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Why US Wireless Isn't Wide Open
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Dec 13, 2007 01:11 PM
from the tone-available-but-not-to-you dept.
from the tone-available-but-not-to-you dept.
Geoffery B tips a story in Business Week about why the US cellular carriers' talk about opening up their networks rings hollow. "Even as the wireless industry chants a new gospel about opening mobile phone networks to outside devices and applications, some of the biggest US carriers are quietly blocking new services that would compete with their own. Would-be mobile-service providers, ranging from startups to major banks to eBay's PayPal, have encountered these roadblocks, erected by the likes of AT&T and Verizon Wireless. In some cases, cellular carriers have backed down, but only after inflicting costly delays on the new services."
Related Stories
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Hardware: Verizon Wireless To Open Network 286 comments
A number of readers are letting us know about Verizon's plans, announced today, to open their nationwide wireless network to devices that they don't sell. A NYTimes blog posting puts VZW's announcement in industry context. From the press release: "In early 2008, the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network. Any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the network. Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab which received an additional investment this year to gear up for the anticipated new demand. Any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices."
Submission: Why wireless in the U.S. isn't wide open by Anonymous Coward
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Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For the record, trying to make money != greed. Not relinquishing a dominated holding (what they're doing is legal) is not greedy, it's intelligent business. What do the companies have to gain by allowing more competition in an already competitive market?
Re:Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa! The equivocations are flying by at light speed!
For the record, trying to make money != greed. Not relinquishing a dominated holding (what they're doing is legal) is not greedy, it's intelligent business.
If one's sole concern is profit, to the exclusion of all other concerns (public health, advancement of humanity, humor value, whim, sex appeal, religious imperatives, etc.), then that's greed. It really doesn't matter *at all* if it has the sanction of law or not; law says next to nothing about ethics, and greed is primarily an ethical judgment.
Intelligent business *is* greedy. Leveraging dominant market share *is* greedy. Trying to make money (as a corporate mandate, not in general; individual moneymaking is a more complicated issue) *is* greedy.
Now, what really needs to be talked about is whether greed is at all times *good*, **bad* or something in between. That would be the moral discussion, divorced as it is nearly entirely from both law *and* ethics.
Parent
Re: (Score:1)
They do not block anything. They just do not respond to proposals by other companies to canibalize their own networks. These other companies that want to do something with ussd so urgently have following choices:
1. give up
2. give more money and agree not to canibalize the incubents' networks (this do
Re: (Score:2)
Had they borne all of the costs for creating their "networks", they'd be entitled to pricing as they saw fit. Since they didn't, they aren't.
Then why not sell crack? (Score:2, Insightful)
As much as many of his stuff annoys the hell out of me, Michael Moore had a line one time about "why doesn't Chrysler sell crack?"
When a company does something unethical, they say they have not just a right but a responsibilit
Greed is OK because it is how business works? (Score:2)
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Greed spurs innovation. Many of these advances wouldn't have been developed without the promise of money once they're complete.
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yes i do see the irony of the worlds only city state claiming greed is bad.
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Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Banning corporate lobbying will give us a nice jolting shakeup of our government.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh wait...
The solution is not to ban lobbying. The solution is to ban "gifts" and campaign contributions by the lobbies.
Re:Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
* Exceptions:
1. Apple getting premium prices
2. Any Slashdot fanboy downloading any movie/music/game for free since this it's only greedy when the creators want $$ for it, not when Slashbots want it for free
3. The other companies mentioned in this article that are not really being banned, but may not be able to get "short" numbers. They are not greedy, since they want to make money, and get a scarce resource (short number codes). If these non-Verizon companies want to hog the short codes this is NOT greedy because they are Slashdot approved. Only the cellphone companies are greedy. Everything is purely black & white.
4. Whenever a Slashdot approved company makes money: AMD, IBM (called an 'underdog' for unknown reasons), Google, Apple (again)
5. Any company with a '90's style business plan that goes under due to ineptitude. They are seen as being martyrs for the religious cause of the week, and that they should have succeeded except for George Bush being evil and destroying them.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Please remember that if you browse at +1 or more you'll only see the multitude of vocal minorities. Granted in most cases its the largest minority, but still a minority out of the whole.
Course less than +1 is a study into Beckett's Endgame writ large, but it does reveal the broader mix of perspectives.
Re: (Score:2)
The real reason is that the FCC/government decided not to require some type of open access at a reasonable price they they require with the telephone company. A third party should be able to "rent" a data/voice line on their network for a nominal fee.....that is if our government wasn't cuddled up with the providers.
Re: (Score:2)
You do understand that's what the short codes are right? They are a way for the third party to "rent" special services from the providers such that they can offer alternative, competitive, or complimentary services. As the article states, these companies are still able to use standard text messaging to accomplish the same purpose.
While I think it is
Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel like the summary is a tad sensationalist... I don't find a business not voluntarily allowing more competition to be suprising.
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Re: (Score:1)
To say that the incumbents in the wireless market are in some sort of trust or effective monopoly is incorrect. Over the course of the relatively short lived wireless market, consumers have seen
Re: (Score:1)
To say that the incumbents in the wireless market are in some sort of trust or effective monopoly is incorrect. Over the course of the relatively short lived wireless market, consumers have seen cost to service ratios drop steadily as the competition between Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon remains constant.
Are you so certain of that first statement? One doesn't necessarily imply the other. Collusion and competition can coexist. As long as everyone in the industry agrees to impose certain barriers to entry while still competing -- that's still collusion.
Re: (Score:2)
Then slowly those 12 standards would merge as the devices relied more heavily on a specific set of features over another. We'd end up with something fairly flexible, but more limited
Customer focus vs competition focus (Score:2)
The truth though is that in many companies are not customer focused, but competitor focused, expending more effort in body-slamming the competition than improving their goods/services. In these cases the customers are very definitely not advantaged.
As with most ideologies, captialism is not good or bad of itself. Th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But in the US wireless market that's hardly what's going on. The carriers keep a stranglehold on the equipment supply by being essentially the only buyer of handsets from each manufacturer. Which explains why the
And You're Surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
And you're surprised at this news...why?
That's not what the article is about. (Score:5, Informative)
Open network surcharge. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
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Re: (Score:2)
Will this force the carrier to just give me a pipe, or can I still be nicked-and-dimed? It seems like it would be really easy, even if the carrier didn't want it, to stuff a data stream into a voice connection or something of the sort to give me a real internet connection.
And if carrier certified x-phone, couldn't someone just make a linux device that accepts the chip and pretends to be x-phone but lets me do what I want?
I may be way off ba
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Verizon says that you can bring a CDMA handset to their network, I'm not sure with contract or not.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If it would let me use my phone's built-in GPS with Google Maps, sure I'd pay $150 extra for the phone. If I were allowed to transfer applications between phones, sure it'd be worth it.
The reason my phone doesn't allow Google Maps access to the GPS is because Sprint sells a similar service for $10/month. So if the phone lasts more than 15 months, it would have been worth it.
Add in other locked down features (can't email photos from the phone, can't easily copy files off the phone, etc.) and it would be
Are US numbers portable? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Are US numbers portable? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
weird (Score:1)
read about that one.... (Score:1)
What are cellular carriers doing in banking? (Score:1, Interesting)
For someone from Europe, the idea that cell carriers do these kinds of shenanigans is just amazing. Here, you can buy a phone with no contract, pop in
Misleading title and summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Illustrative example: The wired phone network is an open-access network (i.e., you can call whomever you want using whatever phone you want and transmit whatever data you want), but that doesn't mean the phone company has to give me a 3-digit access number (ala 911, 411, etc) if I ask for one. This article is stupid.
Better Summary (Score:2, Interesting)
Because the field is completely dominated by huge corporations with great influence in Washington, free markets are incapable of demolishing, and in fact work in favor of monopolies, people are too apathetic to learn, let alone do anything about it, too scared of offending the corpogoverment and worst of all, too resentful of each other to believe they can work together for their mutual benefit.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Your first two statements would seem to contradict the third one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Spectrum should be democratic and FREE (Score:5, Informative)
This already exists. Pick up any used cellphone from any carrier. They will always allow you to make 911 calls regardless of whether or not you are under contract. If you mean emergencies that don't involve calling 911, you can buy a prepaid phone card which will allow you to do the same without having any sort of contract or annual fee.
You should try to gain a better understanding of the problem before you try to propose solutions to it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Please point me to a prepaid plan where the minutes don't expire. Every one I have found expires after a few months, creating a de-facto annual fee.
Do you have the better understanding you said the OP did not have?
Re: (Score:2)
When you buy those minutes, the cell company has to provision their network to be able to provide you with that service. In other words, if you buy, say, 100 minutes of airtime, the company has to have the capacity to reasonably serve you that 100 minutes of air time, *weather or not you use it.*
So, if those minutes don't expire, they have to continually pay to be ready for you to use them, without any sort of recurring revenue.
Here's an example: stale-dated cheques. Lets say you write me a cheque for
Re: (Score:2)
The OP's point was that there needs to be free spectrum, and then the GP post explained that you could get pre-paid without an annual fee. That doesn't seem to be correct, and your post supports that.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the GP post said that you could use any cell phone to call 911 without that phone actually being subscribed or activated to a carrier. In response to your 'Public deserves atleast a lowcost emergency phone which doesn't need the monthly and yearly contract slavery.'
He took 'emergency' to mean 'can dial 911,' where you probably meant it as 'need to call Grandma and tell her I'll be late so she doesn't worry'.
Re: (Score:2)