Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 00:22:20 -0600
From: SuitWatch 
To: suitwatch@ssc.com
Subject: SuitWatch - May 25

                            SuitWatch -- May 25

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  The choice between bad and worse might get bigger.

   In the last several days a flurry of postings about a new company called
   M2Z http://www.m2znetworks.com/ piled up in my email box. Technorati
   http://technorati.com/search/M2Z finds 143 new posts on the
   subject. Google's Blogsearch:
   http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=m2z&btnG=Search+Blogs
   finds 272. (As of 1:33pm Wednesday afternoon, which is when I'm writing this.)
   The pile will get a lot higher before M2Z gets off the ground. Or buried under it.

   M2Z puts VC heavies (Kleiner Perkins, Charles River, Redpoint) behind two
   heavies in the Internet buildout field: Milo Medin, who deserves the primary
   credit for getting Internet service to work over cable systems; and John
   Muleta, the former head of the FCC's wireless bureau. I know at least one
   alpha wireless (and Linux) geek who speaks highly of both men. I also recall
   the story about how John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins recruited Milo personally
   to work with @Home, which was a wild technical success, even though it
   failed ultimately as a company. Om Malik writes, "Milo, last time I saw him,
   was parked inside Charles River's offices and was tooling around with Myth
   TV. Who knew he was cooking up yet another big network." MythTV is a Linux
   project, by the way.

   Go to the M2Z website http://m2znetworks.com/, and you'll be greeted by warm and fuzzy
   Flash-animated quotes from notables (e.g. President Bush, FCC Chairman
   Martin) calling for ubiquitous Internet access, under the less warm but
   equally fuzzy slogan "Freedom. Innovation." The only link leads to a .pdf of
   the company's audacious application to the FCC for spectrum, at no cost,
   with which the company proposes "to rapidly make available free, high speed
   broadband access to nearly every consumer, business and non-profit and
   public safety entity in the United States..." Later, it adds, "The mission
   of M2Z is simple -- to make affordable broadband available throughout the
   United States of America. While M2Z is a for-profit entity, on of its core
   principles is that it can thrive financially while significantly advancing
   the public interest. The proposal before the Commission is the perfect
   marriage of commercial passions and public commitment."

   I have my doubts. M2Z looks to me like an obelisk painted to look like a
   rocket.

   I'll forgive the .pdf, since the company wants the public to read exactly
   what was proposed to the FCC, in the same WYSIWYG format. But why not also
   make it available in HTML, or plain text? (That's what the FCC does with
   most of its own documents, though they don't make it easy. You have to
   substitute .txt for .pdf in any FCC document URL to get the plaintext
   version.) Worse, why disable the copy function? I had to type those quotes
   above. Copying was disabled, presumably by M2Z. Big red flag there. Command
   and control, not freedom and innovation.

   A search for the word "freedom" in the application brings no results. We get
   seven results for "innovation".

   A search for "filter" (which also brings up "filtering", "filtered" and
   "filtration") brings twenty-seven results. Plus nineteen results for
   "indecent" or "indecency". Specifically, there is this:

      Mandatory Filtering of Indecent and Obscene Material. M2Z commits to
      mandatory filtering of indecent and obscene material for the National
      Broadband Radio Service. This will be accomplished through a compulsory
      setting on the service that will utilize state of the art filters, taking
      every reasonable and available step to block access to sites purveying
      pornographic, obscene or indecent material. Like the free service itself,
      M2Z's content filtering will be "always on." Moreover, National Broadband
      Radio Service customers will be unable to alter the filters as they
      constitute an essential element of that service.

   What was that about freedom again?

   M2Z, of course, will require new "Affordable Customer Premises Equipment".

   There will be two levels of service: free and premium. For the free service,
   the proposal says,

      First and foremost, M2Z will ensure a robust level of broadband service is
      provisioned, with asymmetric engineered data rates of at least 384kbps
      down and 128 kbps up, free of airtime or service charges, to all U.S.
      residents.

   The premium service offers "faster data rates, access to additional content
   and/or special service offerings on a subscription basis" Also, five percent
   of its revenues will be kicked back to the federal government. Oh, and
   indecent material filtration is optional.

   In sum, M2Z appears to be a private, low-speed, non-standard, asymmetrical
   filtered subset of the Internet for "consumers". In other words, TV 2.0.

   As a potential customer of M2Z's premium services, I see nothing in the
   company's proposal that looks half as promising as what customers can
   already get today over Sprint/Verizon's EVDO or Cingular's EDGE services,
   both of which use cellular systems already in place.

   Speaking of which, if I were Cingular or Verizon, I'd accuse M2Z of asking
   for free spectrum to set up a new nationwide cell service, behind a "free
   Internet" ruse. But then, I'd be making that accusation entirely within the
   Regulatorium, which M2Z promises only to make bigger.

   Hey, if we're asking the FCC for free market solutions, how about asking
   them to free up some damn spectrum?

   Look at what the free market got with just a few little channels of
   short-range unlicensed wi-fi spectrum. Wouldn't we rather see the backers of
   M2Z go for that? With a swath of nationwide open spectrum, free markets for
   countless new offerings could bloom, raising a vast tide of economic
   activity that would surely benefit every citizen. And M2Z would, presumably,
   have a first-mover advantage there.

   Instead, M2Z is asking the feds to give them land for building out a
   nationwide walled garden for captive customers -- one where "consumers"
   could also roam at no cost but with limited freedoms and unlimited exposure
   to advertising.

   One extra choice between bad and worse.

   ______
   Links:

   http://www.m2znetworks.com/


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