At an intimate event hosted by the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) and RocketSpace on November 19 at RocketSpace’s offices in San Francisco, Federal Communications Commissioner (FCC) Jessica Rosenworcel, Sequoia Capital partner Bill Coughran, and Singularity University’s Vice President of Research & Innovation Vivek Wadhwa, and drop-in guest Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom took on the topic of "Next-Gen Networks: Impact on Innovation, Education, Regulation and the Economy." The panel was moderated by Jamal Simmons, co-chair of IIA, a coalition supporting high speed broadband availability and access for all Americans.
A critical question addressed was how to make the transition from copper line telephone networks to IP-enabled networks. Commissioner Rosenworcel agreed with Simmons that it’s a good idea to conduct some pilots first and "have a sandbox culture for it," because it is "hard to do it in one fell swoop".
"I suggest we do trials and make it location specific, and see what incentives work," Rosenworcel said.
Rosenworcel also voiced her commitment to swiftly move forward on incentive auction rules, now that the Commission is fully populated with its new Chairman, Tom Wheeler, and new Republican Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. She reminded the audience that the proceeds from the incentive auctions will be used to help fund the new nationwide interoperable public safety communications network, FirstNet.
On broadband, Rosenworcel acknowledged that fast Internet is not a luxury anymore but a necessity for healthcare, government services and job seeking. She is very excited about was the reform of the E-rate program, which has become dated since its introduction in the Telecom Act in 1996, a time when the Internet was nascent. Rosenworcel said that in 1996, only 15% of the schools were connected to the Internet. Now, 96% are connected.
"It sounds like the job is done, but it is not," Rosenworcel said. "The issue now is capacity. We need to try to get equity in [broadband] capacity between schools and providing incentives for driving infrastructure upgrades."
She felt that if we could bring faster speeds to schools, this would be powerful for the communities in which the schools sit. She wondered aloud if another government stimulus grant similar to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could help make this happen.
VC Coughran highlighted what he termed a "big development," which is femtocell technology. A femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, used in homes or small businesses. A femtocell allows service providers to extend service coverage indoors or at the cell edge, where the ability to connect would otherwise be limited or unavailable. Coughran focused on the issue of getting femtocell technology to work with WiFi. He acknowledged that there are difficult marketplace challenges relating to WiFi in the US, but he felt new technology is coming to bring it successfully to the U.S. market in a cost effective manner.
A surprise guest was Lt. Gov. Newsom. Urged to take the stage, Newsom took a question about why America lags in broadband leadership globally.
"The monopoly of the incumbents needs to be broken up" to bring broadband to Americans at more affordable rates, he said. "Certain folks can rig the rules, and the politicians are captured by the incumbents. We have to move the cheese to move the incentives."
Newsom said he believed basic Internet access is critical for our state’s ability to compete globally and nationally. He noted he tried to bring free basic Internet access to San Francisco through the generous offer of the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when Newsom was mayor, but "politics got in the way" when Earthlink who stepped forward to help, then had funding problems.
Another issue addressed by Wadwa was how to overcome the bias towards male engineers whose ranks lack African-Americans, Latinos and females. Wadwa described a recent Oakland Hackathon held with teens from 5th to 10th grade. The teens were taught them to code on an FCC-approved tablet devices, which cost only $50. AT&T donated three months of Internet access to the teens who participated. At the beginning of the hackathon, they asked the teens whether if they thought they could be Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Only one teen raised a hand. By the end of the hackathon, they asked the same question, and all the teens raised their hands.
Further, Wadha asked how does one engage more women into the higher ranks of Silicon Valley leadership? Wadwa voiced his concerned that the venture capital world is heavily male-dominated, not to mention boards and senior management teams.
