The Singer's Song

Intel ranks Pomona College the 82nd “most unwired college campus” in the nation, with a network reaching Marston quad, Walker and Wig beaches, and Haldeman pool, among other areas. Yet despite the fact that Pomona spans less than a quarter of a square mile, the wireless internet is not available throughout most areas of the campus.

Pomona’s wireless network, like most used in coffee bars, offices, and homes across the world, runs on the IEEE 802.11 standard. “Wi-Fi,” as it is more commonly known, is the most widely-implemented wireless protocol in the world – Apple and Intel use it, for instance – so most students are easily able to connect to the network. Wi-Fi has drawbacks, though, including the fact that its 2.4 GHz signal is often crowded out by microwaves and cordless phones. More importantly, most wireless routers have a maximum range of three hundred feet outdoors, and about half of that inside. As a result, dozens of towers would be required around the campus for complete, yet at times unreliable, coverage.

Government regulation is the only factor limiting wireless internet broadcasts to 2.4 GHz. Other spectra – like VHF or FM – are more suitable for transmission of the signal, but they are currently designated by Congress for other uses – namely television and radio. This is not the first time that technological innovation has been stifled by spectrum wars. During the 1940s, broadcasters – not wanting to give up their frequencies – successfully blocked an effort by AT&T to develop a precursor to the cell phone.

The current fight is playing out similarly. Following passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the television broadcast stations – the local affiliates of ABC, CBS, etc. – were given a portion of unused spectrum for HDTV at an estimated value of between $12 billion and $70 billion. In return, the stations pledged to give back their VHF signals. After ten years, these broadcasters have failed to live up to their promise, depriving the public of a spectrum that could be reallocated for efficient, long range wireless internet.

In three weeks, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) will introduce legislation mandating the return of the VHF spectrum by December 31, 2006. The bill’s chances at passage are unclear. In the past, Congress has largely refrained from challenging the broadcasters on this issue. Media conglomerates are among the most prolific donors to campaigns. Besides, without the network news reporting on the issue (talk about corporate bias), the public is ill-informed about their bamboozling at the hands of the local broadcasters.

Intel has invested heavily in a lobbying effort to convince Congress to support legislation similar to Barton’s, and the cable industry – hoping to undercut the power of local broadcasters – is also supportive of the measure. Still, at the soonest, it will be another two years until the wireless internet is transmitted on frequencies currently used by VHF. So if Pomona wants to move up in Intel’s “unwired” rankings more rapidly, it will simply have to buck up and buy a few dozen routers.

Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, caused alarm from Manhattan to Manhattan Beach earlier this month. Speaking before the National Association of Broadcasters, the Chairman of the Commerce Committee – which has jurisdiction over the telecommunications industry – announced his intention to draft legislation that would regulate cable broadcasts. Civil libertarians, television executives and Sopranos aficionados alike were shocked and disappointed at the prospect of neutered programming.

There is no doubt as to who is behind this move. Organizations like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family have tried to impose their morality on television for years. Emboldened by George W. Bush’s victory in the fall, Dobson and others have decried SpongeBob SquarePants’s participation in a “pro-homosexual video” and have had the audacity to protest against the Veterans Day showing of Saving Private Ryan on ABC. They truly put Dan Quayle – who bashed Murphy Brown (as if she were a real person) for having an illegitimate child – to shame.

Any attempt at imposing decency standards on cable broadcasts would be a colossal waste of time. The constitutionality of such regulations is at best questionable. While the Supreme Court found in 1997 that Congress can enact “content-neutral” statutes over the cable industry, it concluded more recently that “[it] is rare that a regulation restricting speech because of its content will ever be permissible.”

Congress restricts radio and television airwaves, the content of which is both free and freely accessible. The FCC can dole out indecency fines to networks and stations whose programming falls outside the accepted social mores. CBS was docked $500,000 for Janet Jackson’s bedazzled nipple but NBC wasn’t for its showing of Schindler’s List in an unedited form in 1997. (Even this raised the ire of one Christian conservative, who proclaimed that network television had sunk "to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity.”*)

Cable is entirely different, though. People must pay for the subscription every month to receive the hundreds of channels of potentially indecent programs. Starz!, Sundance, The Movie Channel, et. al. require even larger sums of money for their risky and risqué programming, which is often rife with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity.

Many of these shows are in fact indecent. Showtime’s honest treatment of Lesbianism in The L Word would not fly if Michael Powell had a say in the matter. The intense psychiatric sessions in HBO’s The Sopranos – let alone the extreme violence – would not sit well with the censors. Anything on Cinemax after midnight would most certainly be nixed. Deadwood, HBO’s newest gem, is the best example of the type of programming that would be effectively impossible under the proposed guidelines. Not long ago it would have received an X-rating for its language, violence or sexual content. Nevertheless, it portrays the Wild West more accurately than any tame John Wayne feature (not to take away from the Duke at all).

With such lewd programming, it’s no wonder that Senator Stevens and Doctor Dobson are angry. Given their strong religious beliefs, it would be unfair to begrudge their efforts to curtail the freedom of speech. Instead of trying to enact unconstitutional legislation, though, maybe they could just change the channel instead.

* Tom Coburn, the brilliant man who said this quote, left the United States House of Representatives three years later – only to be elected to the Senate this fall… by a 12-point margin.