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Warner Norcross + Judd LLP is a corporate law firm with over 230 attorneys serving clients in nine offices throughout Michigan. Among the largest law firms in Michigan, Warner works in virtually all areas of business law.

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Over the past two weeks. I've written about the privacy implications of the <a href="http://www.wassom.com/tag/internet-of-things" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Internet of Things</a>&nbsp;(IoT),&nbsp;with respect to both <a href="http://www.wassom.com/top-5-legal-issues-internet-things-part-1-data-security-privacy.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data security</a> and surreptitious <a href="http://www.wassom.com/top-5-legal-issues-internet-things-part-2-data-collection-invasion-privacy.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">collection</a> of information. Today we consider a more mundane, but no less practical, aspect of the IoT explosion: bandwidth.

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Consider this:&nbsp;Cisco IBSG <a href="http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-market-size" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">predicts</a> there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020. &nbsp;Finding each of them their own connection to the internet won't be a problem, thanks to the switch we made a few years ago from IPv4 to IPv6, which gives us more IP addresses than there are atoms in the Earth. No, the problem is processing&nbsp;all that traffic on the network simultaneously. Suppose the number of automobiles on the roads were to double over the next five years. What would happen to our already-crumbling infrastructure? &nbsp;Even if we all had private garages for our cars, we'd be left sitting in them, waiting to&nbsp;get out of the driveway.

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This is not a new concern. As early as 2011 (and probably even earlier), IoT forecasters <a href="http://readwrite.com/2011/11/03/ucsd-study-not-enough-bandwidt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">observed</a> that "there may not be enough space in the public airwaves for all the things that want to chatter with one another."

Google Developer Advocate Don Dodge repeated the prevailing wisdom last year when he <a href="http://www.lightreading.com/iot/google-exec-internet-of-things-requires-brand-new-network/d/d-id/709381" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">concluded</a> that "we're going to have to ...build a brand new network" to handle all this traffic. Various solutions have been proposed, from "<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ptc/2014/07/03/does-the-internet-of-things-need-its-own-network/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a special low-bandwidth cellular network</a>" to "<a href="http://readwrite.com/2011/11/03/ucsd-study-not-enough-bandwidt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wi-Fi-like hotspots that are themselves linked via fiber</a>." The French company SigFox is already <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527376/silicon-valley-to-get-a-cellular-network-just-for-things/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">testing</a> a new type of cellular network just for "things" in the San Francisco Bay area, using&nbsp;the unlicensed 915-megahertz spectrum band most often&nbsp;used by cordless phones.

If successfully implemented, such low-range interactions will add local flavor and variability to our digital interactions, allowing individual businesses to better customize the exchange of information with customers. It will also make it enormously more difficult for law enforcement, advertisers, or anyone else to efficiently search for&nbsp;particular users or transactions.

It seems quite likely that this&nbsp;practical limitation on existing networks is&nbsp;one of the driving forces behind the effort to provide truly global internet access over the entire planet--what I describe in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Augmented-Reality-Law-Privacy-Ethics/dp/0128002085/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417796513&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=augmented+reality+law" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">my recent book</a> as the "panternet." Google and SpaceX&nbsp;are building a <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/google-might-pour-money-into-spacex-really-wants-satellite-internet/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">satellite network</a> for this purpose, while&nbsp;Facebook&nbsp;wants to blanket the world in broadband using high-latitude <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/525951/facebooks-drones-will-battle-googles-balloons-to-spread-internet-access/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">balloons</a>. Although the stated (and laudable) goal of these projects is to extend internet access to the billions who don't already have it, surely the networks will also enable a new class of IoT devices to connect as well.

Indeed, these&nbsp;bespoke networks (whether locally generated or globally broadcast) may have no need to connect to the "internet" as we know it, beholden as it is to undersea cables, ICANN oversight, and the looming tides of <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/document/orielly-statement-internet-regulation-and-fauxbearance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">federal regulation</a>.&nbsp;To the contrary, these may be new "Wild Wests" of private autonomy, much like the internet itself used to (inaccurately)&nbsp;characterized. At that point, IoT devices may become a passport to a decentralized digital world the likes of which we have not yet experienced.

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Brian D. Wassom

Information Technology Transactions

Top 5 Legal Issues in the Internet of Things, Part 3: Bandwidth

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Top 5 Legal Issues in the Internet of Things, Part 3: Bandwidth

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