In defiance of the struggling economy, AT&T and Verizon recently topped the list of “investment heroes”-companies investing in infrastructure, buildings and “capital intensive” expenditures across the United States. These investments create jobs and generate an economic multiplier effect across the economy, as equipment and materials are purchased to meet the needs of wireless networks requiring ongoing maintenance, operation and upgrades. Yet, the real reason wireless broadband companies are champion investors is due to a consumer and policy environment that has made such investments both necessary and possible.

We are now, however, at an important policy crossroads for ensuring these investments for the future. Consumers want more wireless. Across every demographic, Americans are using more wireless devices and demanding immediate wireless access to everything from video to work files to music. This includes Latinos and other minorities who rely on wireless devices for exclusive web access in higher proportion than the rest of Americans. During the past few years, consumer demand has driven investment in new network facilities to help advance the deployment of high-speed broadband service.

These investments have helped create new jobs. A NDN study found that over 300,000 jobs were created in the move from 2G to 3G networks. Building out new towers requires manpower-blue collar construction jobs, managers, engineers, planners and a pipeline of materials. Today the move to 4G LTE is driving today’s capital expenditures, as the companies seek to satisfy consumer demand and provide high speed broadband service throughout the nation. This new wireless broadband infrastructure has made the$16 billion app economy possible and enhanced economic growth throughout the wireless ecosystem.

We need to address the spectrum shortage to ensure that the wireless broadband industry continues to thrive. As this blog has said before, more spectrum must be allocated for consumer use as quickly as possible, not only because of potential consumer consequences but because of the potential for investment. Companies invest to expand their wireless networks when additional spectrum is available to be deployed in the market. Some new spectrum will be made available through spectrum auctions, however, to meet future demand we must look toward advancing secondary market transactions among private entities and the potential for obtaining government-held spectrum .

Newly appointed Commissioners Pai and Rosenworcel have both discussed the need to expedite FCC reviews, with Pai suggesting the creation of an FCC office designated with advocacy for expediency on behalf of entrepreneurs. This is a worthwhile idea, because wasted time at the FCC leaves capital fallow, creates no new jobs, encourages no investment, and benefits no one.

Wireless broadband is a driver of a large portion of the economy — one that creates American jobs. We must ensure that the federal government puts in place the right policies to encourage investment, put Americans back to work and to revitalize our economy.

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Jason A. Llorenz, Esq. is Executive Director, the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP). Follow on twitter: @hispanicttp. www.httponline.org.

At a public meeting of the Federal Communications Commission, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel called for a “clear timeline” for pending spectrum auctions. The Commissioner’s statement is very timely, indeed. America is running low on available spectrum for consumers, a looming shortage that threatens to degrade the quality of wireless services to mobile phones, tablets and unwired computers.

Quite simply, without adequate spectrum, wireless service quality will only worsen from here. Commissioner Rosenworcel understands the urgency of the situation. HTTP, MMTC an others have actively called for action on spectrum to avoid the price hikes and service reductions that would harm the wireless experience of consumers who exclusively rely on wireless for Internet access. Hispanics report such reliance on wireless broadband in very high proportion.

Rosenworcel’s suggestion that federal agencies require appropriate incentives to provide spectrum to wireless providers with the knowledge and resources to deploy it is also right on point. If incentives promoting the efficient allocation of spectrum are not in place, the deployment of next generation, IP-based high-speed networks will stall.

Future innovations, job growth, and economic prosperity are now more dependent on the development of advanced wireless and IP networks than ever before. The government should play a vital role in promoting the development of this wireless and IP infrastructure.

Commissioner Rosenworcel’s ‘carrot-and-stick’ idea is also apt. Providing federal spectrum users with an incentive to reallocate under-utilized spectrum to commercial users by allowing them to reclaim a portion of revenue gained from a future auction of that spectrum, may work better than publicly pressuring them to pursue the most efficient use of spectrum resources.

Commissioner Rosenworcel acknowledges that carrots almost always work better than sticks when attempting to induce appropriate actions. And, as she said, incentivizing the re-auctioning of spectrum resources is “an idea worth exploring.”

Jason A. Llorenz, Esq. Is Executive Director, the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership ( HTTP). Follow on twitter: @hispanicttp. www.httponline.org.

July 12, 2012

It’s becoming pretty common knowledge, at least in policy circles, that all of those terrific services we’re getting from our smartphones and tablets may become a lot less reliable unless we figure out how to devote more radio spectrum towireless communications.    The growing awareness is good news. But we’d feel a whole lot better if there was a bit more urgency about the issue.  The spectrum crunch threatens consumers, with higher prices, less service for their dollar, and less reliability and quality as well. A new paper by the Hispanic Institute and Mobile Future underscores the rate at which Hispanics relay on mobile – especially in light of the ongoing digital divide in home broadband adoption. And so, the spectrum crunch demands attention in order to avoid harming the mobile experience, especially for those who rely on mobile for their primary web access.

As a smart new paper by Rysavy Research points out, putting spectrum to work is a lot more complicatedthan turning on a faucet for more.   For example, it can take five-to-ten years between the time the government identifies spectrum for wireless service and the airwaves are actually in use and carrying data to and from our mobile devices.

The FCC says we need to boost spectrum for wireless by 500 MHz by the end of the decade.   That’s a big leap, considering only about 542 MHz are now allocated for such purposes, and auctions recently approved by Congress are generally expected to produce less than 100 MHz or commercial mobile use.  We need to figure out where the rest of it’s coming from, and we need to do it right away before our devices start to be less enjoyable and valuable.

The new Rysavy Research paper maps out the challenges facing service providers as they work to meet customers’ growing thirst for video and other services that eat up spectrum.   For one, you just can’t go out and buy more whenever you need it.   The supply of spectrum is physically limited, its allocation is controlled by the government, and the government doesn’t make it available very often. Significant blocks of spectrum have been made available only four times in the past 30 years. Companies seek to buy spectrum rights whenever the opportunity arrives even if they don’t need it immediately.

Once a company has rights to spectrum, there are a lot more hurdles before it can be deployed – local permitting, establishing technical standards, and installing additional infrastructure such as new cell towers to mention a few.  To control costs, spectrum is deployed in a controlled fashion as demand rises. Rysavy also notes that upgrading new technologies such as LTE services most carriers are now introducing requires a dedicated chunk of spectrum – even while continuing to back customers using older 2G and 3G devices.

Put it all together, the paper observes, and there will be times when companies are going to have some spectrum that’s not currently in service.   Some critics say these temporarily idle blocks of spectrum prove that wireless companies are hoarding or that the spectrum crunch doesn’t exist.    But it’s hard to think of any businesses in which supply and demand are in perfect balance.  What’s really happening here, according to the Rysavy paper, isn’t hoarding, but simply smart preparation – buying the spectrum you expect to need when you can, so that you can put it to use for customers when they need it most.

It’s an eye opening paper, detailed, but accessible.  Here’s hoping that policymakers will give it a look and start working to find the spectrum we need before our smartphones are stuck in gridlock.

Jason A. Llorenz, Esq. is Executive Director, the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP). Follow on twitter: @hispanicttp. www.httponline.org.

This summer, The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) gathered their respective constituencies in Orlando to educate, inspire and focus the community on the issues facing a nation as it prepares to vote on the next term of the Presidency of the United States. Immigration took center stage with President Obama’s recent executive order. But jobs remain on the minds of all. It’s jobs and wealth, after all that are at the heart of the two Presidential campaigns — particularly the questions of how to create new wealth, and how to inspire new jobs.

In the midst of both conventions, and talk of the jobs of the future was a conversation about the 1% — which is the percentage of venture capital going to African American or Latino tech startups last year.

Job participation by African Americans and Latinos in the tech sector is similarly low.

For a Latino community that lost 2/3 of its net worth in the recession and housing crisis, new paths to wealth and prosperity are sorely needed. The decline of manufacturing jobs, and the explosion of the tech sector means the future of wealth building must include an expansion of minority tech entrepreneurship. After all, today’s new, tech- driven $100 billion companies do not create even a fraction of the full-time jobs that companies with similar value used to.

The digital divide — the much discussed lag in home broadband adoption and digital literacy — is a significant barrier to expanding the core of Latino tech entrepreneurship and connecting communities to tech-driven wealth opportunities. Latino coders do not just emerge from the 20-year-old set while away at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg. Coders are born before high school — typically in wealthy school and home environments, surrounded by easy access to technology. This is also what gave Bill Gates an early start — very early access to advanced technology and computers of his time. Those early, tech-exposed kids go on to become the genius coders who invent the new GUI, and turn passion into millions of dollars of profit in the new app economy.

For Latinos, who are leading consumers of wireless, high tech stuff from smartphones, to tablets, to apps– the opportunity to Leverage this affinity with technology, to mold producers who build wealth and create jobs using that technology is significant. But it craves action to build a digital culture of producers.

At the NALEO and LULAC conventions, we ask elected officials and grassroots community leaders, respectively, to engage in five activities that would help to expand the tech 1%:

1) Engage your community with the once in a lifetime opportunities in Comcast’s
Internet Essentials and the cable Industry’s Connect2Compete programs– make sure every qualified family gets connected.
2) Partner with groups like Code Academy to teach coding in your community
3) Educate your PTA about the digital divide and ask them to make it a priority
4) Work with a local CBO/nonprofit to start a tech program if they
Don’t already have one
5) Use your bully pulpit — sound this issue, and encourage others to
seize the opportunity

The future of jobs and entrepreneurship will be more and more digital, less brick-and-morter and increasingly driven by technology.

Jason A. Llorenz, Esq. is Executive Director, the Hispanic Technologyand Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP). Follow on Twitter: @hispanicttp. www.httponline.org. LULAC is a founding member of the HTTP coalition.

June 14, 2012

A tip of the hat is in order for AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, for offering a convincing set of ideas for addressing the spectrum shortage that threatens to toss a dried up bouquet into the middle of our romance with wireless technology.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal this week, Stephenson identified the unhappy irony of the wireless business’s booming success – it depends on a scare resource whose supply is about to be eclipsed by the growing public appetite for more. Not that spectrum is actually running out. Rather the right to use these critical airwaves has been allocated by government in such a way that wireless carriers don’t have access to enough of it to meet rapidly growing demand for services. President Obama and FCC Commissioner, Julius Genachowski, agree that re-allocation of critical airwaves is necessary to meet skyrocketing consumer demand for mobile broadband services. But that’s a multi-year process that won’t happen in time to address a shortage that is likely to hit as early as next year in the largest markets with the highest Latino populations.

Stephenson mapped out three specific things government can do in the short term – none of which involve taxpayer money – to help wireless companies access the critical airwaves that allow consumers to make calls and businesses to access and to more quickly send data on the mobile Internet. And, in contrast to the anti-government rhetoric that often colors proposals from business executives, Stephenson implicitly acknowledged that government can play a positive role.

Stephenson even called out “speculators” who are sitting on unused spectrum in hopes of an investment gain. Stephenson’s solution is a bit of tough government that would force spectrum holders to use it or lose. In his vision, spectrum holders would get a reasonable time certain to put that spectrum to work or, by sale or partnership, turn it over to somebody who will. This would help spur more investment in America’s wireless infrastructure.

It’s a fair-minded concept that avoids the sort of “big government” directives that sometimes inserts regulators in the day-to-day of business strategy, but also recognizes government’s ability to act in the broad public interest. As Mr. Stephenson noted, the FCC has recently begun to move in this direction by adding tighter build out schedules in approving transactions involving spectrum.

The free market should be allowed to work so that those with unused spectrum can bring it online for consumers much more quickly.

Right now, such transfers require government review that can take a year or more. That’s a long time to wait in an industry where transformative innovations like the iPhone change the game overnight and demand for bandwidth is expected to climb 75 percent or more annually for the next five years.

Finally, and this is a tougher one because it touches on the traditional division of government authority between Washington and local jurisdictions, Stephenson seeks a national framework for getting cell tower infrastructure built. The unfortunate reality is that even with more spectrum, building new cell phone relay towers relies on local approvals that can seriously delay service improvements. Adding towers and other infrastructure enables more efficient use of spectrum so that the same amount of spectrum goes a longer way.

Stephenson envisions a national model to speed up local approvals, much as Congress once intervened to speed the construction of the railroads and the interstate highway system. That might be a heavy lift given the partisan divide in D.C., but it’s worth considering since mobile Internet connectivity may be just as vital to the U.S. economy in the 21st century as overland transportation was in earlier decades.

The economic implications shouldn’t be overlooked: freeing up spectrum in the short-term stimulates investment that creates jobs at a time they are in short supply.

We don’t know if any of these ideas will fly, but Stephenson gets a thumbs up for offering reasonable specifics instead of either whining or complaining at policymakers.

Jason A. Llorenz, Esq. is Executive Director, the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP). Follow on Twitter: @hispanicttp. www.httponline.org.

The New York Times’ Eduardo Porter recently called for a more aggressive interpretation of the Federal Communications Commission’s “net neutrality” rules.The particular issue Mr. Porter addresses is Comcast’s development of a new way to access “on-demand” cable programming through the Xbox gaming console, just as they would on the more traditional “cable box.” Porter thinks the government should force cable broadband providers to count these videos against any data “cap” a provider institutes in order to manage traffic and congestion on their networks (Comcast, for instance, now has a 300 gigabyte monthly cap).

The perverse reasoning of “net neutrality” purists is that permitting viewers to watch on-demand video on third party devices like the Xbox without it counting against the data cap will give Comcast an unfair advantage over Internet video companies like Netflix. But this is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison.

As the FCC said in 2010, net neutrality rules are intended to protect the freedom of the public Internet, preventing discrimination against “unaffiliated” bits of data, or data not related to the broadband provider. But unlike its Xfinity Online service, which uses the public Internet and counts against its customers’ data caps, Comcast’s Xbox on-demand service isn’t using the Internet. Instead, the company has essentially extended the reach of its traditional cable network to a new device. In its net neutrality rules, the FCC specifically exempted “managed services” like traditional cable video and telephone service to promote this type of innovation.

Mr. Porter’s opposition to this new offering is risky. If broadband providers are forced to count cable video service against the data cap, families will be forced to constrain their use only because of a government-imposed rule. Worse, if that useage counts against a cap (not all cable providers offer a full 300 GB per month), this could push a family toward, or over, their monthly cap, and in danger of overage fees. This is precisely the kind of regressive cost shifting that HTTP and others have urged the FCC to avoid.

Access to broadband, and expanding digital literacy are among the keys to economic progress for the Hispanic community. Of course, companies like Netflix would greatly benefit if the government forces families to pay more for a competitor’s service. While we all share the goal of an open, transparent Internet, getting the details wrong could create new cost barriers for families — especially more cost-sensitve, less broadband-enabled Hispanics.

Jason A. Llorenz, Esq. is Executive Director, the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP). Follow on Twitter: @hispanicttp. www.httponline.org.

May 16 2012

Today, there are more wireless subscriptions than people in the U.S. That’s just one of the facts we reveal in the first of a series of Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP) info graphics available in English and Spanish. If you have a “work” mobile phone plus a “personal” device, you’re part of that trend. Here’s another shocker: by the end of 2012, there will be more wireless subscriptions than people on the planet. This ever-growing increase in demand is great news for developers who are creating new apps, and for entrepreneurs who are connecting to the global marketplace and growing their businesses.

It’s also important news for Hispanics, who are relying on their mobile devices more and more. In fact, according to a 2010 Pew Internet and American Life study, Hispanics continue to be the most active users of mobile devices for internet access. On average, 51 percent of Hispanics access the internet from their phone, as compared to 33 percent of whites and 46 percent of African Americans. With young adults leading these data trends, we can only expect these numbers and percentages to increase.

As evidenced by the above, we aren’t just using our phones to talk. In the first half of 2011, more than 6 billion text messages were sent each day — that’s a 16 percent increase in just one year. But as more and more people join the wireless revolution, there’s a bigger demand for spectrum- the invisible airwaves that carry phone calls, e-mails, connections to the Internet, tweets, streaming music and videos to mobile phones. In other words, spectrum is what makes our mobile devices work.

As mobile phone use has increased, wireless networks have become overloaded, and as this congestion increases, so too will dropped calls, unreliable connections and slower Internet speeds. Of particular concern is potential cost increases and stricter data caps driven by lack of available spectrum, which is most dangerous to emerging online communities who choose mobile because of cost and flexibility.

Congress recently approved legislation that would provide an opportunity to reallocate underutilized broadcast spectrum through a reverse auction process, which is a step in the right direction. As shown in the info graphic, by 2016, 10 billion mobile devices worldwide will be connected to wireless networks. However, as the numbers demonstrate, the data demands of these devices and their owners will only be met if spectrum is freed up to drive investment in mobile capacity.

Inaction on spectrum threatens to roll back the great benefits of mobile Internet access to Hispanic communities and others who rely on their mobile devices for a less expensive, flexible, always on-hand access to the web.

Jason A Llorenz, Esq. is Executive Director, the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP). Follow on twitter: @hispanicttp. www.httponline.org.

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