>>fred: so, it's my privilege to introducelarry page, co-founder and president of products from google.and, again, chairman kevin martin from the fcc who was kind enough to say a few wordsthis morning. so, we're just going to have a little conversationabout the various issues out there surrounding wireless broadband.and get the various perspectives both from google, but also from the fcc. >>martin: larry, fred and i spoke this morning,and there were not these cameras in the front row.so i just want to point out that all the cameras that are there are not for fred and i.
>>fred: yeah, i think that's right.well, then we better start with larry. [laughter] >>fred: so, i think everyone knows that googlewas very interested in the whitespaces proceeding that was done a couple of days ago.and so, maybe you could just talk a little bit about your reaction to that and why thatwas so important for wireless broadband. >>page: yeah, i think --first of all, i reallywant to applaud the chairman and the fcc for doing the right thingand for doing something that i think is one of the most important things that they coulddo and that's happened in technology in a long time.my favorite story i guess about all this is
that we all use wifi all the time to connectto the internet, right? at google, basically everybody is just sittingaround with their laptops, and they're only using wifi to do all their work.in fact, we have ethernet cables, but they don't even plug them in because the wifi isso good that there's no point. and if you look at the history of that, itwas really an accident. i mean, there was some really bad spectrumthat people thought was totally worthless that was used for heating things--for microwaveovens. and no one thought it could really be goodfor anything. and so it was put in the sun license regime.and eventually wifi came along and great engineers
got hold of it and made it better and betterand now it's basically used for all of our internet connections.and i think that story--hopefully, we'll repeat that story now again.we have very good prospect to repeat it. there's forecast to be a billion wifi devicesproduced this year--the chipsets for wifi. and that number is amazing if you think aboutit. and those chips are on the order of $5 becausethere's a billion of them produced. and you think about how that's really changedthe world. you know, i have a g1 phone from t-mobilewhich we worked on a lot. it's got wifi built in as i expect all phoneswill in the pretty near future.
and i think because of this order it's likelythat all phones will also have whitespaces built in--and all laptops and computers andso on. and i think that people have not really understoodthe importance of that. we have--basically, every device that's beingproduced is with wifi in it. with whitespaces you have that same capabilityto do a really low cost device, but it can go much, much further.if you have a wifi, you might have noticed that on the edge of your house it doesn'treally work. or, in fact, the 2.4 gigahertz thats usedfor wifi basically goes through 2 walls and then it stops.so if you are more than 2 walls away from
that wifi hotspot or that hub, you're notgoing to get a connection at all. and that happens a lot.and we wire up all our buildings--we've done all of mountain view right near here withwifi. you need a tremendous number of transmittersand so on. but with whitespaces you'll need many, manyfewer of those things. and the cost difference there is going tobe astounding--hugely different. and so i think in terms of how people arereally able to use the internet; how they're able to communicate with each other; how ruralareas will be able to have connectivity-- this will be a tremendously, tremendouslyimportant thing.
and i'm really, really excited about it.i think the thing that people don't realize is that radios are on a similar trajectoryto computers. if you look at why wifi works even thoughpeople thought it was a worthless spectrum, it's because the computers are much betterthan they used to be and those are running the radios and you cando really cool things with it. you can do better directionality as in n--use80211.n. you can do spread spectrum.you can do all these things. so the amount of data you can get througha given piece of spectrum is continuing to increase.so what this means, i think, for everyday
consumers is you'll have--you'll be able togo out and buy-- just like now you can go out to best buy orsomething and buy a hotspot or a hub for your house or for a business, but it will go muchfurther. it will be faster, and it will be the samecost as it is now probably--or even less as the volumes go up.i think that will have a really, really big impact.i think there will be interesting business models that will happen where people are ableto really provide service in ways that are very difficult now.i just notice in the news today that at&t just bought wiport for $275 million.they have 10,000 access points.
so each access point cost at&t $27,000.now if you figure that it would be nice if those access points covered 5 times the areaor something. i think that's really what the fcc has enabledwith the whitespace proceeding. and at no cost to anybody in the country oranything like that. so i guess that i am just tremendously excitedabout that. >>fred: well, mr. chairman, with all thispotential i know that there was always the concern about interference to broadcastersand wireless mics and the others and very difficult to resolve.i was just wondering what your perspective was on the balance between the innovationsthat larry spoke about and the interference
of service. >>martin: well, the commission is certainlyvery conscious about trying to make sure we did adequately protect the broadcastersand to some degree the wireless microphones, as well.i think one of the ironies of that debate was that wireless microphones were a greatexample of how this spectrum could be used in an unlicensed basis.wireless microphones are not licensed, and indeed many of the wireless microphones thatare in use didn't even go through the fcc certification process the way theywere original supposed to. and so i think that they were actually anexample of how you could use this capability
without interfering with your broadcast televisionsignals. and i think we certainly benefitted tremendouslyat the commission from people like larry who came in and tried to explain to us both howthis could be done without interfering and what the importanceof it was to the kind of connectivity that larry was just talking about.and we certainly benefitted, as well, from julie knapp who is the chief engineer at thecommission and who spent an extraordinary amount of time on this issuetrying to make sure that he listened to the concerns that were raised by every part thatwas involved, and trying to make sure that he guided thecommission in such a way that it wasn't going
to create undue interference,but at the same time recognized the real potential that this is going to have--ultimately notwith just the united states, but i think one of the things that i think,larry, was implicit in your statement a minute ago is really for the world.everyone else uses the same broadcast frequencies, and they have the same opportunities to takeadvantage of those whitespaces the same as we're doing here.and i think that this is going to allow for us to use those frequencies with those technicalcharacteristics that larry was talking about about being able to penetrate walls more easilyand carry great amounts of data and use those to connect people not just in this countrybut around the world.
so i think it was, and i do think that weowe a large debt of gratitude to the folks who came and helped us understand the importanceof it. and this is something that--larry, i had metyou in washington once, but i know we talked about this when i was out here about 18 monthsago-- just how important this issue was going tobe and it was critical for the commission to try to be able to address it.and i think it will be very important for consumers. >>page: we should say, too, that interferencehas kind of an interesting concept. for example, we have meetings with our salespeople and stuff.
they all have laptops as a lot of you guysdo out there. we have actually maybe 4 or 5 thousand peopleall in room all running wifi. and it works.they don't interfere with each other. they can actually use the internet and itworks fine. so a lot of this is having smart technologythat can really allow people to share the spectrum that's out there and to do the thingsthey need to get done. >>fred: well, i know that there was a lotof discussion about what the right power limits ought to be and whether things too conservativeor too aggressive. and i think there's been some more questionsasked about some of these issues.
larry, do you think the job here is done orwould google like to see more as the technology becomes more advanced and we move forward. >>page: maybe we should hear from the chairmanon this. >>martin: i think that the--we'll hear fromlarry on it, as well--but i think that ought to put in place a way to try to do more.it was an important and aggressive first step. but there is more that we can potentiallyend up doing. we are going to ask some simple questionsabout, for example, can we raise the power limits even higher in rural areas?there are several theories that were put forth to the commission that larry actually wasreally a primary author and person pushing
about how the commission could actually usebasically a formulaic response to try to figure out what the appropriate power limits arein any given circumstance. and so, while we have set these rules in placein a more simplistic way--the way the commission has--i think that there's the potential for us to move to a more dynamic way of analyzingjust how much spectrum there is available. the sensing technologies that we talk aboutputting in place are just one small part of it.you can actually do the same thing in terms of how much power you could put out.and i think that you're going to see increasing sophistication in devices.and what's really exciting is that to the
extent that we're able to integrate that capabilityinto mass production like you're talking about the wifi was able to be done,then you're going to be able to see tremendous advances.and you're going to be able to see us improving on the way that we can take advantage of thisspectrum. you know, i've already been talking to someof the folks in this room about how they should be trying to look athow do you use what we did on tuesday to complement the wimax kind of technologies and try toresolve some of the challenges that that might faceindoors, for example. and you should be looking at how you can usethese as complementary connectivity just like
wifi and your wireless connections are usedtoday. >>page: i think we've made tremendous, tremendousprogress there. and i think there's a few things that we'llstill get done, and i'm very optimistic about them.but i think we've done enough so that there is enough power and enough distance you canget in a vast majority places that there will be a lot of commercial interestin making these devices and making them in huge quantities.and i think there's also tremendous potential for improving that over time as we get betterin making the technology and julie and people like that at the fccget better at understanding what the issues
really are.i should say, too, that part of the concept of this is that there is a database that kindof tells you what you can do. so when you plug in one of these devices andit's connected to the internet it sort of asks, "where am i""what tv transmitters are around me?" and so on which is a pretty easy thing to know.and then, based on that, "what am i allowed to do?"and i think now that we have the internet and things like that and computers the fccis actually in a position where it can change the rules around thatas it learns more about what the issues really are.the rules don't have to be made once and then
for the next 30 years they're actually thesame. you say, "oh, well actually in these ruralareas, there's really--there's less issue than we expected-- >>martin: yeah. >>page: "--and so powers can go higher."and that kind of stuff can get done and implemented quickly.i think that would make a big difference, as well. >>martin: yeah, i agree with that.and i think we'll be able to continue to improve on the rules that we put in place to allowus to take even more and more advantage of
it. >>fred: you know, with the dtv transitioncoming up pretty quickly, the environment is going to be ripe for these devices to startto take place in the market. and, while neither one of you is technicallya supplier at this point--and, maybe larry you have talked to some folks or the chairmanhas-- when do you think we will start to see someactual devices in this space and start to take hold in the market? >>page: i don't have real inside info.i think there's a lot of people working on devices.i think people can be pretty fast.
i wouldn't be surprised if in a year and halfor something like that there are real devices out there that work. >>martin: i think that one of the advantagesof the rules that the commission put in place when you're talking about geo-location capabilities--youknow-- most cell phones today already have thosecapabilities. actually, let me phrase it this way.most cell phones are supposed to already have that capability.so that technology is readily available, and i think that is going to be very easy to incorporatein. and just having a database that does a lookupis not complicated at all.
so that part of it should be relatively easyfor people to be able to integrate in. but even with that being the case, it stilltakes 18 months or so for people to design and then go to market with any kind of changes.so it's still a little ways off. but as larry said, when things can take offon a mass production scale, it can end up happening pretty quick-- just like we've seenin wifi. >>fred: well, i know that you, mr. chairman,have focused a lot of your time on broadband issues.and google has been involved in more than just the whitespaces.they were also very heavily involved in the 700 megahertz band proceeding that the chairmanspoke a little bit about this morning
and how it's led to more openness in wirelessbroadband. >>page: we actually owned some 700 megahertzspectrum for one weekend. >>page: and it was a long weekend. >>fred: maybe you could talk a little bitabout google's interest in this area--the speculation that maybe google wants to actuallybuild a network. or is the interest just more in broadbandgenerally? maybe you could describe a little bit whatgoogle sees in the wireless broadband space. >>page: people think we're really funny alittle bit when we talk about this, but google is big enough that we can afford to do deals.in fact, we do deals with sort of all the
wireless people.we'd love to do deals with all of you who are here and to get distribution of our productsand to make things work better and so on. so we have a lot of those deals in place withwireless carriers and with broadband providers and people like that.things like putting the google toolbar in. or putting google maps on the phones or thingslike that. for us, we have all those relationships.it's not really that big a deal. but we came from the internet.we started as 2 guys at stanford in a garage. and all of a sudden our service was availableto everybody in the world instantly. and i think that property is a really importantproperty to preserve of the internet.
and so i really applaud, again, the work that'sbeen done on network neutrality. i prefer to call it open internet.to really make sure that if 2 people are in a garage somewhere, and they can turn on theirwebsite, it actually works everywhere in the world.and it's fast. and it's not slower than the other guy's website.i think that's just an important property to have--innovation and progress in the world.i don't want people to forget that about the internet.because they want everybody to do really complicated deals so that they can get their servicesdistributed. i don't think that's a very good idea forthe world.
so, we've been active in that area.again, not for our own interests as much. it's just making sure that the culture ofthe internet of innovation and new services can exist and continue to grow and so on.i think the work that's been done there has been very good.i don't think it's very complicated. all you have to say is you can't discriminateagainst different people just because you want to.and there's actually even a fine line between that and censorship.if you look at what countries that are censoring do, they don't turn things off.they make it slower. that's the best way to censor something becauseyou can never find out that it's really being
censored.it's just kind of unreliable and slow, and people don't use it.so i think there's just an issue that that's not a good way to run--democracy is not agood way to run the world. and so we've been very active in trying toget people to do that. so that was the main question that you asked? >>fred: i think there's more than the 700megahertz that the fcc has recently involved in this area, as well. >>martin: at the commission we try to findan important balance on this issue. when the issue at times was debated in thepast, there was a concern raised by some of
the network operators that if we put rulesin place that what we could inadvertently do is actuallydiminish the value in their investment of their networksor could artificially limit their kind of reasonable network management techniques thatthey were trying to take. and so, i think the commission tried againto listen to both sides like we did on the whitespaces and find a reasonable kind ofapproach. but, at bottom, i think what you've seen thecommission do over the last 18 months and what we did in the 700 megahertz auction--the conditions we placed upon the c block that it had to be open to any applicationsand devices--
and what we did in the context of the complaintabout comcast artificially blocking peer-to-peer applications is the commission said no.we do want to foster the kind of openness that larry was talking about .we want an environment that doesn't have the network operators artificially limiting wherepeople can go on the internet or what content their going to have access to.and that we've tried to say very clearly that we're going to look at any network operatorin the context of the comcast decision where we said that we're going to look atany operator who is making any--putting in place any artificial barriers.and we're going to say that that doesn't make sense when you're picking on a particularkind of application or even on a particular
type of applicationlike peer-to-peer if it can't be justified in terms of something on a non-discriminatorybasis like you're trying to be concerned about just the amount of capacitythat's being used. and there are ways to manage your networkwithout having to look at individual applications or types of applications.you can do it in terms of, for example, the bandwidth that's being utilized.and i think even perhaps more important, as i mentioned a little bit this morning, iswith what's happened in the wireless space where within a relatively short amount oftime--a little over a year--you've seen a transformation in the direction of wirelessfrom a complete walled garden kind of approach.
when i was out here in silicon valley probably18 months ago or so before we established the rules for the 700 megahertz auction,you heard application creator after application creator come in talking about the difficultythey were going to have getting their applications on a wireless networksto now all of the wireless network operators talking about how they're going to move toa more open environment and incorporating the opportunity for applicationdevelopers to take advantage of that. and so, that's in various stages from thegoogle phone that's running--the t-mobiles running it with android platformto the iphone with it trying to take steps to being more open to application developersto verizon's commitment that they're going
to be completely opento the new clearwire announcement that they're going to have a completely different businessmodel that's going to be open to that from the beginning.and i think that just demonstrates how you've seen almost every major player--and like isaid--in a very short amount of time completely embrace that more open environment.and i think you're just going to continue to see that trend accelerate. >>fred: yeah, you know i talked a little bitthis morning when we presented chairman martin with the government leadership award aboutall of the spectrum he has made available. and he's talked a little bit about anotheritem that would make even more available--as
we kind of gointo this--the next administration, and there will be some changes and the like.what does google think should be done to sort of bring these innovative applications tothose who might not have access at the current time? >>page: i think just in general making accesscheaper, making it more available, more places--you know--and so on is probably the most importantthing we can do. that's why i mentioned that with the whitespacesjust increasing the radius that you can cover. when we compute the cost of covering a city,that's like the main thing that determines the cost.so i think in terms of getting people basic
universal access that works well, i thinkthat's well within our technological abilities to do.it's really a question of can we get everybody organized, get the regulatory work done, andso on to make that happen. i think we can do that.so i'm very optimistic. i think this making the $5 communication chiplike we have with wifi that just works--once we have those for $5, they can be distributedall around the world to everybody, and that's what's going to cause people to have reallygood access to communications. >>fred: and, mr. chairman, i know you've madebroadband access a focal point. maybe you could talk a little bit about whatmay be left to be done.
>>martin: i think ultimately the thing thati think the commission still has left to do is we need to reform our universal servicesystem and bring that into the 21st century. move it away from a system in which we'repaying sometimes 1 provider, sometimes multiple providers to provide voice grade serviceand have it move into an era where we're trying to utilize the resources we have there tofocus in on connecting people to broadband connections in the future.and to continue to pour money down to keep voice connectivity in rural areas--voice connectivityalone in rural areas and/or keep voice services cheaper, it doesn'tmake any sense when if you can just move that support to a broadband mechanismyou could end up having a voice over ip system
that would end up still allowing that voicegrade connectivity. and so we've got to find a way to say howdo we take our lifeline linkup program where we allow people who arequalified to be economically disadvantaged to get subsidies so they can have cheap phoneservice? and how do we instead stop talking about givingthem cheap phone service and start talking about giving them a cheaper broadband connectivityso that they can be connected, as well? and i think we need to do that in urban areasand in rural areas and move that universal service mechanism.we spend a lot of money. the whole program is about 8 billion dollarsa year between schools and libraries, rural
health care clinicsand the money we pay for rural and low income. and we need to move that all into broadbandconnections going forward. >>page: yeah. >>fred: any other parting thoughts, larry,on broadband and our broadband future. >>page: again, i'm very optimistic.i think there is so much potential in what all of you are doing in really improving people'sbasic communications. i'm amazed in our office we've got 1 gigabitlinks. the hardware for that is about $50 or somethinglike that. getting that in your house is close to impossiblein most places.
so i think in terms of the technology we haveavailable--we have amazing technologies available to do both wireless things and to do wiredconnections and fiber and all those things for very, verylow cost. we're not yet really using those things.and we're not really on the path that the computer industry has been on where we're--youknow, the stuff's not really getting replaced every 2 years or whatever.and so, i think there's tremendous business opportunities to really improve the qualityof service that people get in ways that will really affect them.and also to really use that. the difference between what people are reallygetting or able to get now and what's possible
technologically to make good business modelsand to make this really happen and serve all the people who don't really have service,and so on. and i think we've seen that happen more--somewhatmore in a lot of other countries that have higher densities and so on.but i think in the u.s. we could really be first--not somewhere in the middle--if weget all this stuff right. we're set up to do that.we have the technologies. we have the innovation.and we have a government now that's been doing a good job of doing some of the regulatorythings we need to do to make that happen. so i'm very optimistic.
>>fred: well, i'd like to thank fcc chairmanmartin and larry page from google for joining us today. [applause] >>martin: thank you all. thanks.
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