Obama announces plan to free up 500MHz of spectrum, invest in 4G for rural areas, and build out nationwide public safety network

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release February 10, 2011
President Obama Details Plan to Win the Future through Expanded Wireless Access

Initiative expands wireless coverage to 98% of Americans, reduces deficit by nearly $10 billion, invests in nationwide public safety network

WASHINGTON-President Barack Obama will today detail his plan to win the future by catalyzing the buildout of high-speed wireless services that will enable businesses to grow faster, students to learn more, and public safety officials to access state-of-the-art, secure, nationwide, and interoperable mobile communications.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for a National Wireless Initiative to make available high-speed wireless services to at least 98 percent of Americans. The Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative laid out today will make it possible for businesses to achieve that goal, while freeing up spectrum through incentive auctions, spurring innovation, and creating a nationwide, interoperable wireless network for public safety. It will also reduce the national deficit by approximately $10 billion.

The President will announce the new initiative at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan, a city where local businesses have been able to grow as a result of broadband access, with particular benefit in exporting goods to new markets around the world. He will also see a demonstration of how the university's WiMAX network has enabled distance learning for university and community students.

For more details on the President's Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative, please see the fact sheet below:

The White House

FACT SHEET: President Obama's Plan to Win the Future through the Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative

In his State of the Union address, President Obama set the goal of enabling businesses to provide high-speed wireless services to at least 98 percent of all Americans within five years. The rollout of the next generation of high-speed wireless-the "4G" technology now being deployed in the United States by leading carriers-promises considerable benefits to our economy and society. More than 10 times faster than current high speed wireless services, this technology promises to benefit all Americans, bolster public safety, and spur innovation in wireless services, equipment, and applications. By catalyzing private investment and innovation and reducing the deficit by $9.6 billion, this initiative will help the United States win the future and compete in the 21st century economy.

Nearly Double Wireless Spectrum Available for Mobile Broadband: The President has set the goal of freeing up 500 MHz of spectrum for everything from smartphones to wireless broadband connectivity for laptops to new forms of machine-to-machine communication within a decade. Critical to realizing this goal are "voluntary incentive auctions" and more efficient use of government spectrum, estimated to raise $27.8 billion over the next decade.
Provide At Least 98% of Americans with Access to 4G High-Speed Wireless: Private investments are extending 4G to most of the Nation, but leaving some rural areas behind. The President's initiative would support a one-time investment of $5 billion and reform of the "Universal Service Fund" to ensure millions more Americans will be able to use this technology.
Catalyze Innovation Through a Wireless Innovation (WIN): To spur innovation, $3 billion of the spectrum proceeds will go to research and development of emerging wireless technologies and applications.
Develop and Deploy a Nationwide, Interoperable Wireless Network for Public Safety: The President's Budget calls for a $10.7 billion commitment to support the development and deployment of a nationwide wireless broadband network to afford public safety agencies with far greater levels of effectiveness and interoperability. An important element of this plan is the reallocation of the D Block for public safety and $500 million within the WIN Fund.
Cut the Deficit By $9.6 Billion Over the Next Decade: Nearly $10 billion of spectrum auction revenue will be devoted to deficit reduction.
Details of the President's Initiative

Nearly Double Wireless Spectrum Available for Mobile Broadband. The number of "Smartphones" will soon pass both conventional mobile phones and computers around the world, promising lower costs for such devices, more functionality, and greater demand for bandwidth (speed). 4G deployment is rising to meet this demand, but it relies on access to the "airwaves" that is currently constrained by a spectrum crunch that will hinder future innovation. To address this challenge, the President's initiative has set the goal of freeing up 500 MHz of spectrum. Specifically, the plan provides:
Win-win incentives for government holders. New financial-compensation tools and a commitment to using advanced technologies more effectively will enable government agencies to use spectrum more efficiently.
Win-win incentives for commercial holders. As recommended in the FCC's National Broadband Plan, legislation is needed to allow the FCC to conduct "voluntary incentive auctions" that enable current spectrum holders to realize a portion of auction revenues if they choose to participate.
The majority of the freed up spectrum would be auctioned for licensed mobile broadband, raising a projected $27.8 billion over the next decade, and a remainder would be for unlicensed use.
A Goal of 98% of Americans with Access to 4G High-Speed Wireless. America's businesses are building out 4G networks to much of the nation, with some major companies crediting the President's recent tax incentives for accelerating their efforts. Nevertheless, absent additional government investment, millions of Americans will not be able to participate in the 4G revolution. To that end, the President's Budget supports the 4G buildout in rural areas through a one-time $5 billion investment. This investment, to be managed by the FCC, will help catalyze universal service reform to provide access to higher-speed wireless and wired broadband, dovetail with the need for public safety to have a wireless network available in rural areas, and extend access from the almost 95% of Americans who have 3G wireless services today to at least 98% of all Americans gaining access to state-of-the-art 4G high-speed wireless services within five years. Extending access to high-speed wireless not only provides a valuable service to Americans living in those areas-access to medical tests, online courses, and applications that have not yet been invented-but also catalyzes economic growth by enabling consumers and businesses living in those areas to participate in the 21st century economy.
A Wireless Innovation (WIN) Fund to Help Drive Innovation. This $3 billion fund will advance our economic growth and competitiveness goals, supporting key technological developments that will enable and take advantage of the 4G rollout and pave the way for new technologies. The WIN Fund will support basic research, experimentation and testbeds, and applied development in a number of areas, including public safety, education, energy, health, transportation, and economic development.
Develop and Deploy A Nationwide, Interoperable Wireless Network For Public Safety. The 9/11 Commission noted that our homeland security is vulnerable, in part, due to the lack of interoperable wireless communication among first responders. The rollout of 4G high speed wireless services provides a unique opportunity to deploy such a system in conjunction with the commercial infrastructure already being developed and deployed. To seize that opportunity, President Obama is calling for an investment of $10.7 billion to ensure that our public safety benefits from these new technologies: $3.2 billion to reallocate the "D Block" (which is a band of spectrum that would be reserved and prioritized for public safety and not auctioned as called for under existing law); $7 billion to support the deployment of this network; and $500 million from the WIN Fund for R&D and technological development to tailor the network to meet public safety requirements. This investment, in coordination with the investment in rural buildout, will ensure that the rollout of 4G in rural areas serves the needs of public safety and the broader community.
Cut the deficit by $9.6 billion over the next decade. The President's proposals to auction off spectrum freed up from the government and voluntarily relinquished by current commercial users, is estimated to raise $27.8 billion. This total is above-and-beyond the auction proceeds that are used to provide an incentive for private and government users as well as the auction proceeds that are expected even absent the President's proposal. After the cost of the investments proposed by the President, the initiative would reduce the deficit by $9.6 billion over the next decade.
Building on Progress

The Administration has already made progress on its decade-long spectrum goal and on expanding broadband access.

A 115 MHz downpayment on the President's 500 MHz goal. Last June, President Obama issued a Memorandum calling for action by the Federal government and Congress to enable large swaths of spectrum to be used more efficiently. The NTIA has already taken steps to make good on that commitment. In particular, the agency has identified 115 Megahertz of Federal spectrum that can be freed up as part of a "fast track" process for exclusive or shared use, selected another 95 MHz of valuable spectrum for immediate evaluation, and has a workplan for evaluating other Federal spectrum bands that can be used more efficiently.
Recovery Act investments by the Commerce and Agriculture Departments have boosted deployment and adoption of broadband technology. The Recovery Act provided around $7 billion to expand broadband access and adoption, with more than $2.5 billion going to the Rural Utility Service at Agriculture for rural areas and $4.4 billion going to National Telecommunications and Information Administration at Commerce to support a number of broadband initiatives. In particular, NTIA provided around $400 million in grants to jurisdictions using wireless broadband for public safety.

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Move Over, Rover: Next Giant Leap Gets $1 Million Grant To Build Hopping Moon Landers

Next Giant Leap in Boulder, Colorado— a startup that’s making robots that will land and hop around on the surfaces of other planets in order to gather data, detect resources valuable to humans, and more — attained a $1 million grant from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, to advance their technology and pursue the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize in 2012, the companies revealed today.

Draper is a non-profit in Cambridge, Massachusetts that develops advanced technology, and assists and invests in others’ innovation for space, air, land and sea exploration. One of Next Giant Leap’s team members, Seamus Tuohy (also Draper’s director of space systems) explained what NGL is working on and its potential uses:

“We’re developing critical technology for landing and hopping, both to satisfy the rules for the Google Lunar X Prize, and to provide an innovative, regional-scale science measurement capability. Unlike rovers that go to a single point on the surface of a planet, and then maybe two kilometers away and back, retreating if something is in the way, these would land, then ascend a bit, do a translation, traverse above the terrain to land in another spot. The lander-hopper we’re building is about the size of a coffee table, not a car.

I believe this would be particularly valuable to the environmental cause. The future ability to monitor the environment is a government concern, but who’s to say the best technology and services to measure greenhouse gases, and other things might not come from a commercial enterprise like Next Giant Leap? These technologies we’re working on let you place sensors, gather samples from difficult-to-access locations on the moon, and on earth as well where you don’t want to send a manned vehicle or a helicopter.”

Another team member with NGL, Todd J. Mosher, a program manager at Sierra Nevada Corporation, said potential buyers of NGL’s lander technology could include NASA as an anchor, and a number private sector companies that look at the moon as the next Gold Rush site, full of untapped water and mineral resources that are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive on earth.

Mosher and Tuohy envision NASA using NGL’s landers in “operations-to-station” and “commercial crew development” programs, bringing people and their supplies to the surface of the moon and back, or in scientific investigations. NASA, however, is not in the practice of mining other planets for resources Mosher noted. Beyond government missions, he explained, his team’s lander technology and more so, competitions like the Google Lunar X Prize, could have a huge impact on clean energy, water and minerals trade:

“My kids are doing an explorers’ segment in school right now, studying Magellan, Ponce de Leon and those folks. If you study that history, the first wave of explorers were funded by the government. They went out and found places. The next waves were entrepreneurs and traders who turned scientific discoveries into something profitable. They may not be as glamorous, but what they did led to the development of trade routes that connected people, and allowed settlements that turned into great cultures.

NGL’s landers are robotic scouts or prospectors that will head out to new territories to discover forms of wealth for all of us. They depend on solar rays to get their power. So does a lot of space technology, actually. They’re part of the next wave that will make space exploration much more sustainable. They can also help us explore water deposits that are believed to be in cold traps, or craters on the surface of the moon that the sun doesn’t reach.

The competition is driving people to get together and figure things out. We may not solve this problem in our first mission, but we’re thinking about how to survive a lunar night, which is equivalent to 14 days on earth in darkness, if our vehicles and stations run on solar. If we develop something rugged and robust enough to work in that extreme environment, it will help us back here on earth.”

With this grant, the NGL team, led by founder Michael Joyce, has raised about $1.5 million, including an investment of $200,000 by the team’s founder Michael Joyce, a $100,000 from Jolted Media Group Ltd., a $30,000 grant from eSpace an incubator program for space startups, and $125,000 from Sierra Nevada Corporation.

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HTC HD2 gets a stable stock Android build for internal storage

By Chris Ziegler posted Dec 30th 2010 2:40PM Running Android on HTC's venerable HD2 is old hat -- but historically, you've had to run it off microSD storage, which isn't an optimal situation for an operating system you might hope to use as your primary. Now we've finally got what appears to be the first solution allowing you to drop a nearly stock build of Android on the HD2's internal NAND memory, freeing up external storage for your usual collection of family photos, showtunes, and PowerPoint presentations left over from your WinMo 6.5 days. We've no doubt that this hack is a little dicey -- especially considering the herculean level of hacker effort that went into making it happen -- but if you've got an HD2 lying around that needs a new lease on life, it might be worth a shot.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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