Wireless Broadband in 2021 May Be Faster Than Wireline Is Now, Shapiro Says

Wireless broadband in 2021 will be faster than wireline access now is, cars could be virtual social networks, radio stations will have “fully embraced” HD Radio and “no one cares” anymore about net neutrality, predicted CEA President Gary Shapiro. Autos could become rolling “music devices” with Internet access and electronics in the backseat akin to “rolling homes,” with most cars having social media features, he said Wednesday. Speaking to communications lobbyists and executives, Shapiro acknowledged that his predictions were semi-serious and that he was asked by President Patrick Maines of the Media Institute, whose luncheon he addressed, not to speak about spectrum in his prepared remarks. He managed anyway to get in a dig at the NAB, at odds with the CEA over spectrum and broadcasters’ desire for more cellphones to receive terrestrial radio.

On whether the consumer electronics and multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) industries can agree on an approach for AllVid devices, Shapiro said it was an “interesting question” without a foregone conclusion. The FCC has had the foresight to suggest a common platform for CE plug-and-play devices to connect to all MVPDs, Shapiro said during a Q-and-A. “NCTA does not yet have a new head” as Kyle McSlarrow prepares to depart, so Shapiro said he'll have to see what the future holds. NCTA meanwhile responded at the FCC to recent comments (CED Jan 28 p4) from the CEA and a variety of Internet companies and nonprofit groups that seek the issuance of a rulemaking notice on AllVid rules.

Shapiro sees “a consensus developing” on spectrum that “we have to shepherd” it, he said in the Q-and-A. He said the government may have located some radio waves to repurpose for wireless broadband -- an apparent allusion to the NTIA looking at the 1755-1850 MHz band for possible repurposing for wireless broadband. Plus there’s an incentive auction for broadcasters -- “at this point it’s theoretically voluntary,” Shapiro said: “I hope we can move forward in a voluntary way."

In 10 years, “privacy issues will remain volatile,” Shapiro predicted. “The European broad and proscriptive approach focuses on denying businesses any ability to do permission-based assistance. The American approach protects consumers from government.” The latter attitude lets U.S. Internet companies “maintain their dominance of the world, while the Europeans retain their air of superiority and their sub-par economy,” Shapiro said. In 2021, the issue of net neutrality is on “life support,” he said: “Policymakers from both sides of the aisle refuse to bite” by engaging on the issue and consumers can choose from more than a dozen ISPs “on multiple platforms."

Shapiro had some predictions for radio. He said he thinks what he described as a legal form of payola that’s disclosed to listeners should prevail, with radio stations getting exclusive deals to air music in their market. “Music on the road becomes something like product placements in movies,” with stations “offering exclusives by market, so radio stations can market themselves as the only one offering” it within an area, Shapiro said. He hopes there will be multiple streams of digital radio at many stations. What won’t catch on is radio on cellphones, Shapiro said. “A grand total of 13 U.S. consumers, 12 of whom are employees of the NAB, listen to music over their cellphones” from terrestrial broadcasts, he said. An NAB spokesman had no immediate comment.

What CEA and its allies seek is for the FCC to “ignore copyright, patent, trademark, contract privacy, licensing, and other legal rights and limitations,” through the recent comments from the group, Google, Sony and others, the NCTA said. Signers of a Jan. 26 ex parte filing seek a commission mandate “for CE device manufacturers to extract piece parts of a

multichannel offering for each CE manufacturer to remake into a service of its own design, as though each MVPD were a wholesale distributor of all content in all windows for delivery to all devices on every platform,” the NCTA said in a filing in docket 97-80. “Such a mandate would not only violate the affiliation agreements and intellectual property licenses under which multichannel programming is obtained and retailed, but it would also stunt the innovations that are taking place."

CEA and allies don’t propose for the best device to win, said the filing signed by NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg. “Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Sony, and Google make their content available only through a retail presence that they themselves define. They do not open their storerooms and databases for MVPDs to take as wholesale inventory and make a part of a ‘unified offering’ in a ’store’ provided” by a pay-TV company, NCTA said. “Under the Sony/Google proposal, retail device manufacturers could convert MVPDs into wholesale suppliers, but MVPDs would have no comparable right to incorporate the content of other types of video distributors into their own offerings.”