Is Microsoft Hustling Us With 'White Spaces'? (wired.com) 65
rgh02 writes:
Microsoft recently announced their plan to deploy unused television airwaves to solve the digital divide in America. And while the media painted this effort as a noble one, at Backchannel, Susan Crawford reveals the truth: "Microsoft's plans aren't really about consumer internet access, don't actually focus on rural areas, and aren't targeted at the US -- except for political purposes." So what is Microsoft really up to?
The article's author believes Microsoft's real game is "to be the soup-to-nuts provider of Internet of Things devices, software, and consulting services to zillions of local and national governments around the world. Need to use energy more efficiently, manage your traffic lights, target preventative maintenance, and optimize your public transport -- but you're a local government with limited resources and competence? Call Microsoft."
The article argues Microsoft wants to bypass mobile data carriers who "will want a pound of flesh -- a percentage -- in exchange for shipping data generated by Microsoft devices from Point A to Point B... [I]n many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies -- spectrum -- under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars."
The article's author believes Microsoft's real game is "to be the soup-to-nuts provider of Internet of Things devices, software, and consulting services to zillions of local and national governments around the world. Need to use energy more efficiently, manage your traffic lights, target preventative maintenance, and optimize your public transport -- but you're a local government with limited resources and competence? Call Microsoft."
The article argues Microsoft wants to bypass mobile data carriers who "will want a pound of flesh -- a percentage -- in exchange for shipping data generated by Microsoft devices from Point A to Point B... [I]n many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies -- spectrum -- under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars."
Sure! (Score:1)
This is why the space bar is the largest in the PC keyboard!
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Facebook and Google will be buying up all the tabs and newlines.
Well, shit. How am I going to program in my favorite language [wikipedia.org] any longer then?
Evil MS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Evil MS (Score:4, Interesting)
More unlicensed spectrum would be good from everyone except the telcos. It would spur innovation, cut costs, and provide no specific benefit to Microsoft. Microsoft is a small participant in the IoT market, and they have a poor track record outside their dominant markets. Google and Amazon will benefit from this much more than Microsoft.
Microsoft is doing a Good Thing here.
Re:Evil MS (Score:4, Insightful)
The old TV spectrum is extremely valuable because the lower the frequency, the better the radio wave propagation at a given transmission power. That makes it ideal for low power devices like sensor networks, automated meter reading, and portables.
The trade off is that because propagation is good you need to manage it carefully, because one device hogging a frequency blocks other devices in a wide area. For things like sensors and meter reading that's no problem, as they tend to transmit very small amounts of data anyway. A few bytes an hour, or even a month for something like an electricity meter.
Not sure it's a good idea putting it in the hands of a corporation like Microsoft.
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Not sure it's a good idea putting it in the hands of a corporation like Microsoft.
That is not what is being proposed here. The spectrum would be unlicensed. Microsoft could use it, but so could anyone else, similar to how anyone can use 2.4GHz.
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And that's what makes it such a bad idea.
If you think open spectrum is such a bad idea, they why do you use technology based on it, such as Wifi? Why don't you use a closed spectrum proprietary solution that is "better"? Perhaps because they suck, are expensive, and mostly no longer exist (because they sucked)?
We already have a ton of problems with the 2.4GHZ spectrum because devices don't play well with each other.
The solution to that is MORE open spectrum, rather than cramming everything into 2.4GHz. The UHF spectrum would be perfect for things like sensors and other IoT devices where range and battery life is more important than bandwidth.
Re: Evil MS (Score:1)
Re: Evil MS (Score:2)
They want to become a carrier of their own. Why use a carrier if you can be a monopoly in the business.
And? (Score:3)
Oh no! Bypassing monopolies and disintermediating middlemen?! The horror...
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Good news! A new monopoly player wants to take over from old monopoly players.
I just don't see how this will help anybody but the monopolists.
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Pray tell, what is the new monopoly? The article says that the white spaces exceptions would be unlicensed spectrum. The article also says that Microsoft is pushing for a regulatory market that will encourage manufacturers to mass produce appropriate chipsets. Did Microsoft start manufacturing wireless chipsets suddenly?
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Microsoft is a monopoly (certified by Federal court). It has used it's monopoly position in computer software to take over additional markets. No reason to believe they won't try the same thing here.
(Microsoft has been able to establish a monopoly in "open" markets. You don't need regulatory mandates to establish a monopoly.)
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In 1999. Hardly a "new monopoly player," even ignoring developments in the last 18 years.
Name one. Hint: it's not servers, internet browsers, gaming consoles, or phone operating system
Good news (Score:5, Funny)
That's good news: the so-called "internet of things" needed to be knocked back 20 years until society can get a handle on security and accountability. Microsoft is just the organization to provide the necessary retrograde motion.
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So rather than having any sort of principled position against rent-seeking, you're fine with it as long as it injures someone or something that you don't like.
Way to be part of the problem...
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Way to make completely unfounded accusations and do nothing but bitch about it anonymously.
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No, yours was lead off with "Boo F-ing Hoo," which also indicates that one vehemently does not care.
Yes, you have a position on rent seeking -- a shit position. I asserted that you have no principled position on rent seeking, which is so
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Re: HomeKit (Score:1)
Mobile and Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft hasn't had a successful entry into a new market since..what? The xbox? Their mobile efforts have not only been disasters, they've been repeated and predictable disasters.
They've got their core markets ( desktop, server/services, gaming ), and are arguably "improving" them successfully ( with some serious mis steps along the way ), but I just don't see how anyone can think they'll pull a rabbit out of their hat here.
Re:Mobile and Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
You forgot cloud platforms. Office 365 is #1 in cloud "productivity" and Azure is #2 in cloud hosting.
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A fair point.
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MS has leverage.
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Decades ago people said M$ main aim was to become a corporate tax parasite, taxing all transactions whilst providing next to nothing. It seems they were correct. M$ is pretty bad at supply product and better at marketing and lobbying and maximising gain from a monopoly. They seem to have a real deep seated problem with arrogance, their customers will do what M$ says and not the other way around, this seems to bring their new products undone and the xbone is now losing more and more market share to playstati
Smart market to get into (Score:4, Insightful)
Once they become, not just a "product" but a whole "ecosystem" of products for municipal governments, they will never have more loyal, nay, slavishly devoted customers. I just finished 30 years with a local government. I was in the water department, which had its own budget for a little of the early-PC era, when they were considered toys. I watched the IT department take over that end.
I watched with my bewilderment gradually exceeding my disgust as the same bunch that clung bitterly to their IBM mainframe environment long after it was obviously obsolete, jumped eagerly into the arms of Microsoft, glad to have new Masters that would tell them their strategy and what to buy. Once they paid attention to the formerly-hated PCs at all, they ensured the fewest-possible vendors in the "environment" by going MS with *everything* that MS sold. Macs were quickly eliminated, then competing software, anywhere that MS had an offering. It wasn't just the office products and all the development tools, dutifully switching from VB to .Net to C# when MS told them to: it was how they became MS salesmen themselves 5 minutes after leaving the sales meeting.
Nothing was ever even discussed in terms of "choices" or selections, things like OLE and MSN and IE and Silverlight were just enthusiastically described as the obvious future, the only road forward.
So I can't recommend strongly enough to MS shareholders that you get your company installed in local governments everywhere. They're big enough to buy lots of product, and not courageous enough to try anything else. Out in the service-providing departments, customers that are paying for all this, can come forward with obviously-superior products at lower prices, and IT will blandly mouth words about "Total Cost of Ownership", and "Integration with other products" without doing a cost-study, and never look into them. Why would they? MS will be the obvious Road Ahead, onward to the 22nd century.
Re:Smart market to get into (Score:4, Funny)
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They bring huge value to the IT department, yes, but the IT department is 5% of the municipal government corporation. At only 5%, IT could run 20% cheaper, and still only chop 1% from the corporate budget.
Meanwhile, their convenience is costing time and money for the customer-serving departments. You could prove this if you tried both products and compared the results, but that was never even permitted. MS was a "strategy", a word meaning "not subject to cost/benefit analysis" and their products were ne