subject: US telecomms research in disarray - official posted: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:25:28 +0100
[lots of comments on this one, but I'll just say.. if a system is
corrupt, it will never be sustainable. American superficiality can
be expected to produce what we find below. Wakey Wakey! - Stu]
US telecomms research in disarray - official
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Tuesday 22nd June 2004 18:15 GMT
It's rare to see such immense concern on the face of US technology
executives and government regulators. But concern is the exact word
needed to describe the state of panelists debating the health of the
US telecommunications industry during a panel held here Monday at the
SuperComm conference.
The US tends to enjoy a position of prestige in most things IT. This,
however, is not the case in telecommunications where major US
corporations have been punished by a bust of magnificent proportions,
a mess of wireless technology standards, and mediocre broadband
adoption rates. And where is the blame best placed for our poor
telecom position? Maybe with the government and what some see as
insufficient research and development aid from Uncle Sam.
"Research is important, and we need more of it," said Peter Rooney,
deputy director of the House Committee on Science, and one of six
panelists debating the state of telecom R&D spend here. "We are
always advocating a robust American scientific enterprise."
But it was Rooney and the bureaucratic enterprise he is part of that
came under fire from the SuperComm crowd for not doing enough to
promote the robust science he described. Of particular concern,
conference attendees worried that companies such as Lucent and MCI
are now only a fraction of their former size, meaning less research
and development money will flow from the private sector. In addition,
venture capitalists have pulled back dramatically on their
investments on radical, ahead-of-their time ideas.
"Large companies are the ones who have driven research 15 to 20 years
out," said one audience member during a question and answer session.
"But those companies don't have that latitude anymore. What are we
going to do ten years from now when we realize that fiber optics is
tired and have to look at what we do after that?"
Whether it's large companies, start-ups or universities that really
drive the long range research is not really the point. The main worry
is that the EU and Asian countries are outdoing the US with regard to
the help they provide to advance telecommunications technology.
The US tends to put the bulk of its research spending behind defense
technology, biomedical research and high-end computing. This is due,
in part, to the priorities the government has identified and a belief
that a deregulated telecommunications market will take care of itself
with regard to pushing technological boundaries. Life, however, is
tough for telecommunications companies that agree on very little. A
prime example of the disagreement being the varied standards for next-
generation cell phone networks. US companies are competing for the
sake of competing, trying to create differentiation out of thin air.
In addition, the companies are apparently not doing much to help
themselves in Washington.
"Nobody deploys more lobbyists than the Telecommunications Industry
Association (TIA)," Rooney said. "One would wonder why they are not
more effective. But one group wants one thing, and the other wants
the opposite. You would make the Silicon Valley crowd look sick (if
you got together). Their big disadvantage is they come from a
libertarian mindset where they believe the government should not
exist. That is not a problem the telecommunications industry shares."
Rooney, and others, proposed that the telecom sector adopt policies
similar to those used by semiconductor companies. Chip makers tend to
lay out very specific long range technology roadmaps. The vendors
agree on where the trouble spots for shrinking transistors will be
and then put their collective minds behind solving these problems.
This type of focus helps the government out, letting it know where
investment should be directed.
One industry executive, however, suggested that this level of
agreement is near impossible in an industry that has gone through
tumultuous times, including deregulation, a boom and a bust.
"To have a roadmap, you need a way of getting together," said Jeffrey
Jaffe, president Bell Labs Research for Lucent. "It has been
difficult to get that kind of focus."
Jaffe argued that creating an entire communications infrastructure
and guessing where it might go next is a tad harder than narrowing in
on cramming more transistors on a processor. He then put the focus
back on the government, pointing to the EU's Sixth Framework research
model as something the US should consider.
Jaffe managed to use a healthy dose of sarcasm as tool in goading
Rooney.
"I am delighted to hear from my colleague in the public sector that
there is a tremendous desire to fund basic research in new ideas, if
we would only bring them forward," Jaffe said. "I think it is
fascinating that we have such a capacity in this country. In the
telcos, we have lots of ideas to work on."
Well said.
Al Vincent, director of the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences,
backed up the position on government spending, saying federal funding
for telco programs has been "increasing at a fairly decent clip." The
US currently spends 2.6 percent of its GDP on research as compared to
the 1.9 percent spent by the EU, although the EU hopes to raise this
total to 3.0 percent by 2010.
"The basic story is that the government side is slowly increasing,
and the industry side has dipped and is slowly coming back," Vincent
said.
And what US technology debate would be complete without a member of
DARPA showing up. In this case, Preston Marshall, a program manager
in DARPA's Advanced Technology Office (ATO). Marshall, who came over
as a geeky version of Hunter S Thompson, refused to participate in
the silly squabble over whether the government or industry was in the
right on this funding issue. That's because they are all wrong.
Off in the wacko labs, DARPA is looking for something revolutionary
and has grown tired of researchers touting their ability to wring
more performance out of TCP/IP, or flaunting new wireless access
devices. 802.11 cards are so old hat, Marshall said.
"I think the telecommunications industry has been grossly ill-served
by its early success (with the Internet and cell phones)," Marshall
said. "It has made the telecommunications industry incredibly
evolutionary with products that are two or three times better. Our
threshold for funding is something that is 10 times better."
Can you really measure how much better one Terror Casino is than
another? We digress.
Marshall suggested that researchers would be really useful if they
"banned IP" from their minds all together and looked to the unknown.
Overall, the government officials put a lot of pressure on the
private sector and research bodies. The Feds won't fund any project
that could harm current business models, because there's no sense in
knocking our own companies. So they want the private sector and
universities to come up with technology that will benefit everyone
equally and that has no application today. Great. Get to it.
Exactly how these telcos are to get together and agree on what these
magic technology areas might be is difficult to imagine. With the
antitrust regulators watching the telcos every move, it would seem a
tad difficult to set up a meeting to discuss how they all might move
forward as a collective.
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