Feds’ plans for better Wi-Fi have carriers seeing red

If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. We’ve all heard that truism, and it applies to the recent media firestorm around a federal initiative to offer nationwide, fast Wi-Fi for free. It’s simply not true, a story based on amazingly substandard reporting and editing at a major national newspaper and the uncritical acceptance by much of the blogosphere.

What is true is that the feds are looking for ways to take some unused spectrum and make it available to Wi-Fi devices — spectrum that penetrates buildings better and thus extends Wi-Fi’s reach. That’s good news, but what people really need to understand is the story of how this outrageously false story came to be, what the feds are really trying to do with Wi-Fi, and why carrier resistance to it is part of a bigger threaten to the Internet we know today. So here we go.

[ Carrier greed threatens the affordable Internet access we all depend on and could kill Internet video, argues InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman. | For the latest in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter. ]

The origins of the “free nationwide super Wi-Fi” false report If you’re a parent, you know about magical thinking, even if you didn’t know it was called that. When kids really, really want something to be true, in their minds it becomes true, as if by magic. That’s OK for children, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense for adults, particularly for professional technology writers and the legions of bloggers who follow the industry.

Sure, all of us would love to have free Wi-Fi wherever we go. So when the usually sensible Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post wrote a story saying that the federal government wants to create “super Wi-Fi networks” across the country that people could access for free, the blogosphere and the mainstream stream press lit up like a 1,000-watt bulb.

Even juicier, the story asserted that the proposal had “rattled” the wireless industry, and it was waging a “fierce” lobbying campaign to derail it. Yeah, those evil, money-grubbing carriers fighting to abort super Wi-Fi, that could, like Superman, penetrate thick concrete walls and travel over hills and around trees.

Who could resist that story? Almost no one. It was all over the Internet soon after it was posted, and I’ll bet the Post got more hits on that story than anything it’s published about the fiscal cliff or killer drones. Even the New York Times ate it up. “Imagine a free Wi-Fi network spanning the country. The feds want it to happen, wireless cos don’t,” Times media reporter Brian Stetler tweeted.

It was of course, total nonsense. The FCC proposed nothing of the sort. There won’t be a free, nationwide, super Wi-Fi network — not now or probably ever.

Not to be mean, but Kang’s editors must have been out to lunch when they read her story. How can anyone who knows anything about business not ask a few very simple questions: Who’s going to pay for this? Why build something hugely expensive and not charge for it?

Another obvious question: How come, when you go to the FCC’s website, you can’t find a report or a press release trumpeting free Wi-Fi? I noticed immediately that there was no link to a report in Kang’s story nor a quote from a proud commissioner. How could you think that the FCC would propose such a revolutionary program, then say nothing about it?

When the FCC considers significant actions, it asks for public comment, and naturally most of that comes from companies that have a vested interest in the matter. As a couple of people have reported, Kang said in a tweet that she was actually writing about some of those missives to the FCC. How it turned into the greatest thing that happened to the Internet since the invention of the browser is utterly baffling, and the uncritical acceptance of her thesis was just stupid. (Hats off to the few tech writers who popped this ludicrous balloon.)

This silly incident, though, is not so different than the preposterous rumormongering by hordes of Apple groupies, who were convinced the iPhone 4S was really the iPhone 5 (which actually launched about a year later) or that Apple was going to build a cheap iPhone — or was it a bigger iPhone?

Welcome to the reality-free world.

The truth: Tapping into “white spaces,” spectrum for Wi-Fi, not offering free Wi-Fi Here’s what’s really going on: The FCC and various industry folks have been noodling over something called the White Spaces Initiative for at least six years. White spaces are unused radio frequencies freed up by the migration to digital television. There’s been some progress toward allocating them, and at the end of 2011 the FCC approved the very first white spaces device.

The idea is to take that piece of the spectrum and use it for Wi-Fi. Because those signals use lower frequencies than traditional Wi-Fi, they would be more powerful and better able to penetrate obstacles like walls.

Part of what the FCC does is allocate spectrum, a resource that we citizens all own. In one sense, spectrum is infinite. But in the real world, only certain parts are usable, which is why it has to be allocated in a rational way. If anyone could do anything they wanted in any corner of the spectrum, devices would constantly interfere with one another. You’ve probably noticed that a microwave can interfere with your cordless phone, both of which use spectrum open to multiple devices. Imagine that on a much greater scale.

It appears that Kang was really writing about white spaces and the ongoing discussion about how to use them for Internet connectivity. Not surprisingly, the carriers aren’t big fans of the White Spaces Initiative because it could cut into their profits. As DSL Reports noted late last year, AT&T’s buddies in Congress are trying to kill it. Companies like Google, which want everyone to be on the Web looking at ads every waking moment, favor it.

The Internet is in trouble If you’re going to think seriously about the Internet, be aware that the carriers are doing a terrible job to the point they’re pushing the Web over a cliff, as noted by my colleague Galen Gruman. Wireless service is terrible in many areas, mobile payments technology is stuck because the carriers want to own it, and the fixed broadband providers are messing with tiered pricing, which would discourage — maybe kill — the use of bandwidth-intensive applications like online video (and preserve carriers’ TV offerings, of course).

Now, they’re lining up to oppose the FCC’s laudable efforts to make Wi-Fi work better, for fear it will cut into cellular data revenues.

That’s reality. And poorly reported stories that promise unlimited quantities of free stuff are simply diversions that keep us from seeing it.

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This article, “Feds’ plans for better Wi-Fi have carriers seeing red,” was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.