was two to five times faster than the fastest cable modem in the United
States.[5-29] Once built, the system would deliver this content at just about zero
marginal cost.

Hendricks could build this system in Tonga because he was free of FCC
regulations. Tonga has its own rules for allocating spectrum; it chose to
make a sufficient amount free to enable this free Internet use. Rather than
fight with the skeptics over whether the system would work in theory, Hen-
dricks decided to prove it would work simply by building it.

Hendricks has not stopped with Tonga. Encouraged by the FCC's push to
develop Internet infrastructure in Native American tribal lands, he has now
begun a program to give Native American tribes access to free spectrum.[5-30]
Within eight tribal lands, he is building a similar system to that in Tonga. Na-
tive Americans on those reservations will have access to superfast, supercheap
wireless Internet technologies -- long before the rest of America does.

How can Hendricks do this, given the rules of the FCC? Hendricks's plan
starts within the rules the FCC has set; when he runs against the rules, he
will shift to plan B: The Native American tribes argue that they are sover-
eign nations. The Supreme Court has agreed. Their claim is that they are
free to regulate spectrum on their lands as long as they don't interfere with
spectrum off their lands. Hendricks's system won't interfere. And by the
time the lawyers resolve the battle, these Native American tribes will be con-
nected at a higher speed than the fastest cable modems in AT&T's labs.
This is regulatory activism in its finest form.

///\\\

Hughes and Hendricks are just two of a gaggle of innovators experi-
menting with these alternatives to allocated spectrum. Some of the most fa-
mous innovations are the "Bluetooth" protocols, which enable low-power
connections between mobile devices and PCs. Millions of devices now
embed the protocol, which uses one of the few "unlicensed" bands that the
FCC has allowed.[5-31] Another example is Apple Computer's AirPort tech-
nology, enabling wireless links to computer networks using a protocol
called 802.11b.[5-32] (Real Madison Avenue whizzes, these protocol namers!)
This technology enables extremely fast wireless connections between com-
puters and a network.

But these are just the beginning.[5-33] Consider the work of Charmed Tech-
nologies. Founded by MIT Media Lab alumnus Alex Lightman, Charmed
Technologies aims to develop wearable computing systems. These wearable
devices will link to the Internet and feed information in real time back to the

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