Issues on Open Spectrum

Onno W. Purbo

?In a simple language, it is all about mass / demand creation & economic scale. It is an art to do it on self-finance & sustainable.?

The talk is based on 12+ years experience in liberating / unlicensing 2.4GHz band in Indonesia. Opening / unlicensing a spectrum is known to have many benefits, such as,

* Lowering the barrier of entry to use the frequency.
* Increasing the number of users; increase the demand.
* Huge incentive for IT manufacturer to produce the equipment, and, thus, lower the end user price / cost.
* The cycle will go on and on and on to lowering the price / cost and increase the demand / number of users.

The strategy described here can be easily replicated for other objectives if you like. In our case, we are in process to replicate the strategy to liberate 5.8GHz, VoIP, and other community-based networks.

Basic Strategies:
* Self-finance & bottom-up community based.
* Provide Knowledge to the communities.
* Encourage young students to write articles / books published in local language. This is the most important strategy that should be adopted.

Liberation Processes:

?You can only win the war if either you have huge power, or large amount of money, or ?. Huge mass?

Being a common / regular people with no power, no money but some knowledge on ICT. The only way to win the war is to get a large mass to support the idea.

* In simple language, creating a mass movement of people to build their own low cost ICT infrastructure. The basic philosophy of a movement - it must be able to transfer / to replicate in self-finance & autonomous. If at all possible, it must be able to move forward without relying on external funding to assure sustainable processes.

* The method of replication is fairly simple. Getting people?s trust & convinced through education & awareness process is the key.

* Being an ordinary people & not funded by anyone, to reduce the education / awareness process, it can be done through printed media, books, seminars, and workshops that cost only US$1-3 per person to buy / to attend. Thus, it is very much affordable to most people, and thus, the whole education / awareness process can be self-finance. It is all supported by heavy & free mailing list discussions that are done in the last 12+ years.

* One of the most important processes in the transfer of knowledge is the empowerment of young ICT writer mostly young university students to write their knowledge & experiences in books / articles in local language. The US$500-1000 royalty of the books is quite an incentive of the student who normally lived for US$30 / month and US$150 for tuition free per semester. Onno Purbo is normally acting as co-author for these young writers for their first few books. As they become known, normally they will write on their own & sometimes becoming a co-author for others. As a result, today, there are lots of ICT books in local language needed to transfer the knowledge to other countryman.

* Such education processes create a mass movement within Indonesian societies to create their own ICT infrastructure. Including the deployment of 150+ Internet Service Providers, 2000+ Internet Kiosks (Cybercafes), 4000+ schools to the Internet, 100+ Neighborhood Networks, 15000+ outdoor WiFi infrastructures to bypass Telco infrastructures.

* Massive deployment outdoor Wireless Internet in 2.4GHz & 5.8GHz to bypass Telco is detected from none in 1995, around 20 nodes in 1996,  to more than 4000 nodes in 2004, and reaches 15000+ nodes in 2005 with 2000+ new monthly installation. The communities gathered at indowli@yahoogroups.com.

* National & international pressure to unlicensed the 2.4GHz is too large, and thus, as of 5 January 2005, the government unlicensing 2.4GHz due to our large pressure. It is recorded at IDRC Website http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-89751-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html entitled ?Onno the Liberator?. Thank you IDRC. Thank you to my Indonesian comrades.