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July 2016

Preparing for a 5G World

Since the late-1970s wireless telephone communication has seen a steady progression in speed, bandwidth and services offered to the public. The next generation of wireless innovation, called 5G, promises a significant leap in what it will provide in capacity, speed and performance for wireless networks, massive machine communications and the Internet of Things. Many companies and organizations have already begun to create and test 5G technologies and have made commitments to early deployment. Yet, this shift in technology raises a number of legal and regulatory issues that will have to be resolved, both domestically and internationally, to realize the full potential of this technology.

To address these regulatory (and related) issues, the 2015 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Spectrum Policy (AIRS) met October 26-28, 2015 at the Aspen/Wye River campus on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Leading communications policy experts took a close look at the range of needs that 5G is intended to address, attempting to understand what the technological options are for meeting those needs. Participants then focused on defining the key policy issues raised by the move to 5G and recommended actions to address these concerns. Recommendations include:

1. Improving Spectrum Availability and Efficiency.
2. Accelerating Development and Deployment of 5G Networks.
3. Ways to Promote Wide Adoption of 5G Offerings.

Verizon 5G Spec Finalized, Suggesting Strong Interest in Fixed Wireless Deployments

Verizon’s announcement that the company has completed a specification for ultra-high-bandwidth 5G wireless is the latest example of the company’s increasingly wireless focus. The Verizon 5G spec was completed in advance of industry fifth-generation wireless standards efforts, raising the question of what is driving Verizon to push this technology so aggressively and so soon. It’s important to remember that in its initial incarnation, 5G will be a fixed wireless technology. And as Verizon’s announcement indicates, the company has been testing the technology for fixed deployments.

“Propagation and penetration testing across residential single and multi-dwelling units built in field locations has validated the feasibility of millimeter wave systems,” the company said. It would appear that Verizon sees 5G as the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) alternative it has been missing for boosting residential broadband bandwidth. In late May, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said that using 5G for fixed wireless may offer enough of a business case alone to justify the carrier’s investment in 5G and that any profits from 5G mobile would be “gravy.”In the announcement, Verizon notes that the Verizon 5G spec “provides guidelines to test and validate crucial 5G technical components” and that it “allows industry partners such as chipset vendors, network vendors and mobile operators to develop interoperable solutions and contribute to pre-standard testing and fabrication.”

28% of Americans are ‘strong’ early adopters of technology

Technology is changing the ways people seek and get knowledge, communicate and work. But Americans still tend to embrace familiarity over newness when it comes to their choices of new products, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data. Overall, 52% of adults say they “feel more comfortable using familiar brands and products,” and 39% describe themselves as preferring to wait until they hear about others’ experiences before trying something new themselves. Similarly, 39% say they prefer their “tried and trusted” brands. But 35% of Americans say they like the variety of trying new products, and three-in-ten like being able to tell others about their experiences with new technology. About one-in-six adults (15%) say they usually try technology products before others do.

Using people’s answers to these six questions, Pew Research Center created an “early adopter index” that classifies Americans’ preferences for new technology products or familiar ones into three tiers: strong, medium and weak. Some 28% of Americans hold strong preferences for being early adopters and trying new technology products, 45% score at or near the mean of the index, and 26% score low on the index, indicating a stronger preference for familiar technology products. When the six questions are taken individually, the answers suggest a tilt toward the comfort of the familiar, with a committed minority of the more adventurous mixed in.

The debates gave Donald Trump the nomination, and it’s the media’s fault

[Commentary] What could be more open and democratic than a debate? For all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth now taking place over the massive amounts of free media bestowed upon Donald Trump, it was his dominating performance in the televised debates that allowed him to separate himself from the pack. Yet the debates themselves were an exercise in faux democracy. What really mattered, especially early on, was who got invited, who got to stand where and who was allowed to speak the most. Unfortunately, the media organizations that ran the debates (along with the Republican National Committee) relied on polls to make those decisions right from the very first encounter in August.

Needless to say, news organizations have been reveling in the ratings they received from their Trump-centric, made-for-television extravaganzas. But we’re choosing a president, not who should get fired during the next episode of “The Apprentice.” We should demand that our media give us more democracy — and trust that the public will find it interesting enough to watch.

[Dan Kennedy is an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston (MA)]

John Brademas, Indiana Congressman and NYU President

John Brademas, a political, financial and academic dynamo who served 22 years in Congress and more than a decade as president of New York University in an all-but-seamless quest to promote education, the arts and a liberal agenda, died on July 11 in Manhattan. He was 89. His death was announced by NYU.

Brademas liked to say that being a university president was not much different from being a congressman: You shake hands, make speeches, remember names and faces, stump for a cause and raise money relentlessly. The difference, he said, is that you do not have to depend on voters to renew your contract every two years. As a Democratic representative from Indiana from 1959 to 1981, Brademas became known as Mr. Education and Mr. Arts. He sponsored bills that nearly doubled federal aid for elementary and secondary education in the mid-1960s and that created the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. He was also instrumental in annual financing of the arts and humanities and in the passage of Project Head Start, the National Teachers Corps and college tuition aid and loan programs.

[Brademas served on the Board of Directors of the Benton Foundation from 1981 through 1992]

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