Information Economy Project
Past Events
THE GENESIS OF UNLICENSED WIRELESS POLICY :
An Information Economy Project Conference
George Mason University School of Law
3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, Virginia
Room 121
Friday, April 4, 2008
Charles Jackson, Conference Coordinator
Thomas W. Hazlett, IEP Director
Drew Clark, IEP Assistant Director
Unlicensed wireless devices, from Wi-Fi routers to baby monitors to cordless phones, are in common use today. But the technologies they deploy were largely illegal until significant reforms were enacted in the mid-1980s. Starting in the United States, regulators permitted certain types of radios to access frequencies on a non-exclusive basis. These policy measures unleashing unlicensed have remained largely in the shadows.
This conference aims to bring new historical perspective to the emergence of the license-exempt rules and the applications that followed. It will explore the interplay between industry initiatives
and government responses. It will showcase a series of academic research papers examining how unlicensed spectrum policies developed and how they helped shaped market responses.
The Information Economy Project is bringing together speakers deeply involved in crafting key policy changes, including spectrum allocations and technology standards. Many of the individuals have also been at the forefront of supplying applications via unlicensed spectrum.
This conference should prove informative to people interested in spectrum policy generally, or unlicensed wireless in particular. It may also interest students of regulation, technological innovation, communications, or law and economics.
| 8:15 a.m. | Informal Breakfast Welcome: THOMAS HAZLETT, George Mason University School of Law (Bio) Digital Recording (MP3) |
| 8:30 a.m. | Morning Keynote: "Wi-Fi and Bluetooth - The Path from Carter and Reagan-era Faith
in Deregulation to Widespread Products Impacting Our World" |
| 9:15 a.m. | Panel 1: Policy Development Digital Recording (MP3) "Unlicensed to Kill: a Brief History of the FCC Part 15 Rules" "Grazing on the Commons: The Emergence of Part 15," |
| 10:30 a.m. | Break |
| 10:45 a.m. | Panel 2: Market Development Digital Recording (MP3) "History of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) in the Unlicensed Bands" "Unlicensed: The case of Wi-Fi" "Broadband Access in Unlicensed Bands for Fun & Profit" |
| 12:15 p.m. | Lunch |
Luncheon Keynote: "What Went Wrong with U-PCS" Digital Recording (MP3) |
|
| 1:30 p.m. | Concluding Remarks |
| 1:45 p.m. | Adjourn |
When: Friday, April 4, 2008, 8:30 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.
Where: George Mason University School of Law, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201 (Orange Line: Virginia Square-GMU Metro). Admission is free, but seating is limited.
Because of construction, parking is tight. See http://www.law.gmu.edu/geninfo/parking.
See IEP Web page: http://iep.gmu.edu.
Note (04/03): We have an agreement to submit the conference papers to the journal INFO, which will publish a special issue related to unlicensed wireless.