AT&T has secured support from the Federal Communications Commission for authority to deploy 4G LTE service within a 20MHz portion of the 2.3GHz WCS band after cutting a deal with a next door neighbor especially sensitive about potential interference.

WCS spectrum holders have fought for years to develop commercially viable wireless service, but faced regular opposition from the satellite radio industry concerned that interference problems would result from using the band for mobile data. Right in the middle of the WCS band is Sirius XM, which depends on sensitive receivers to pick up the company’s satellite signal.

But now AT&T and Sirius XM have worked out a compromise both companies believe will protect mobile data and satellite radio. AT&T has conceded 10MHz of its total WCS spectrum for two 5MHz guard bands, devoid of signals, around Sirius XM’s frequencies. Sirius XM signal engineers believe this, combined with power limits, will protect radio receivers from overloading whenever near AT&T’s ground-based LTE cell towers.

In August, AT&T announced its intention to acquire WCS spectrum from NextWave Wireless, a spectrum-squatting holding company, for $600 million. The phone company is also attempting to acquire the remainder of WCS spectrum from the last two significant holders — Comcast and Horizon Wi-Com, which both have between 10-25MHz of spectrum in 149 and 132 communities respectively.

When the acquisitions are complete, AT&T will have WCS spectrum covering virtually the entire nation.

Frequencies in the 2.3GHz band are best received outdoors. Signals crossing windows and walls lose potency. (Courtesy: Greenpacket)

AT&T says it needs the spectrum to further deploy 4G LTE data service across the country. But the company admits it will take up to five years before it can switch on the new frequencies — no current smartphones support the 2.3GHz WCS band.

AT&T has also included provisions to ensure fixed wireless base stations will be able to utilize AT&T’s WCS spectrum, within reasonable limits to protect Sirius XM radios from harmful interference. That has important implications for AT&T’s long-term view that rural landline and broadband service is best delivered over a wireless network.

A major limitation of spectrum in the 2GHz band is the quality of indoor coverage it can deliver. As many Clearwire customers can attest, these frequencies suffer from high transmission loss, poor ability for diffraction, and most importantly, poor building penetration — especially in urban and suburban areas. Tall nearby buildings, homes, and even trees all impede WCS reception. According to Andrea Goldsmith in her book Wireless Communications, there is also a 6dB penetration loss when 2.5GHz signals cross un-insulated glass windows and a 13dB loss for concrete walls, with wood falling somewhere in-between.

But rural areas do better, in part thanks to the higher likelihood of unimpeded line-of-sight access between a cell tower and receiver. AT&T’s fixed wireless solution would place a small antenna on the roof or side of a home, positioned for maximum reception from the nearest cell tower. The signal is then brought indoors through cabling (or in some cases Wi-Fi) and available to customers, comparable to a home broadband connection.

AT&T’s strong spectrum position in WCS gives the company an opportunity to construct a robust, near-nationwide wireless network suitable for rural wireless communications. In more urban areas, WCS could operate seamlessly with AT&T’s lower frequency holdings and offer an extension of its current LTE service.

AT&T’s acquisition of WCS has several important implications for the wireless marketplace:

2GHz signals travel the least distance in urban and suburban areas, often blocked or degraded by buildings or trees. But better results in rural areas suggest AT&T’s WCS spectrum could partly be deployed as a fixed wireless broadband solution, if enough towers are available to support it. (Courtesy: Greenpacket)

1. It proves AT&T never needed to acquire T-Mobile USA. Through spectrum acquisitions like WCS, AT&T can still find relatively inexpensive spectrum suitable for mobile broadband use, without spending tens of billions to acquire a competitor just to poach its spectrum and eliminate a competitor.

2. The Competitive Carriers Association worries AT&T’s acquisition of secondary spectrum holders is allowing the company to gather a massive amount of spectrum.

CCA President & CEO Steven K. Berry said, “Allowing the largest carriers to obtain unlimited amounts of  spectrum on the secondary market raises serious competitive concerns.  The only way for the FCC to truly see the devastating consequences of further spectrum aggregation is by consolidating the proposed applications.  On their own, AT&T’s proposed license acquisitions may not seem significant, but when added together, it totals to a significant amount of spectrum.”

Berry continued, “Should the FCC decide to approve the transactions, it must impose conditions to ensure interoperability across the Lower 700 MHz band and to ensure data roaming – both are absolutely essential ingredients to a healthy, competitive marketplace.  Competitive carriers need access to usable spectrum, and I urge the Commission to carefully review the negative impact these transactions will have on the wireless marketplace.”

3. Clearwire’s 2.5GHz spectrum could become more valuable if AT&T can demonstrate its 2.3GHz service can deliver robust service, if provisioned adequately for customers. Clearwire’s capital investments and overall performance of its limited coverage WiMAX network have been deemed inadequate by its biggest partner Sprint, now constructing its own 4G LTE network to replace Clearwire’s WiMAX network.

4. Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin notes Verizon will still have a better standing in spectrum even with AT&T WCS: “AT&T will have the following available for LTE: 20 MHz of 700 MHz nationwide; 20 MHz of WCS nationwide; a few AWS licenses (5 MHz on average). With Verizon’s deal with large cable companies, Verizon will have: 20 MHz of 700 MHz nationwide; 20 MHz of AWS nationwide; another 10 MHz of AWS in 60 percent of the country (13 MHz on average). In addition, Verizon’s spectrum is usable immediately, while AT&T’s WCS will take three to five years to deploy.”

Phillip “Tollbooths are not innovation” Dampier

Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski last week wrote a guest editorial on TechCrunch espousing the benefits of faster broadband networks, but the advances he celebrates often come with innovation-killing usage caps and overlimit fees he continues to ignore.

We feel the need – the need for speed. As Tom Friedman and others have written, in this flat global economy a strategic bandwidth advantage will help keep the U.S. as the home and most desired destination for the world’s greatest innovators and entrepreneurs.

[…] But progress isn’t victory, particularly in this fast-moving sector. Challenges to U.S. leadership are real. This is a time to press harder on the gas pedal, not let up. The first challenge is the need for faster and more accessible broadband networks. We need to keep pushing because our global competitors aren’t slowing down. I’ve met with senior government officials and business leaders from every continent, and every one of them is focused on the broadband opportunity. If we in the U.S. don’t foster major investments to extend and expand our broadband infrastructure, somebody else will take the lead.

We need to keep pushing because innovators need next-generation bandwidth for next-generation innovations – genetic sequencing for cancer patients, immersive and creative software to help children learn, ways for small businesses to take advantage of Big Data, and speed- and capacity-heavy innovations we can’t yet imagine.

We need to remove bandwidth as a constraint on our innovators and entrepreneurs. In addition to steadily increasing broadband speed and capacity for consumers and businesses throughout the country, we need – as we said in our National Broadband Plan – “innovation hubs” with super-fast broadband, with speed measured in gigabits, not megabits.

[…]Some argue the private sector will solve these challenges itself, and that all government has to do is get out of the way. I disagree. The private sector must take the lead, but the public sector has a vital though limited role to play.

Among the policy levers government needs to use is the removal of barriers to broadband buildout, lowering the costs of infrastructure deployment with new policies like “Dig Once” that says you should lay fiber when you dig up roads. The President recently issued an Executive Order implementing this idea, suggested in our Broadband Plan. Government must promote competition, which drives innovation and network upgrades.

We must ensure the Internet remains an open platform that continues to enable innovation without permission.

Genachowski

Genachowski’s vision for faster broadband has the noble goal of maintaining competitiveness with the rest of the world and putting the United States back on top in broadband rankings and innovation. But while hobnobbing with his industry friends at recent industry conventions, he may have gotten too close to one of the biggest impediments holding us back — big cable and phone companies merrily working their magic to create a comfortable duopoly with pricing and service plans to match.

Back in the late 1990s, most cable operators thought of broadband as an ancillary service easy enough to operate, but probably hard to monetize. Just like digital cable radio services like Music Choice and DMX, “broadband” would likely appeal only to a tiny subset of customers.

“Back in the 1990s, Time Warner was primarily a TV company in a TV industry.  Broadband then was an innovating and radical thing, and a lot of people thought it was stupid and wouldn’t work,” Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said in April, 2009.

The launch of “Road Runner” was not the most auspicious marketing effort undertaken by the cable operator. In fact, the service was rarely targeted for price adjustments, hovering at around $40 a month for a decade.

When the Great Recession hit the United States, something unexpected happened. Cable operators discovered people were willing to cancel their cable and phone services, but not their broadband. In fact, as high bandwidth online video became an increasing part of our lives, the cable industry realized they were in the catbird seat to deliver the best broadband experience, and be well-paid for it. With little competition, increasing prices brought little risk and, thanks to the insatiable drive to boost revenue and reduce costs, implementing usage caps to control “excess” usage and costs were within their grasp.

In 2008, when Stop the Cap! launched, only a handful of ISPs had usage caps. Now most providers, with the exception of Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Cablevision, and a handful of others, all have usage allowances and overlimit fee Internet Overcharging schemes to further pad their bottom lines.

Innovation: Rationing Your Internet Experience — Stick to e-mail and web pages.

Genachowski has completely ignored the growing pervasiveness of usage caps, and even excused them as an experiment in marketplace innovation. But limits on broadband usage will also limit the broadband innovation revolution he wants, especially when most Americans have just one or two realistic choices for broadband service:

1. Usage caps are the product of artificial scarcity. Rationing Internet usage, even with now-pervasive cost-effective upgrades like DOCSIS 3, simply does not make sense (but it will make dollars). Cable operators are switching off analog television service to free up bandwidth to provider faster Internet speed and fatten the pipeline that delivers it. They have plenty of capacity, but continue to proclaim they must limit usage for “fairness” reasons, without providing a single shred of evidence to prove the need for usage caps. Consumers will self-ration just to avoid the prospect of being cut off or handed a bill with overlimit fees.
2. Usage caps make faster speeds irrelevant. Selling customers premium-priced, super fast broadband speed is hardly compelling when accompanied by usage caps that constrain the benefits of buying. Why pay $20-50 more for faster speeds when customers cannot take practical advantage of them. Customers using their Internet service to browse web pages and read e-mail have no interest in upgrading to 30+Mbps. Customers streaming video or moving large files do.
3. Usage caps retard innovation. Google’s new 1Gbps fiber optic network was built on the premise that usage caps were unnecessary on a fiber-based network and would retard innovation. Developing the next generation of innovative apps that Genachowski celebrates will never happen if developers are discouraged by Internet usage toll booths and stop signs. The cost to provide the service is not largely dependent on customer usage. It is the initial price of last mile infrastructure that really matters. Both cable and phone companies have reduced their investments to upgrade their networks, and AT&T and Verizon both contemplate getting rid of their rural landlines. Most cable operators paid off their networks years ago.
4. Usage caps create a whole new digital divide.  Time Warner Cable’s discounted Internet Essentials program delivers only a $5 discount with a harsh 5GB usage cap. For an income-challenged home compelled to switch to a provider’s budget plan, the result is a different Internet experience than the rest of us enjoy. Imagine if your home broadband account was limited to 5GB a month. What online services would you have to avoid to stay under the provider’s limit? Traditionally, operators sell the lowest speed tiers with the lowest usage allowances. Slower speeds already offer a disincentive to use high bandwidth services, but many providers typically drive that disincentive home even harder with a paltry allowance that will cost plenty to exceed.
5. Usage caps harm our broadband standing. While Genachowski celebrates increasing broadband speeds, he ignores the fact the rest of the world is moving away from usage caps even as the United States moves towards them. Both Australia and New Zealand elected to construct their own national fiber networks in large part because the heavily usage-capped experience was holding both countries back. Usage caps are a product of a barely competitive market.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bandwidth Caps 7-2011.flv[/flv]

Tech News Today debunks providers’ claims that usage caps are fair and control those who “overuse” their networks, noting the same phone companies (AT&T) pushing for usage caps are also moving voice calling to unlimited service plans. (August, 2011) (4 minutes)

Phillip “Artificial Scarcity for Fun and Profits” Dampier

It would be an understatement to say I’ve heard the argument once or twice that there is simply no economic room for additional players to enter what Big Telecom companies always claim is a robustly competitive marketplace for Internet access.

Virtually every company facing inquiries from regulators, politicians, and consumers always makes the point today’s deregulated broadband playing field is an excellent example of free market competition at its best.

While they advocate for even more deregulation, oppose the entry of community-owned broadband services, and demand more spectrum from Washington lawmakers, we endure a veritable monopoly/duopoly for Internet access. Their defense, after a dismissive rolling of the eyes, is that we just don’t understand business.

Enter Tim Lee, writing for the alternate reality reader of Forbes, who decided to prove his argument by comparing broadband with Supercuts:

Being the first to build a hair-cutting shack in a particular customer’s backyard can be pretty lucrative. It gives you a de facto monopoly on that household’s haircut business. Let’s assume that it takes 4 years worth of haircuts to recoup the costs of building a shack for a particular household. While barbers will need to raise some extra capital to build the shacks, in the long run the owner of the first shack may be able to earn big monopoly rents.

Now along comes a new barber who wants to enter the hair-cutting business, but every household already has at least one hair-cutting shack. So he needs to build hair-cutting shacks in backyards where another barber has already built one. And that’s an economically precarious situation. Remember, we assumed a monopolist needs to do 4 years worth of haircuts in order to break even. But if you build a shack in a backyard that already has another barber in it, you shouldn’t expect to get more than half of the customer’s business, on average, over the long run. Not only that, but competition will push down prices, so you’ll have to do more haircuts to recover the costs of construction. So you’ll be lucky to recover your initial investment within 8 years, and it could easily take more than a decade.

And things are even worse for the third or fourth barber who builds in a particular backyard. The fourth barber will be building in a yard that already has three barbers. He can only expect to attract 25 percent of the household’s business, and strong competition among barbers means his margins will be pretty thin. It’s hard to see how he could ever recover the costs of his investment.

Brushing away the hair-cutting analogy, Lee’s point is that it is wasteful and inefficient for competitors to overbuild new networks where others already exist. The phone and cable companies that dominate the marketplace today decry additional competition as a death blow to their business models, because with so many providers fighting for customers (by lowering prices and offering better service), not every provider can sustain a profit Wall Street investors expect quarter after quarter. This argument is particularly common when attacking those dastardly socialist community-owned broadband providers they say destroy private enterprise (while unconvincingly also warning they will always fail and cost taxpayers millions on the way down). It is also why Wall Street continues to beat the drum for additional consolidation in the wireless marketplace, where anything more than AT&T and Verizon Wireless represents too much revenue destruction.

Lee does make some valid points:

1. Infrastructure costs are the biggest expense in launching a new network, especially wiring the last mile to customers;
2. Verizon FiOS overestimated its potential market share and found it harder to turn a profit than first anticipated;
3. Other utilities have avoided building redundant networks (ie. you don’t have two companies providing their own electric, water, and gas lines).

When communities decide to offer their own broadband service, incumbent cable and phone companies spend big bucks to scare residents.

But Lee’s conclusion is entirely favorable to the industry he often defends — that is just the way things are and customers should not expect anything better.

Those arguments are usually also the basis for free market declarations that if a private company cannot find a way to deliver a service at a profit, then those left out will just have to do without.

Thankfully, despite Lee’s criticism of Google Fiber in Kansas City as “extremely wasteful,” the search engine company is perhaps best positioned of all to turn the industry’s common refrain against new competition on its head.

Every so often, a surprising third party shows up with the resources to ignore Wall Street’s conventional wisdom. Enter the deep pockets of Google Fiber or a bond-backed community provider threatening to deliver service far better than what a community currently enjoys. The predictable defense from incumbent providers:

• Nobody needs faster broadband speeds;
• Community networks are a government takeover of the Internet;
• Fiber optics are expensive and represent an unnecessary investment;
• Public broadband destroys private investment and jobs at incumbent commercial providers;
• This is just a political stunt, not a real effort at taking Internet speeds to the next level.

Without the kind of competition on offer from Google, community providers, and private providers like Verizon taking a chance on FiOS fiber optics, there would be no room for innovation in the marketplace.

Provider tolerance for today’s marketplace duopoly and the lackluster service that results is reminiscent of a joke told by President George W. Bush’s in 2000: “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier…just so long as I’m the dictator.”

It is easy for today’s comfortable duopoly providers to take shots at would-be competitors while dragging their feet on network upgrades. They have little to fear with Wall Street on their side, joining opposition to new competition as harmful to profits. Even Verizon Communications, one of the two dominant providers, quickly heard from analysts irritated with the infrastructure expenses involved upgrading to a fiber optic network. At the heart of that criticism was a sense it was an unnecessary expense, with no reason to change the safe and reliable status quo. Innovation that costs money is the enemy of Wall Street, unless competition warrants the investment.

Therein lies the key. Effective, disruptive competition demands companies do something different. Lee may be right that three companies cannot easily bring home the big profits. Wall Street may have to make do with less. In a competitive market, the player offering the least will be the first to innovate to keep or attract customers, or eventually close their doors. Those remaining will compete in turn to deliver the best possible service at the lowest possible price. That itself is a departure from the comfort zone enjoyed by phone and cable operators today where neither feels much pressure. Cable companies won’t ever compete with other cable companies and the same is true for phone companies. But if a company like Google arrives, the decade-long coffee break is over.

Want proof? Just look at cable operators struggling to keep video customers who are now finding alternatives with Netflix and online viewing. They are increasingly looking for ways to enhance the value of cable television by offering online viewing themselves. Even rate increases have slowed. If Netflix and cord-cutting were not factors, would cable companies have changed the way they do business?

Google’s marketplace disruption delivers for consumers.

Lee is right saying it is not easy to break into the broadband business. Only some might realize the same investors and Wall Street barons that dislike profit-eroding competition also often happen to be in the business of loaning money to finance new businesses. More than a few will turn those loans down as too risky to contemplate.

But here comes the rhetorical trap Lee’s argument gets ensnared in: If running redundant networks is wasteful and we still need competition, the logical solution would be to construct or nationalize one advanced network on which all providers would market their services. Why waste time and money on duplicate copper and coaxial networks when a single fiber to the home network could deliver improved service well beyond what the local phone and cable company can offer.

Isn’t the answer to run a single telecommunications line into customer homes (one preferably not controlled by any provider), and let competition bloom on that advanced infrastructure? That is the solution Australia has chosen, scrapping the country’s ancient copper wire phone lines in favor of one national fiber network. Most community providers also operate open networks that other cable and phone companies can utilize (but often petulantly refuse).

Somehow, despite the enormous savings possible from sharing or offloading network infrastructure expenses, I doubt providers will consider that the kind of innovation they want or need.

The FCC’s UHF TV Diet Plan: Slimming Down the Free TV Dial to Make Room for Expensive Wireless Broadband

By the end of this month, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on proposed rules governing a planned 2014 auction that will allow over the air TV stations to surrender their “free TV” channels in return for money from the nation’s wireless phone companies looking for more mobile broadband spectrum.

The Commission is considering reallocating UHF TV channels 31-51 for mobile data, compacting the nation’s over the air TV stations onto VHF channels 2-13 and UHF channels 14-30. But the FCC also expects many stations, particularly smaller independent or specialty channels in large cities, will be happier surrendering their broadcast TV licenses in return for cash compensation.

If the five FCC commissioners approve the plan, it will be the largest spectrum auction since 2008, and could earn the U.S. treasury billions, tempered by payouts to television stations agreeing to shut down their transmitters, and to compensate remaining stations for the cost of moving operations to a new channel number, when necessary.

“To ensure ongoing innovation in mobile broadband, we must pursue several strategies vigorously: freeing up more spectrum for both licensed use and for unlicensed services like Wi-Fi; driving faster speeds, greater capacity, and ubiquitous mobile Internet coverage; and taking additional steps to ensure that our invisible infrastructure for mobile innovation can meet the needs of the 21st century,” the agency’s chairman, Julius Genachowski, said in a statement.

The controversial auction would compensate broadcasters even before the FCC knows exactly how much spectrum it will eventually have available to auction to wireless carriers. Nobody is sure how many stations will ultimately choose to abandon their over-the-air audiences, but an FCC report predicts the largest number of station losses would be in large metropolitan areas, which often have more than a dozen stations devoted to infomercials/home shopping, ethnic shows, religious programming, and independent network affiliates. The FCC suspects some of these lower-rated stations will see the money as a strong incentive to surrender their broadcast licenses.

Genachowski

The FCC considered several spectrum-saving proposals that would free up as much channel space as possible to resell to wireless operators. One proposal would have full power broadcast outlets switch to low-powered cellular-style transmitter networks to reduce the potential interference on an increasingly crowded dial. But that proved unpopular and expensive for broadcasters. Instead, the FCC predicts stations could effectively share channels and still retain HD service. For example, a local CBS station could agree to surrender its license and broadcast instead over the transmitting facilities of the local NBC station, splitting one station’s allocated channel bandwidth in half. Other stations will be relocated on the dial or moved to different transmitter sites to reduce potential interference from stations in nearby cities.

Stations that do not require an HD service could share space with those serving several standard definition channels to the public. These are typically public, educational, or ethnic-oriented broadcasters.

As a consequence, the FCC says many stations might have to give up on their “multicast” standard definition secondary services — the 24 hour local weather or news channel, Me-TV, This TV, Retro TV, Antenna TV, and Bounce, for example, because there would be insufficient bandwidth when two services sharing one channel are transmitting in HD.

The FCC does not believe stations would mind too much, quoting from RBR/TVBR:

“So far, nobody’s been able to figure out what can go on a digital side channel and pay for its own presence there. Mostly it’s been used as a revenue-neutral or money-losing place to put 24-hour weather… Nobody watches these things in strong enough numbers to generate any advertising revenue.”

But the FCC did recognize that certain viewers in fringe reception zones could experience a loss of service — one that could be addressed by subsidizing improved antennas for homeowners or requiring cable or satellite operators to develop a “lifeline” television service consisting of local broadcasters, either for free or at a minimal monthly cost.

Some consumer groups worry that any forthcoming spectrum auction would be dominated by Verizon Wireless and AT&T — the nation’s two largest carriers, who could easily outbid smaller cell phone companies also clamoring for spectrum. During the last auction in 2008, which netted nearly $20 billion, Verizon Wireless walked away with the bulk of the spectrum on offer. Without auction rules setting aside significant spectrum for smaller competitors, both dominant carriers could lock up one of the last spectrum auctions for the next 5-10 years, cementing their de facto duopoly.

The FCC is considering reworking its market concentration rules before the bidding begins, which could constrain Verizon and AT&T from bidding and winning the bulk of available frequencies in the cities where they dominate.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg FCC Chair on Spectrum Auctions 9-10-12.flv[/flv]

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski talks about rising demand for mobile broadband access and the outlook for spectrum auctions to free up more airwaves. He speaks with Cory Johnson on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”  (7 minutes)

On important issues for the online community, there are some substantial differences between the Democratic and Republican parties, particularly regarding Net Neutrality.

A review of the yas and nays in both party platforms (and past history in Congress) shows your vote can make a difference when Washington ultimately deals with privacy, network traffic, piracy, cybersecurity, and broadband expansion.

Net Neutrality – “Preserving the free and open Internet”: Prohibits providers from discriminating against different types of network traffic for profit or control

• Democrats: Yas
• Republicans: Nay

While the Democratic platform specifically states, “President Obama is strongly committed to protecting an open Internet,” one “that fosters investment, innovation, creativity, consumer choice, and free speech,” Republicans have treated Net Neutrality as anathema to the free market. Although virtually every Republican member of Congress has voted against Net Neutrality or publicly opposed the concept, some Democrats have as well, particularly those who have received significant financial contributions from the largest phone and cable companies lobbying against the policy.

Net Neutrality has not proved to be a major issue in Congress this year, with most of the recent battles taking place at the Federal Communications Commission. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski applauded a ‘third way’ for Net Neutrality, staking out a middle-of-the-road policy that pleased few outside of the FCC. It largely leaves the concept a “suggestion” for wireless carriers. Replete with loopholes and enforcement issues, even wired providers like Comcast have run around the policy for their own benefit.

Network Privacy – Full disclosure when websites track your browsing habits, and how online companies protect your private information

• Democrats: Yas, provisionally
• Republicans: Yas, provisionally

Net privacy is a topic many consumers hear about the most when a website gets hacked and private customer information is stolen in the process. But a growing number of consumers are also concerned about what websites are doing with their information and how their web visits are being tracked for advertising purposes. Large online companies like Facebook and Google have a vested interest in keeping this space as unregulated as possible to maintain lucrative revenue earned selling demographic information to advertisers. But consumers may not want advertisers to know the websites they visit, and members of both political parties have expressed growing interest in taming who gets their hands on your private stuff. Republicans are primarily concerned about tracking by government agencies, Democrats are more concerned with for-profit use of customer data.

The Republican platform abhors government intrusion into private liberty — primarily a reference to certain forms of surveillance. But the GOP platform is silent on enhancing privacy rights of consumers. The Obama Administration has been calling for a “Privacy Bill of Rights” that permits consumers to opt out of web tracking cookies and other tracking technology. Democrats separately want companies to do a better job disclosing and explaining how private information is being used. But Congress, under heavy lobbying to avoid the issue, never acted on the administration’s request.

Expanding Broadband: Finding New Wireless Spectrum and Improved Rural Access

• Democrats: Yas on both
• Republicans: Yas on one, vacillating  on the other

While neither party fully embraces their respective platforms while governing, their stated positions often reflect political positioning when new laws are contemplated.

The Democrats tout both their National Broadband Plan and the Obama Administration’s commitment to find Internet access for 98 percent of the country and expand spectrum available to meet the growing demands for wireless data. The Democratic platform touted President Obama’s proposal to promote wireless broadband as a possible rural Internet solution.