Subject: [report-release-list] Yochai Benkler's "Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption" published in latest issue of JOLT
From: Amar Ashar <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:27:15 -0500
List-Id: <report-release-and-press-list.eon.law.harvard.edu>

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is 
pleased to announce the publication of *Open Wireless vs. Licensed 
Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption 
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2012/unlicensed_wireless_v_licensed_spectrum>*, 
authored by Yochai Benkler, and published in the latest issue of the 
Harvard Journal of Law & Technology.

The paper reviews evidence from eight wireless markets: mobile 
broadband; wireless healthcare; smart grid communications; inventory 
management; access control; mobile payments; fleet management; and 
secondary markets in spectrum.

Benkler finds that markets are adopting unlicensed wireless strategies 
in mission-critical applications, in many cases more so than they are 
building on licensed strategies.  If the 1990s saw what was called "the 
Negroponte Switch" of video from air to wire, and telephony from wire to 
air, the present and near future are seeing an even more fundamental 
switch.  Where a decade ago most of our wireless capacity was delivered 
over exclusive control approaches-both command and control and auctioned 
exclusivity--complemented by special-purpose shared spectrum use, today 
we are moving to a wireless infrastructure whose core relies on shared, 
open wireless approaches, complemented by exclusive control approaches 
for special, latency-intolerant, high-speed mobile applications.  The 
scope of the latter will contract further if regulation catches up to 
technological reality, and opens up more bands to open wireless 
innovation, with greater operational flexibility and an emphasis on 
interoperability

This final version of the paper uses more updated market data than the 
2011 working paper 
<http://www.benkler.org/Open_Wireless_V_Licensed_Spectrum_Market_Adoption_current.pdf>, 
adds case study analysis of failures or anemic cases of open wireless 
allocations, the U-PCS, WMTS, ITS, and 3.65GHz bands (suggesting 
valuable lessons for future design of open wireless allocations), and 
adds an extensive literature review and rebuttal to some of the major 
academic critiques of open wireless approaches.

As always, we welcome your feedback.

-The Berkman Center Team

This announcement can be found online at: 
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/8173