Politics

My Take

Reasonable and flexible rules are easy to follow and easy to enforce, and that's what every regulator should try to achieve.

by Marlon Schafer Consultant and CEO, Odessa Office [December 13, 2004]

My part of the day was spent mostly on talking about the who, what, when, where, and why of being a WISP. I started out talking about how I understood the market and my competition (mainly the telcos). I told them about how we work hard to create teams and partnerships out of local government, industry, and individuals through things like trading access for rent.

I showed my guests how Odessa is so small that it doesn't even rate a dot on a State of Washington map. How, even out there, I have nearly 6000 square miles of coverage. How over the last 5 or so years I've only spent $60,000 or $70,000 to do that. Amazingly (to some anyway) that's my own money, no grants or investors. Just me, the bank, and Visa and Master Card.

Next I talked about how I decided to use the technology that I used back then. Should I go with DSSS, FHSS, or (available today but not then) OFDM? I landed on DSSS, which later came to be synonymous with Wi-Fi. It was much less expensive. And, as I later found out, it would allow me to set the radios to avoid known sources of interference.

My powerpoint included a large number of pictures. Things I'd done to build tower (base station) systems, customer installations, mobile applications, and more. I'll have as many of the files as I can posted on my Wireless Broadband site as soon as I can. In the mean time you can poke around and see many of the pictures I used and, eventually, many taken during the trip.

What we're going to do next naturally came up as well. We'll continue to improve the equipment we use and how we deploy it. It was also interesting to point out that for roughly $1,000,000 I could cover at least 80 percent of the population of my state and provide free equipment for 500 end users.

Next I covered regulatory issues as I see them (as well as they could be covered in the 5 minutes left in my segment). If we lived in a polite society we'd not even need regulations. People would always keep in mind the impact their actions will have on others. Unfortunately, we don't live in a world free of bad characters. In an imperfect world, we need government, but it should limit its scope to protecting the average person from the unscrupulous among us.

Some time was spent on the basics of the FCC rules, mainly for unlicensed wireless. I talked about how sometimes good ideas failed to take into account their impact on the market place. A specific example would be the new part-15 higher power levels allowed for certain types of systems. Vivato was able to certify a solution ($150,000ish for a 360° coverage base station system) that controls where data is sent via electronic means rather than RF means.

Basically, the Vivato system makes sure than a packet goes out one of several access point/antenna systems that are all assembled into a common enclosure. I believe that a functional equivalent could be designed and built in the field using off the shelf gear for one tenth that amount. Sadly, under the current rules we're not allowed to do deploy anything not FCC certified.

To me, a regulatory environment should follow the KISS (keep it simple, silly) rule. Don't make rules that the average person can't understand. If the rules are too hard to understand someone will have to be hired just to keep up with the rules. That costs money that could have been put into infrastructure expansion.

Complicated and confusing rules are harder to enforce. In my mind, the rules should be enforceable too. Enforcement should strict, and nobody should be above the law. If the rules are onerous, then the enforcement should be only as a last resort, but that's a worse case. It's much better to have very reasonable and flexible rules that are easily followed and enforced.

—End