Blair Levin

[Commentary] The National Broadband Plan has a lot of recommendations for improving the spectrum position of the mobile providers. While there have been some problems, the government has made significant progress in replenishing the empty spectrum cupboard we saw in 2009 and creating new supplies. But there are three problems with spectrum as our single strategy. First, it takes a very long time to identify spectrum bands and make them available for use. Second, the two largest wireless providers are also the two largest fixed line telcos, changing the incentives for what it would be if they were different companies. Third, the next generation of mobility, sometimes referred to as 5G, will rely on small cells, an architecture that will require greater fiber connectivity. These problems don’t mean we shouldn’t proceed, but only that we should be realistic about the timing and impact of the first leverage point of more spectrum.

Gig.U began in 2011 with three-dozen research university communities coming together to accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband networks to enhance educational and economic development.

We believed that eliminating bandwidth as a constraint to innovation would lead to economic and social progress for our communities and accelerate the discoveries university communities create for the world. We also believed market forces by themselves would not deliver such networks on a timely basis and therefore, we ourselves had to innovate in how we approached network deployments.

We saw our task as creating test beds; what we were attempting to do -- organize communities to stimulate private investment to upgrade or overbuild existing networks -- had few precedents. This required openness to different models, some of which would hopefully succeed and some of which would likely fail.

Still, taken together, those efforts would draw a map that all communities could use to create the next wireline upgrade and achieve bandwidth abundance.