Origins of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

May 9, 2010 will be the 25th anniversary of the FCC's adoption of the First Report and Order in Docket 81-413 - the rules that laid our the rules that became Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee,  many of the cordless phones sold in the US, and a variety of niche products that enhance our lives.  In the next few months we will have several posts on how this all came about and its impact on today's world.

A Dutch team based at TU Delft/Delft University of Technology has completed a book on the background of this decision and the early history of Wi-Fi focusing on the factors that stimulated innovation.  (NCR's Utrecht Engineering Centre played a key role in early 802.11 standards formulation and its Vic Hayes, a coauthor of the book, was the founding chair of the group.) The book should be published later this year by Cambridge University Press.  

The 2008 George Mason University "Unleashing Unlicensed" conference also has a great deal of information on why this decision came about.  The paper presented by Vic Hayes and Wolter Lemstra  from TU Delft is a good preview of the coming book.

A shorter history, "A brief history of Wi-Fi" was published in The Economist in 2004.

Some people think this decision was the just FCC reacting in a dilatory way to a petition from industry - adding no value and just slowing down progress through mindless regulation of technology.  It wasn't. While the then Hewlett-Packard initially supported it, all other significant corporate interests at the time were against it. (The part of H-P that was involved then is now part of Agilent, not the present H-P.  It was supportive and then just lost interest in the topic with a corporate refocusing.)

The FCC initiative that resulted in these rules were an internal FCC initiative that came out of Carter Administration and then Reagan Administration belief that deregulation would stimulate economic growth.  

In occasional posts over the next few months we will review where this decision came from and lessons it offers for the present day.

"Looking back, it is clear that adoption of these rules was one

of the significant achievements of the Reagan FCC

- though I doubt if anyone thought so at the time."

Mark Fowler, FCC Chairman 1981-87, 4/08

Will Free Wi-Fi Become the Norm?

Larry Magid of CBS News and the San Jose Mercury News had an interesting post on CBS News this week about the future role of Wi-Fi.  Of course, if would be a nice holiday present to all if it widely became free in public places.  It was stimulated in part by McDonald's announcement of free Wi-Fi starting in January.

I also note that AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega has said that it will try to ease the load on its network overburdened by the success of iPhone, and perhaps somewhat underbuilt/underprovisioned, and to offload the carrier's cellular traffic to Wi-Fi hotspots and femtocells.

So as we approach the 25th anniversary next year of the Docket 81-413 rulemaking that brought forth Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth) over the opposition of most mainstream players at the time, who knows how big its long term role may be?

UPDATE

 Wired: Ford is making its cars into mobile Wi-Fi hot spots.

McCain and Wi-Fi

There has been a lot of press coverage of John McCain's aide's Gore-like Blackberry remark, but little about another McCain remark about his role in Wi-Fi. Yesterday's Washington Post quoted McCain as saying "Under my guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology". (Virtually the same words are also on McCain website.) Apparently he was talking about his chairmanship of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. For the record, he was chairman in 1997-2001 and 2003-2005.

What happened to Wi-Fi policy during this period? Basically nothing except some technical fine tuning at FCC of the rules in 47 C.F.R. 15.247.

Wi-Fi was enabled by the rules, now codified as 15.247, adopted in Docket 81-413. The drafting of the original proposals was explicitly authorized by Chmn. Ferris as part of a Carter-era push for deregulation. The NPRM and R&O were adopted in 1981 and 1985 under Chmn. Fowler with no Congressional (and almost no industry) interest. Wi-Fi was successful mainly because of deregulatory rules followed by benign neglect from Congress and FCC. (A good source of information on the origins of Wi-Fi is the collection of papers from a George Mason University 4/08 conference.)

The specific standards for Wi-Fi as we know it came from a voluntary standards group, IEEE 802.11 whose deliberations started in 1990 and the first standard was published in 1997.

So when McCain was committee chairman the first time, Wi-Fi hit the market in a big way, but the Congress and FCC had nothing to do with the timing. The foundation was set in 1985 and subsequent FCC action was fine tuning of technical details. No legislation or Congressional pressure had any impact on Wi-Fi.

While Sen. McCain's tenure as Senate Commerce Committee Chairman might have contributed to the "rapid rise of mobile phones", it had nothing to do with the success of Wi-Fi other than the coincidence that Wi-Fi became a household term in the same time period.

Wi-Fi History
Conference
at George
Mason University







My sincere thanks to Chuck Jackson, Tom Hazlett, and Drew Clark for organizing a great conference on Wi-Fi history on Friday. I previously gave the program here. Click on the conference logo above and you will go to a page with links to the papers, presentation "slides", and audio recordings of each session.

Vic Hayes, founding chair of 802.11 came over from Holland to speak. I was the keynote speaker.

Mark Fowler, FCC chair during the original deliberations that laid out the rules for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, was kind enough to send the following remarks,

Good morning, Thank you for opportunity to introduce Mike
Marcus to this audience today.

During my tenure as chairman, we faced a number of difficult
and contentious issues including reforming telephone rates,
facilitating telecommunications competition, and extending
First Amendment protection to all media. The electronic
press, the press that uses air and electrons, must be as free
as the press that uses paper and ink. There are no policy
reasons to regulate the content of the electronic media, only
excuses.

In any case, all of these momentous issues drew the
attention of the industry, academics, Capitol Hill, and the
press.

In comparison to those issues, our consideration in 1985 of
rules that would reduce the regulatory barriers facing radio
system innovators did not gather much attention. The
proposed policy was new—radio systems operating at the
relatively high power level of 1 watt could be brought to the
market without an FCC rulemaking or the grant of an FCC
license. In a limited sphere, it would be as easy to develop
and sell new radio equipment as it would be to develop and
sell a new toaster—well as easy as a toaster with an
antenna. As with any policy change, there were many who
feared change and suggested going slow or abandoning the
effort.

Despite these naysayers, Mike Marcus persisted. I clearly
recall the meeting with Mike in which he convinced me that I
should put the adoption of these new policies before the
entire Commission for an up or down vote. I did so, and the
Commission adopted the new Part 15 rules.

The rest is history. Today, billions of dollars of equipment
operating under these rules are sold each year. Most
portable computers sold today incorporate WiFi radios.
Looking back, it is clear that adoption of these rules was one
of the significant achievements of the Reagan FCC —though
I doubt if anyone thought so at the time.

Mike Marcus knows better than anyone else the details of
the development of the FCC’s modern unlicensed wireless
policy and is ideally suited to kick off today’s conference.
Mike truly was a man ahead of his time. He still is. So,
here’s Mike.