[IP] Re: FCC sets wireless sale rules

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brad Templeton <btm@templetons.com>
Date: July 31, 2007 6:05:43 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Cc: ip@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [IP] FCC sets wireless sale rules

On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 05:05:32PM -0400, David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: ext Robert Hinden <bob.hinden@nokia.com>
> Date: July 31, 2007 4:12:19 PM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
> Cc: Bob Hinden <bob.hinden@nokia.com>
> Subject: Yahoo! News Story - FCC sets wireless sale rules
> Reply-To: bob.hinden@nokia.com
>
> For IP.  This is good news from my point of view and will result in a
> lot of innovation from the device vendors.  Also, in my view, Google
> did get what they wanted (as opposed to what they were asking for).
>
> Bob

That remains to be seen.  Generally, you can connect any unlocked GSM  
phone to
the GSM providers.  However, AT&T and T-Mobile only offer certain  
blessed
models for sale, and in particular only provide subsidies on them.  You
can buy an unlocked Nokia E61 for $350 with wifi, and use it on  
AT&T's network
as far as I know, but you can get a Wifi-less locked Nokia E62 for  
$50 with
subsidies.

They do however only officially offer certain data plans to certain  
blessed
phones.  While often the other plans work, the iPhone's $60/month  
plan is not
available on many of the other phones AT&T sells and not on any foreign
phone you bring in.

Now, they don't do open apps today.   They block apps for two reasons.
One, they compete with voice services (Skype or SIP get blocked) or
other services the carrier sells.   Two, they just plain use a lot of  
bandwidth
and we know that with "unlimited" pricing the carrier wants to  
discourage
anything high bandwidth as much as they can.

But will these new rules simply direct the victorious carrier to offer
"any application" on bandwidth that is billed by the kilobyte, but still
prohibit applications if you want the "unlimited" that customers all  
love?
Or will they just change the name to call it "Unlimited web surf and  
e-mail"
while putting per-kb charges on other apps?   That's still _open_ to  
all apps.

This is the thing that wholesale pricing might have changed.   If the
carrier's own services pay the same price as the resellers pay, they
you would get competition over what unlimited actually means.


Of course, the truth is nobody should own spectrum.  The opening up  
of a few
mhz of spectrum where microwaves blare created the greatest period of
innovation and price reduction in the history of radio.   Yet, even
with an example like that, people can't see it.

Another hidden tragedy is the allocation of spectrum to emergency  
services.
What a waste.  If all that spectrum were opened up, the police and fire
depts. could buy superior radios, with ten times the features, at 1/10th
the price, and they could all talk to each other and even to members of
the public they wish to talk to.   There would be so much spectrum  
available
they would not need a priority channel, but if they insisted on one,  
their
radios could be given special certificates that the access towers  
which made
use of frequencies in "their" band could obey, though they would  
probably never
need to use them


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