IV. Personal Freedom and Licensing
Whether persons need to be licensed to use radio has often been considered with misplaced emphasis. Consider this recommendation from the European Radiocommunications Committee (ERC) on exemption from individual licensing:
Licensing is an appropriate tool for Administrations to regulate the use of radio equipment and the efficient use of the frequency spectrum. However, the technical characteristics of radio equipment require less intervention from the Administrations as far as the installation and use of equipment is concerned. Administrations and especially users, retailers and manufacturers will benefit from a more deregulated system of authorising the use of radio equipment.
There is general agreement that when the efficient use of the frequency spectrum is not at risk and as long as harmful interference is unlikely, the installation and use of radio equipment can be exempt from a licence. …
When radio equipment is subject to an exemption from individual licensing, anyone can buy, install, possess and use the radio equipment without prior permission from the Administration. Furthermore, the Administration will not register the individual equipment. The use of the equipment can be subject to general provisions.[1]
The recommendation first describes licensing as a tool for regulators (Administrations), one that might be used less while still meeting regulatory objectives. Further on, the recommendation describes consequences for personal freedom in a paragraph whose main subject is radio equipment. The recommendation, read narrowly, points in a sensible policy direction. But this recommendation, and radio regulation more generally, needs to better appreciate physical truth and human freedom.
Electromagnetic radiation is a fundamental aspect of the physical world and human freedom. All bodies with temperature above absolute zero radiate some energy across the whole electromagnetic spectrum.[2] When human beings use fire to keep warm, to dispel darkness, or to communicate, they use electromagnetic spectrum. Putting on a wool sweater or working across a thick rug can generate electromagnetic waves, as can a variety of other human activities. The freedom to be warm, to shine light, or to create electric sparks in the world is not contingent on the efficient use of electromagnetic spectrum.
The definition of radio communications subject to regulation must be understood as subordinate to the understanding of human freedom. While the first two international radiotelegraph conventions defined radio communications implicitly as wireless telegraphy, the U.S. proposal to the International Radiotelegraph Conference in Washington in 1927 took a different approach. The proposal defined “radio communications”:
The term “radio communication” as used in this convention means the transmission of intelligence, photographs, reproductions, or any other subject matter, without connecting wires, by radiated electromagnetic energy.[3]
Light is a form of radiated electromagnetic energy. Thus the plain language of the above definition covers all forms of light-mediated communication – reading texts; observed motion, form, and gesture; and explicit signaling with light, such as hanging lanterns in a church to convey signals of public importance. If this proposal had not been limited de facto by an understanding of freedom, it would have represented a more dramatic denial of human rights than the most oppressive governments in the world have ever proposed.
Definitions of “radio communications” adopted in international radio regulations made the controlling position of human freedom less obvious but no less important. The Washington Conference of 1927 adopted this definition of “radio communications”:
The term “radio communication,” applies to the transmission by radio of writing, signs, signals, pictures, and sounds of all kinds by means of Hertzian waves.[4]
The convention did not define “radio” or “Hertzian waves.”[5] In the Madrid Conference of 1932, the relevant definitions in international radio regulations became:
Radio communication: Any telecommunication by means of Hertzian waves.
Telecommunication: Any telegraph or telephone communication of signs, signals, writings, images, and sounds of any nature, by wire, radio, or other systems or processes of electric or visual (semaphore) signaling.[6]
Again there was no definition of “radio” or “Hertzian waves,” but some types of light-mediated communication clearly fell within the definition of telecommunication. The Atlantic City Conference of 1947 added a definition of Hertzian waves:
Hertzian Waves: Electromagnetic waves of frequencies between 10 kc/s and
3 000 000 Mc/s.[7]
This definition of Hertzian waves excludes the electromagnetic waves that the human eye normally processes (electromagnetic waves with frequencies between 810 terahertz and 1620 terahertz, i.e. light). By 1959 international radio regulations had equated radio waves and Hertzian waves, and defined both together with reference to a specific medium of propagation. The definition also included additional frequencies:
Radio Waves (or Hertzian Waves): Electromagnetic waves of frequencies lower than 3 000 Gc/s [3 000 000 Mc/s], propagated in space without artificial guide.[8]
The Geneva Conference of 1979 modified the definition to recognize its arbitrariness:
Radio Waves or Hertzian Waves. Electromagnetic waves of frequencies arbitrarily [emphasis added] lower than 3 000 GHz, propagated in space without artificial guide.[9]
This definition is currently embedded in the national law of many countries, including U.S. administrative law.[10] The incoherence, instability, and arbitrariness of the definition of radio communications have attracted little attention. That indicates confidence that radio regulation will defer to established understandings of human freedom.
Such confidence has some factual support. Consider some aspects of U.S. experience. While it is common knowledge that high-power electric lines can cause interference to radio and television signals, the FCC only regulates limited aspects of electric utilities.[11] A single automobile with its engine running creates at 10 meters’ distance a field strength greater than the limit that defines auctioned spectrum boundary rights in the frequency range 700 and 800 MHz.[12] Nonetheless, the FCC does not regulate automobiles. A U.S. government study showed that in worst cases windmills produce objectionable distortions of TV reception within a few miles’ distance.[13] Yet the FCC never tilted its regulatory power toward windmills. Free space optical communications systems are now being implemented for terrestrial services and for communications among satellites.[14] The FCC has chosen not to regulate these systems, and generally does not regulate light or the generation of light.[15] The FCC has provided a comprehensive regulatory scheme for radio use. But in important, practical ways the meaning of those words has been subordinate to ideas of human freedom, understood with respect to true descriptions of persons and the world.[16]
Distracted by the many pressing tasks of the day, regulators and other human beings can fail to act in accordance with what is most important. Promoting every person’s freedom to be who she or he truly is, in the world as it really exists, surely is one of the most important objectives of communications policy. What freedom means should not be taken for granted.[17] The freedom that comes from being alone, lost in a cave, facing certain death in a few days, differs from the freedom that comes from an ever-loving wife who has a secure, well-paying job.[18] The physical freedom of a drunk differs from that of a well-trained actor, and the intellectual freedom of the learned is not the same as that of the innocent. One must confront real, historical experience of freedom and reflect on what one finds, on what one knows to be true, and on how to address any contradiction between the two – you, now, here, in this field.
A. Different Kinds of Freedom: Hams, Hackers, and Yackers
Amateur radio, the Internet, and commercial wireless services are fields dominated by radically different understandings of personal freedom. Hams, hackers, and yackers, the most distinctive characters in those respective fields, share common biological, social, and cultural features. They are members of the same species, they may be neighbors, or even the same person engaged in different activities in different times and places. In each of these fields, person-to-person communication for non-commercial purposes comprises an important part of activity in the field. Each of these fields involves similar, general-purpose information and communications technologies. This technology is amenable to personalization, diversity, and decentralized evolution fueled by user creativity. It is also amenable to abusive use, interference, and breakdowns in operating standards and cooperation. This section will show that, despite their similar characteristics and possibilities, the fields of amateur radio, the Internet, and commercial wireless services have incarnated much different ideas of freedom.
The facts about these fields should serve as a policy warning. The range of real possibilities in regulation is enormous. Yet freedom that has merely a conventional meaning is not a worthy guide to policy. Deliberation about freedom needs to evolve as a working consensus in tension with a search for truth about what persons do and the way the world is. This section provides material for such deliberation.
1. Amateur Radio
Amateur radio is a field that grew with the development of radio technology early in the twentieth century. Amateur radio users are called amateurs or “hams.”[19] Now You’re Talking, an amateur radio association’s guidebook for aspiring hams, describes amateur radio as follows:
Ham radio offers so much variety, it would be hard to describe all its activities in a book twice this size! Most of all, ham radio gives you a chance to meet other people who like to communicate. That’s the one thing all hams have in common. You can communicate with other hams on a simple hand-held radio that fits in your pocket.[20]
Public service is also an important part of hams’ self-understanding. Hams have long provided emergency communications for local community events and in response to natural disasters. Hams have also contributed significantly to advancing radio technology, such as pioneering early high-frequency communications and popularizing packet radio. Some hams currently communicate via Morse Code and single-sideband voice communications, methods of communications that have been in use for over half a century. Other hams explore digital signal processing, software-defined radios, moon-bounce communications, and communications using specially designed earth-orbiting satellites. The three-million hams worldwide form a community with a strong sense of tradition and identity. Amateur radio has created for hams opportunities for social interaction, for serving the public, and for exercising engineering creativity. Hams’ appreciation for the freedom they have found in amateur radio, and their dedication to preserving it, cannot be doubted.
To a remarkable degree, hams understand their activities to be dependent on government license. This view goes all the way back to the beginning of radio. The development of radio implicitly raised the question of whether persons have some natural rights to communicate by radio. Most governments, and amateurs, seemed to assume that persons do not. Nonetheless, absent effective means of suppression, amateur radio developed naturally, through personal curiosity and creativity. About 1912, there were roughly 8000 amateur radio users and 230 amateur radio clubs in the U.S.[21] The U.S. Radio Act of 1912 was hailed as a great victory for amateurs. An amateur activist/magazine publisher declared, “The amateur had at last come into his own…. Uncle Sam has set his seal of approval upon the amateur’s wireless...”, and of course, “the entire credit for obtaining the amateur’s rights belongs to [the author]…”[22] Here is what the Act said regarding amateurs’ rights:
No private or commercial station not engaged in the transaction of bona fide commercial business by radio communication or in experimentation in connection with the development and manufacture of radio apparatus for commercial purposes shall use a transmitting wave length exceeding two hundred meters, or transformer input exceeding one kilowatt, except by special authority of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor…[23]
Ten years later a historian asked, without even a whiff of self-consciousness, “What has the amateur done in the past ten years, to justify the privileges granted him by his government?”[24]
Over time amateurs’ rights have been further elaborated through national and international regulations. In these regulations, amateurs’ rights to communicate internationally depend not just on the amateur’s government but on mutual international agreement. International radio regulations require governments not to permit amateurs to communicate with amateurs in a country whose government objects to such communication. Government suppression of amateur communications in one country thus creates a reciprocal obligation for like suppression by other countries.[25]
Amateur privileges do not include privacy. Communications between two hams are potentially accessible to anyone with appropriate operating equipment and within the geographic range of the signal. International amateur regulations enforce this lack of privacy by declaring that amateur stations should transmit their call signs (station identification) “at short intervals” and by stating that international amateur communications should be “in plain language.”[26] In the US, FCC regulations require that call signs be transmitted at the end of each communication and at least every ten minutes during communications.[27] The FCC provides on the Internet a searchable licensing database that allows a call sign to be linked to the licensee’s name and address.[28] FCC regulations prohibit international or domestic amateur communications “in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning thereof.”[29] Controversy over encryption technology, police access to personal communications, and unauthorized collection of personally identifying information has been bluntly pre-empted in amateur radio regulation.
International treaties and national regulations also govern the content and purpose of amateur communications. Under international radio regulations, communications between amateurs in different countries must be:
…limited to messages of a technical nature relating to tests and to remarks of a personal character for which, by reason of their unimportance, recourse to the public telecommunications service is not justified. It is absolutely forbidden for amateur stations to be used for transmitting international communications on behalf of third parties.[30]
FCC regulations prohibit amateur communications containing “obscene or indecent words or language,” “false or deceptive message,” or music.[31] The amateur radio service cannot be used for “communications for hire or for material compensation,” “any form of broadcasting,” “one-way communications” except of limited types, “activity related to program production or news gathering for broadcasting purposes,” retransmissions “from any type of radio station other than an amateur station,” or “[c]ommunications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services.”[32] Although regulation specifically forbids amateurs from engaging in “any form of broadcasting,” amateur radio is considered similar to broadcasting for content regulatory purposes.[33] The regulations on the content and purpose of amateur radio underscore the absence of any presumption of free communications in amateur radio.
Under international and national regulations, persons must demonstrate technical qualifications to be licensed to engage in amateur communications. An ITU recommendation passed in August, 2001 indicates:
…at minimum, any person seeking an amateur license should demonstrate theoretical knowledge of specific topics in the areas of radio regulations, methods of radiocommunications, radio system theory, radio emission safety, electromagnetic compatibility, and avoidance and resolution of radio frequency interference.[34]
Amateurs who want to make use of amateur frequencies below 30 MHz are required under international regulations to be able to transmit and receive in Morse Code.[35] In the US, FCC regulations link a ladder of three licensing tests to the extent of amateur frequency privileges.[36] The connection between passing a more difficult licensing test and getting more extensive frequency privileges seems to relate not to necessary technical knowledge, but to creating objective support for group boundaries and privilege hierarchies.
Well-established amateur radio associations strongly support amateur radio freedom defined by international and national authority. The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), created in 1925, actively participates in ITU conferences that define international radio regulations through international treaty.[37] The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), founded in 1914 for U.S. amateurs, serves as the International Secretariat for the IARU.[38] For the aspiring ham, the ARRL sells for $19 a three-hundred page guidebook, Now You’re Talking, subtitled, All You Need For Your First Amateur Radio License. Chapter 1 (30 pages) is “Federal Communication [sic] Commission’s Rules.” The underlying theme of this chapter is that hams have been given operational freedoms by government and that these freedoms are secured by hams submitting to government authority. These excerpts indicate the orientation:
You should also post your original license, or a photocopy of it, in your station after it arrives in the mail. You will be proud of earning the license, so display it in your station. A copy of the license on the wall also makes your station look more “official.”
Amateur licenses are printed on a laser printer, and issued in two parts (Figure 1-2). One part is small enough to carry with you; the other can be framed and displayed in your shack. This means you can carry your license and display it! Laser ink can smear, so it’s a good idea to have your wallet copy laminated. If the small part is too large for your wallet, you can make a reduced-size copy on a photocopier. If you carry a copy, you can leave your original safely at home. Although you can legally carry a copy, your original license must be available for inspection by any U.S. government official or FCC representative. Don’t lose the original license!
…
Keep in mind that the FCC has the authority to modify the terms of your amateur license any time they determine that such a modification will promote the public interest, convenience, and necessity.
…
Consider laminating your original license, as the ink sometimes lifts off the paper, even if you place the license behind glass in a frame.
…
Suppose you receive an official notice from the FCC informing you that you have violated a regulation. Now what should you do? Simple: Whatever the notice tells you to do.[39]
Thus the authority of national regulations, re-enforced by international treaties, defines what amateurs understand as their freedom.
Interference among hams is not a significant public policy issue. Amateur radio has been assigned rights to use only limited radio frequencies. In addition, one ham’s use of a particular frequency at a particular place and time could potentially interfere with another ham’s use of that frequency. The number of hams is not limited, nor are particular frequencies assigned to particular hams. Interference among hams undoubtedly occurs. Nonetheless, formal, authoritative regulation of interference among hams is essentially non-existent. Hams seem to cope with interference through personal courtesy, operational adaptability, and consensus-based coordination mechanisms.
2. The Internet
The Internet consists of interconnected but somewhat autonomous electronic information and communications systems. The Internet began as a system for sharing computational resources among geographically dispersed academic and government researchers. By the late 1980s, e-mail had inadvertently become an important use. In the mid-1990s, a simple interface for sharing text and images (the Web) spurred dramatic Internet growth. Hackers, the community of experts in computer programming and electronic networking, are acutely conscious of their particular freedoms. Hackers have played a major role in making the Internet what it is.[40] Other Internet users more passively make choices among the capabilities that the Internet offers. Habitually exercised and thus naturalized, such choices also inculcate the Internet field’s understanding of freedom.
Compared to freedom in amateur radio, freedom in the Internet field takes on a radically different meaning. A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, a document issued on the Internet in 1996 and subsequently widely discussed, opened with these words:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.[41]
An informally recognized hacker-leader performed another dramatic challenge to authority:
In 1977, while attending a science-fiction convention, [Richard M. Stallman] came across a woman selling custom-made buttons. Excited, Stallman ordered a button with the words “Impeach God” emblazoned on it.
…Stallman wore the button proudly. People curious enough to ask him about it received the same well-prepared spiel. “My name is Jehovah,” Stallman would say. “I have a special plan to save the universe, but because of heavenly security reasons I can’t tell you what the plan is. You’re just going to have to put your faith in me, because I see the picture and you don’t. You know I’m good because I told you so. If you don’t believe me, I’ll throw you on my enemies list and throw you in a pit were Infernal Revenue Service will audit your taxes for eternity.”
Those who interpreted the spiel as a word-for-word parody of the Watergate hearings only got half the message. For Stallman, the other half of the message was something only his fellow hackers seemed to be hearing. One hundred years after Lord Acton warned about absolute power corrupting absolutely, Americans seemed to have forgotten the first part of Acton’s truism: power, itself, corrupts. Rather than point out the numerous examples of petty corruption, Stallman felt content voicing his outrage toward an entire system that trusted power in the first place.[42]
Elsewhere, this hacker-leader presents himself as a general, writing:
…some of my cities have fallen. Then I found another threatened city, and got ready for another battle. Over time, I’ve learned to look for threats and put myself between them and my city, calling on other hackers to come and join me.
…We can’t take the future of freedom for granted. Don’t take it for granted! If you want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it.[43]
Another hacker-leader wrote and made freely available on the Internet a fourteen-page article, “How to Become a Hacker.” The substance of the article begins this way:
Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. To be accepted as a hacker, you have to behave as though you have this kind of attitude yourself. And to behave as though you have the attitude, you have to really believe the attitude.[44]
The article then offers a modern Zen poem for inspiration, and advises: “So, if you want to be a hacker, repeat the following things until you believe them….” Although exactly what should be repeated is not entirely clear, this appears to be the litany:
The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
Boredom and drudgery are evil.
Freedom is good.
Attitude is no substitute for competence.
The article then goes on to advise on how to acquire hacking skills and on socially valued uses of these skills.
Hackers and others actively engaged with the Internet would consider government licensing of Internet users to be an outrage. This is so even though hackers seem to be historically linked to amateur radio users, and a leading hacker is also a leader in amateur radio.[45] This is so even though the challenge of initiating new users and the problems of abusive use, interference, and breakdowns in operating standards and cooperation are similar in amateur radio and on the Internet. Nonetheless, government licensing of Internet users would be abhorred as a violation of God-given inalienable rights. Or abhorred as a violation of natural human rights. Or abhorred as a violation of what most persons, deliberating under appropriately specified circumstances, would come to agree to regard as rights persons should have irrespective of decisions made by duly constituted governing authorities. Freedom to use the Internet is not understood as a privilege granted by national governments and international treaties. In the Internet field, freedom means capabilities that persons should personally recognize, cultivate, and defend.
Internet users have recognized, cultivated and defended capabilities that some governments would prefer to suppress. Supporters of democracy in China and adherents of the Falun Gong movement have vigorously sought to communicate with persons in China. When the founder of China’s first human-rights website was arrested, supporters copied his website to a server in the U.S. and the contents of the website remained accessible to persons in China.[46] In contrast to amateur radio communications, international law does not require the U.S. or any other country to shut down Internet communications that the Chinese government does not want to occur.
Hackers and others actively engaged in shaping the Internet have sought to promote capabilities for privacy. In 1993, a programmer in Finland implemented in his spare time an anonymous re-mailer (a means for e-mail anonymity) that by 1996 had more than half a million users worldwide.[47] By early 1999 there were about 40 anonymous re-mailers accessible on the Internet.[48] Services have been developed to allow users to browse the Web anonymously. Encryption technologies are readily available on the Internet. Internet activist have put strong pressure on the U.S. government to relax its restrictions on the export of advanced encryption software, and they have strongly resisted law enforcement initiatives to increase capabilities to monitor Internet communications. In contrast to amateur radio users, Internet users probably would not warmly embrace government regulations requiring them to identify all their communications with a national identification number linked to their names and addresses in a national, publicly available database.[49]
The Internet recognizes relatively few restrictions on purpose of use or content. The Internet was designed as a general-purpose medium. It has been used for person-to-person mail, instructional services, transaction systems, monitoring and tracking services, telephony, text, audio and video broadcasting, and a variety of other purposes. Content on the Internet spans the full range of human expression. Poetry, personal diaries, independent newsgathering and reporting, political commentary from widely different perspectives, false and deceptive information, and racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and misandristic tracts all can be found readily on the Internet. Photographs and videos of naked human sexual acts, which many would regard as obscene or, alternatively, prurient, are also widely available. When the U.S. government in 1996 passed a law regulating indecent content on the Internet, many high-traffic websites temporarily suspended normal communication as an act of protest. A broad coalition of Internet and civil liberties groups challenged the law in court, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such regulation is unconstitutional.[50] Other governments and judicial systems have different standards for regulating the content of communications. Yet for most users around the world, the Internet offers access to a wider range of information and communications capabilities than is available through other media.
Interference on the Internet is a major public policy issue. The large volume of unsolicited email (“spam”) distributed on the Internet essentially creates noise in Internet users’ mailboxes and causes inefficient use of personal attention, a scarce resource.[51] Completely eliminating such noise is widely recognized to be not only infeasible but also undesirable.[52] Nonetheless, Internet users have looked to government for help, and governments around the world are actively seeking to regulate e-mail interference in ways that produce net benefits.[53] Interference in domain name addresses has also emerged as a major public policy issue. As is the case with interference in U.S. patent applications, special institutions and regulations have been created to govern domain name interference disputes. Domain name interference regulation has emphasized “private sector leadership,” a slogan popular in the U.S. government in the late 1990s. However, national governments and international treaty organizations, acting in ways that obscure political accountability, have strongly influenced domain name regulation. Careful analysis also indicates that the scope and the significance of interference problems have been exaggerated.[54]
3. Commercial Wireless Services
Commercial wireless services are provided in ways commonly appreciated for many goods. That means a person, in the role of customer or consumer, buys the goods that she wants. Freedom in this context is about having money. Freedom also depends on the scope of opportunities to buy and on the prices at which goods are available. Competition among profit-seeking firms within a well-functioning capital market is widely considered to promote consumer freedom.
Consider, for example, the multi-national corporation Orange. In 1994, Orange, established as the fourth mobile service provider in the UK, began selling. By early 1996, Orange served about a half-million customers and was on the FTSE-100 list of the UK’s largest companies. Among its many offerings, Orange pioneered pre-pay service, per second billing, and caller ID as a standard feature. By late 1999, Orange, then serving about 3.5 million customers, was bought by Mannesmann, a Germany corporation. Early in 2000, Vodaphone, a British company, bought Mannesman, and the European Commission required the divestiture of Orange. While prices of mobile calls continued to drop, Orange developed additional services, including conference calling, vocal e-mail delivery, and voice recognition technology. In mid-2000, France Telecom bought Orange from Vodaphone. The new company, named Orange SA and headquartered in Paris, served in 2000 about eighteen million French customers, eight million British customers, and nine million customers in wholly owned subsidiaries in seven other countries. Now included in the CAC40, a list of France’s forty largest corporations, Orange aims to provide service in 50 countries by 2005.[55]
Orange presents its commercial wireless services as promoting freedom. Orange calls its services wirefreeTM communications, rather than wireless communications, and thus emphasizes freedom from being “encumbered by wires.” Considerable thought went into choosing the name Orange:
The team brainstormed names and refined the core brand proposition from four options to a composite of three ideas (my world, manager, my friend). The composite idea was “It’s my life.” ….
….
“Orange” was the word that best represented their ideas, with its connotations of hope, fun, and freedom.[56]
In 1999, Orange launched a £12 million UK advertising campaign emphasizing, “Orange enables you to communicate wherever, whenever and however you want.”[57] This freedom is important to users:
Text messaging may be the ultimate street language for today's teenagers, but many are using this new way of communicating as a way to combat nerves when embarking on new relationships according to a recent survey conducted by Orange. Over 30% of 16-18yr olds are sending an average of over 20 messages a week and many respondents are relying on texting to avoid those tricky face to face conversations.
…
Denise Lewis, [Orange]
Group Director of Corporate Affairs, stated: "Text messaging provides yet
another way to share our thoughts with others. Where shyness used to prevent
some from communicating their feelings, text messaging has fully opened the
gates; the buzz of receiving text messages goes on the anytime, anywhere
scenario. Orange text messaging is the ideal way to keep in touch!"
Text messaging is now more popular than ever. A total of 373m text messages
were sent over the Orange network (UK and France)
in January this year, an 86% increase in the last six months.
To cater for the increasing text messaging phenomenon, Orange has
launched Orange Out Here, a new mobile phone package that offers
five free text messages a day. The package also includes up to 2 reserve calls
which can be used when call credit has expired, as well as an additional £5
free airtime on top of the £5 already available on Just Talk.[58]
Orange offers a variety of other products to increase users’ freedom of action and expression. Users can buy a mobile phone featuring always-on connectivity to the Internet, wireless local connectivity to laptop computers and personal digital assistants, and tri-band operation allowing roaming across five continents (£179.99, monthly payment available). Orange has worked with a British bank to allow customers to do banking through their mobile phones. Orange implemented a service that allows users to bet on horse-races through their mobile phones. Users have a wide range of choices of phone styles and accessories. For example, users can buy a Mexican influenced cactus phone cover, an oriental Dragon design, or pop art female and male faces (£19.99 each).[59] Users satisfied with a standard black phone are also free to choose that.
While commercial wireless services are associated with a widely practiced freedom, this type of freedom has significant limitations. Orange offers on a profit-seeking basis the above choices to customers in the UK. Orange seeks to provide similar choices to customers in France, where its headquarters and top management reside, and in the many other countries. But every country, like every person, is special and unique. National laws, typically considered to be related to national security or cultural integrity, limit the operation of companies like Orange.[60] Laws and government practices that limit private, profit-seeking corporations’ willingness to invest capital also limit the scope of commercial wireless services.[61] The extent of consumer spending power is an additional constraint on commercial wireless services.
Freedom associated with commercial wireless services does not encompass important aspects of persons and societies. Policy issues such as international justice, privacy, and use rights are treated as just another product attribute that an individual chooses, like animal testing for perfume or the organically grown status of vegetables. But in most societies, politics and policy decisions are about more than just marketing products. The composite idea of Orange, “It’s my life,” presents an anonymous speaker articulating “it,” “my,” and “life.” One feels impelled to ask: “Who are you?”; “Are you alienated from your life?”; “Is that it?” An understanding of freedom merely concerned with choices for having or owning misses important aspects of human being.
Concern about interference in commercial wireless services focuses on the interaction of different service providers’ radio signals. Under current radio regulations, commercial wireless service users seldom experience such interference. Service qualities that users experience typically depend much more significantly on network build-out and network technology. However, before constructing a network, commercial wireless service providers typically seek a license to use specific frequencies, and the license is often associated with particular network technologies. For example, Orange in the year 2000 bought for £4.1 billion a license to provide UMTS service in the UK.[62] Acquiring a license greatly reduces the extent to which Orange has to manage radio signal interference as a business risk and an operating concern. On the other hand, the value of Orange’s UK UMTS license is likely to depend strongly on whether other companies can acquire licenses to provide services similar to UMTS in the UK using alternative radio rights. Orange’s primary business focus is not on governing radio frequency use but on providing wireless services to customers. Under current radio regulations, radio signal interference in commercial wireless services is only a minor business concern outside of the licensing process. Under different radio regulations, such as an unlicensed use regime, radio signal interference might significantly affect service qualities that customers perceive. In such a situation, dealing with radio signal interference would be another aspect of serving customers.
Interference among commercial wireless service providers’ radio signals is a rather different issue in low-income countries than in high-income countries. Low-income countries typically have little military use of radio; underdeveloped, public radio and television broadcasting; and much greater demand for low-quality radio services at correspondingly low prices. International radio regulations and the global radio equipment industry may not produce regulations and equipment appropriately adapted to the relatively low opportunity cost of radio use in low-income countries. Although low-income countries face different circumstances, their commercial wireless services may be effectively constrained by interference concerns in high-income countries.
To better understand freedom, consider what communications capabilities persons actually exercise. Table 10 summarizes amateur radio, Internet, and mobile telephony users per thousand persons in 164 countries, grouped by World Bank income categories. Looking across all countries, the median figures show about three times as many mobile users as Internet users, and about a thousand times as many mobile telephony users as amateur radio users. These data indicate that the commercial wireless services field has been relatively successful in bringing its type of freedom to persons around the world. These facts do not necessarily imply that commercial wireless services are much more important to personal welfare and the common good than are the Internet and amateur radio. But they do describe important aspects of persons’ communications activities in relation to much different fields of freedom.
|
Table 10 World Communications Capabilities By Income (median for countries in income class)
|
||||
|
|
|
Users Per Thousand Persons |
||
|
Income Class |
Number of Countries |
Amateur Radio |
Internet |
Mobile Telephony |
|
1. High |
39 |
0.7660 |
310 |
711 |
|
2. Upper Middle |
32 |
0.3320 |
82 |
212 |
|
3. Lower Middle |
47 |
0.0801 |
26 |
67 |
|
4. Low |
46 |
0.0022 |
3 |
10 |
|
All Classes |
164 |
0.0951 |
35 |
105 |
|
Comparing Income Classes
|
||||
|
|
|
Ratio of Users Per Thousand |
||
|
Ratio of Income Classes |
Number Ratio |
Amateur Radio |
Internet |
Mobile Telephony |
|
1/2 |
39/32 |
2.3 |
3.8 |
3.3 |
|
2/3 |
32/47 |
4.1 |
3.2 |
3.2 |
|
3/4 |
47/46 |
36.9 |
9.8 |
7.0 |
|
Comparing Fields
|
||||
|
|
Ratio of Users Per Thousand |
|||
|
Income Class |
Number of Countries |
Amateur/ Internet |
Amateur/ Mobile |
Internet/ Mobile |
|
1. High |
39 |
0.25% |
0.11% |
43.54% |
|
2. Upper Middle |
32 |
0.41% |
0.16% |
38.42% |
|
3. Lower Middle |
47 |
0.31% |
0.12% |
38.42% |
|
4. Low |
46 |
0.08% |
0.02% |
27.38% |
|
All Classes |
164 |
0.27% |
0.09% |
33.07% |
|
Sources and Details: See Appendices A and C. |
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The extent of communications capabilities has major significant for emergencies and disasters. One approach to emergency response and disaster communications is to have a small number of communicators who have special disaster response skills. The admirable services of amateur radio users are well-recognized in this regard. But having more dispersed communications capabilities can also play a critical role in emergency response. The presence of mobile phones among the passengers on a hijacked U.S. airline, along with the courageous and decisive action of a few strong men, probably prevented the U.S. Capitol from being destroyed and many additional persons killed.[63] Increasing persons’ capabilities also increases the possibilities for evil acts. Commercial wireless services, the Internet, and even amateur radio can be used for good or for evil. When confronted with those two general possibilities, liberal democracies usually place their faith in the good and promote freedom, while making prudent preparations to confront evil acts that might occur.
Difference in income levels of countries are strongly associated with differences in realized communications capabilities. The number of users per thousand persons drops sharply with country income class for amateur radio, the Internet, and mobile telephony. The median share of amateur radio users and Internet users is much less than 1% of the population in low-income countries. The share of mobile telephony users is only about 1%. Given that about 40% of people live in countries in the low-income category and about another 35% live in countries in the lower-middle-income category, many persons around the world have not realized important communications capabilities.
Some types of freedom are more easily realized than others in low-income countries. Commercial wireless services have done relatively well in low-income countries. On the other hand, amateur radio fares particularly badly in low-income countries and in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (see Table 11).[64] Amateur radio understands freedom as closely tied to government authority. Good government is not easy to establish and maintain. It is particularly lacking in low-income countries and in many countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Amateur radio needs to better adapt to conditions in low-income countries. More generally, communications capabilities in low-income countries develop more quickly in fields less closely tied to government authority.
|
Table 11 World Communications Capabilities By Region (medians for countries in region)
|
||||
|
|
|
Users Per Thousand Persons |
||
|
Region |
Number of Countries |
Amateur Radio |
Internet |
Mobile Telephony |
|
Western Europe |
22 |
0.8400 |
300 |
748 |
|
Africa |
45 |
0.0024 |
3 |
15 |
|
Middle East |
10 |
0.0376 |
69 |
209 |
|
Caribbean |
14 |
0.3181 |
51 |
117 |
|
North and Central America |
10 |
0.1602 |
34 |
122 |
|
South America |
12 |
0.2057 |
50 |
162 |
|
Asia |
19 |
0.0164 |
26 |
81 |
|
Oceania |
11 |
0.1923 |
22 |
18 |
|
Central and Eastern Europe |
21 |
0.2602 |
57 |
188 |
|
World |
164 |
0.0951 |
35 |
105 |
|
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