it reexamines the question in 2015 and comes out the other way? Or can Petitioners argue that the statute is not ambiguous and explicitly precludes the interpretation the FCC now gives it? Under HCAA, the D.C. Circuit appears to find that once the Supreme Court decides a statute is ambiguous, that settles the question. If the statute was ambiguous for an interpretation in one direction, it is still ambiguous — and thus subject to Chevron deference — when the agency reverses course. Nor does the agency have a higher burden when it reverses course then it did when it first made the decision.

 

Good lawyers can always distinguish cases, of course — as can a conservative panel of the D.C. Cir. that wants to find a particular result. Furthermore, Petitioners have lots of other arguments to make that are not impacted by the HCAA decision. Nevertheless, it seems clear this case is good news for the FCC (and those of us who support the FCC), and Petitioners will no doubt need to spend a good portion of their reply brief explaining why HCAA doesn’t dictate the result here.

 

I explain in more detail below . . . .

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So What’s This “Designated Entity” Thing, and Why Does DISH Owe The FCC $3 bn When They Didn’t Break The Rules?

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Generally, I loath the cliche “be careful what you wish for.” But I can think of no better way to describe the vast consternation in the spectrum world over the licenses won by SNR and Northstar in the AWS-3 Auction. If you don’t recognize the names off-hand, that’s because most of the time people just refer to them as the “DISH Designated Entities” or the “DISH DEs.” As detailed in many articles and petitions to deny SNR and Northstar their DE credits (totaling $3.3 billion), most people regard SNR and Northstar as “sham” or “fake” DEs, owned and controlled by DISH.

But here’s the funny thing. As far as anyone can tell from the filings, DISH, SNR and Northstar followed the precise letter of the law. And, what’s even more surprising, if you look at the results, this was the most successful auction ever for DEs. Both SNR and Northstar are minority owned (as defined by the FCC’s rules). All the “loopholes” DISH used with regard to ownership interest and bidding coordination were designed to make it easier for DE’s to get capital, win licenses, and benefit from partnering with a larger telecommunications company — which SNR and Northstar certainly did.

As a result, as noted by my usual frenemies at Phoenix Center, as measured by every traditional metric, the AWS-3 auction was the single most successful auction in awarding licenses not merely to small businesses, but to minority owned firms specifically. By every past criteria ever used, the AWS-3 auction results ought to be celebrated as a ginormous success for the DE program. Every aspect worked exactly as intended, and the result was exactly what people claimed to want. Indeed, as noted by Phoenix Center, even the $3.3 bn in bidding credits was in line with other spectrum auctions as a percentage of revenue.

Except, in classic “be careful what you wish for” fashion, when you scaled these results up to their logical outcome, no one was really happy with the result (except for DISH). Which has now prompted FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to circulate an order denying SNR and Northstar their designated entity credits. As a result, SNR and Northstar (meaning their financial backer DISH) must cough up $3.3 bn within 30 days of issuance of the Order or — unless granted a stay or extension — the licenses will revert back to the FCC. Oh yes, and the FCC might need to deduct an additional $10 bn from the auction revenue. And there might be default charges (the FCC charges a penalty for defaulting on payments so people don’t bid and hope they find the money later). Or it might get more complicated, since there has never been a clawback of this magnitude before.

 

In Part 1, I will explain what exactly happened, why DISH did not violate the rules as written and why SNR and Northstar are technically “minority owned.” Along the way, we will consider some delightful ironies about the whole business.

In Part 2, I’ll tackle why the FCC decided that it could yank the DE discount anyway, and try to figure out what happens next.

More below . . . .

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