Metered nation

What a strange paradoxical digital world this is, with its seemingly endless supply of free content gushing through broadband pipes amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. How can this be? Is there such a thing as a free lunch after all, even in these depressing economic times?
It turns out traditional economic principles are, indeed, at work. It’s all about attracting Web traffic with freebies so as to generate revenue-producing advertising, a formula not so different from advertising-based, free-over-the-air TV that barely exists today if you’re lucky enough to get a coupon or two to help pay for converter boxes that may or may not capture those new-fangled digital broadcast signals.
In reality, though, the notion of unlimited free content – free anything for that matter – is mostly illusion and will remain that way for reasons owing to economics, the laws of physics, politics and the rest.
New York Gov. David Paterson (D) wants to impose a 4% tax on Web downloads such as music, software, videos and pornography, leading one lawmaker to assert the proposal effectively legitimizes digital smut. The Empire State is trying to plug a $15 billion deficit, the kind of predicament faced by other states – including many already wise to the ploy of taxing commercial wireless services to raise needed state funds. Agence France-Presse reports that nearly 20 states have embraced the “iPod tax,” and Mississippi, North Dakota and Wisconsin are considering jumping on the bandwagon.
Call it taxation or government-imposing metering, but the Transportation Secretary is enamored with the concept as it relates to driving because taxing gas is apparently insufficient to keep the nation’s highways and bridges intact. The big winner could be GPS chip vendors if wireless navigation devices become as prevalent in vehicles as they already are in mobile phones.
With wireless devices predicted to become the primary means by which consumers access the Internet in the future and with the plethora of bandwidth-gobbling content and applications, the Stalwart Stewards of Spectrum – Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. – will have no choice but to continue holding the line on high-volume data usage or else risk crashing their networks at everyone else’s expense. The question is how much weight policymakers will give network management as they field calls to expand open access/net neutrality throughout the wireless space.
The growing trend toward mobile broadband raises another policy issue, one which was flagged in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress: finding more, propagation rich spectrum for wireless carriers. It seems like this issue habitually pops up every decade or so. Indeed, it does because of the undeniable reality that the future is broadband mobility. You can take it with you. Powerful, mini-me technology makes it possible. Adequate spectrum is really the only limitation.