March 2013

Activists at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin built a free wireless network to help publicize the power of unlicensed "white spaces" technology.

The project is part of a broader campaign to persuade the FCC not to auction off this spectrum for the exclusive use of wireless carriers. Almost everyone agrees that until recently, the spectrum allocated for broadcasting television channels was used inefficiently. In less populous areas, many channels sat idle. And channels were surrounded by "guard bands" to prevent adjacent channels from interfering with each other. A coalition that includes technology companies such as Google and Microsoft and think tanks such as the New America Foundation has been lobbying the FCC to open this unused spectrum up to third parties. The proposal initially faced fierce opposition from broadcasters, but they dropped their opposition after reaching a compromise with the FCC last year. As a result, the FCC recently opened up white space frequencies to unlicensed uses.

Now debate has shifted to a new question: whether to auction off some of these white space frequencies for the exclusive use of private wireless companies. Supporters of the auction approach argue that incumbent wireless providers could use the spectrum to improve their networks. And they point out that the auctions would generate much-needed cash for the federal treasury. But advocates of unlicensed uses say the spectrum will generate more value if the FCC leaves it open for unlicensed uses. They point to the success of Wi-Fi, which is now embedded in billions of electronic devices and allows people to communicate wirelessly without subscribing to a wireless service. Enter the "We ♥ WiFi" project. Austin has 14 vacant television channels that are now open for use by white space devices. So during this weekend's South by Southwest Interactive confab, activists set up a wireless network designed to showcase their potential.

VoIP calling over 4G networks may be the wave of the future, but as wireless and testing measurement company Spirent discovered last November, voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) technology still has a lot of kinks to work out before it can match the power efficiency of our old reliable 2G networks.

Tests of MetroPCS’s new VoLTE service found that 4G calls drained twice as much as regular CDMA ones. At the time, however, Spirent Global Director of Insights Amit Malhotra predicted that VoLTE’s power efficiency would improve as both VoLTE network and handset technology progressed. Fast-forward four months and Malhotra’s prognostication appears to be coming true. Spirent recently performed a new batch of tests using Metro’s newest generation VoLTE handset, the LG Spirit 4G, and found that the current drain from a VoLTE call had dropped by 35 percent compared to LG’s first-generation VoLTE smartphone, the Connect. Improving power efficiency by 35 percent is a tremendous number when it comes to cellular battery life, which tends to measure progress in tiny increments. But there is still one big qualification to that good news: 2G is still a more power-efficient technology.

President Barack Obama vowed four years ago to make his Administration the most open in history. But despite thousands of hours invested in laying the foundation for transparency, a new study finds actual agency adoption of policies has been uneven and occasionally weak.

The Center for Effective Government’s March 10 report examines the Obama administration's progress on open government in three main areas: creating an environment supportive of transparency, improving the usability of government information, and reducing secrecy related to national security. “Overall, we found that the administration has taken a lot of positive steps on the policy side to strengthen open government,” Gavin Baker, open government policy analyst at the Center for Effective Government, told FCW. “The weakness has been that those policies are inconsistent in how they’re trickling down to agencies, so over the next four years we’re hoping to see reinvigorated approach to implementation and getting these new policies into practice.” The report found that generally, the administration did best in using technology to make information more available to the public and more user-friendly. Agencies used more social media, launched new websites, created mobile apps, and overhauled older online tools as part of their open government efforts. The public was also able to glean more insight into federal spending thanks to USASpending.gov and the Recovery Act -- though that effort has had problems ensuring accurate data.

Jerry James, CEO of COMPTEL, said during the keynote speech at this week's COMPTEL Spring 2013 event that the biggest challenge its member companies face, particularly CLECs that deliver competitive services, is a lack of regulatory clarity.

The three "hottest" items the industry association is advocating for at both the state and federal regulatory level are SIP interconnection, last mile access, and special access, James said. "The network technology, as we all know, has been evolving to a managed IP network, which enables our members to offer managed services," he said. "We also need to make sure that whenever we change technology we don't change the regulatory compliance rules, and competition has to have those to stay in place." James said that with SIP interconnection, COMPTEL doesn't want to hold anyone back, but wants to enable easier ways for its members to work with large incumbent service providers so they can deliver managed services to their customer base.