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CenturyLink is notorious for burying startup ISPs that would compete with them in preliminary injunctions and then dragging the cases out in court until the startup goes bankrupt from lawyer fees. They're one of the major ISPs that shut down North Carolina municipal broadband. They have obtained an obscene government grant to expand rural broadband yet every rural area I go to has pretty much the same CenturyLink service as they did five years ago: you're lucky if you get one megabit. They got one five years ago too.

CenturyLink is about as evil of a corporation as you can get. They constantly cut off all attempts to bring better internet service to areas (even if they don't serve them yet!) while not improving their offerings significantly enough compared to the amount of cash they're raking in from customers and government grants.

Isn't it ironic that they're slated to get $3 BILLION in grants over the next six years, yet they claim municipal broadband funded by local-level tax dollars is "unfair competition?"

Posting anonymously only because CenturyLink could easily sue me otherwise.

technically Sprint was the first carrier with VoLTE (or VoIP). They inked a deal with Google several years back where your Sprint phone number became your Google Voice number

Obviously that's not VoLTE, and I expect T-Mobile's widespread deployment of VoIP on their handsets predates that, anyhow.

Even Sprint never mentioned that, in relation to their VoLTE plans:

http://www.fiercewireless.com/...

http://telecoms.com/304831/spr...

I believe quite a bit of development work has gone into Wikipedia Zero (and into mobile generally, which is the Wikimedia Foundation's major growth sector, as desktop pageviews are going down). At present, the WMF staff and contractors page shows one Director of Mobile Partnerships, and four mobile partner managers. I don't know how much developer time Wikipedia Zero currently claims. There is also a project to get Wikipedia articles to subscribers via SMS. ("The Wikimedia Foundation added that it partnered with the Praekelt Foundation, a South African nonprofit with expertise in text messaging, to develop the necessary technology for the project.") Of course, SMS delivery seems like the worst possible format for article delivery, in terms of enabling a reader to assess a Wikipedia article's sourcing.

Meh, replying to my own post. Found this:

http://www.telecoms.com/22503/nokia%E2%80%99s-problem

The N97 was the phone I was thinking of although ALL of their Nxx devices were crap.

And there were so MANY of them! Why have 5 SKUs where 500 will do? Always doing the networks' bidding...

Yes, I have also discovered HTML formatting too - sorry about original post.

In the U.S., DSL and cable Internet access were formerly regulated by the FCC according to different rules, but in 2005 the FCC re-classified DSL according to the more permissive cable rules -- Wikipedia

So I apologize, it was only DSL and other phone-line based internet that was regulated under common carrier laws under the telecommunications act. However, it still stands that these are not new regulations. The desire of proponents of Net Neutrality is to reclassify all internet access under the telecommunications rules for Common Carriers and unbundling etc.

I've seen the fake picture you mention. However, I've also seen this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/carriers-net-neutrality-tiers/ which is not fake at all. In fact, it looks remarkably similar to the satirical image you were referring to.

Not only that, but the UK is starting to warm up to tiered internet like this http://www.telecoms.com/23428/uk-warms-to-tiered-internet/ so of course we'll start seeing ISPs in the US clambering to do the same thing.

Let Corporation A and Corporation B fight it out

You're under the mistaken impression that there is competition in the ISP industry. Corporation A and Corporation B aren't going to fight at all. They are going to agree not to poach each other's customers by being in different areas and do the exact same thing, allow companies to pay for priority service. This is a horrible thing for consumers and once we let the ISPs follow through and get entrenched doing this, not only would we have to fight the ISPs to implement Net Neutrality, but we'd have to fight all the companies paying for priority service so they don't lose the advantage they gain by paying exorbitant sums of money to ISPs.

I'm also sure that when the ISPs follow through with what they want to do, everyone who said that Net Neutrality should wait until they actually do something, will come up with some other reason why not to implement Net Neutrality.

LTE is not GSM.

It's not directly GSM and I never said it was, I said VARIANT, as in based on GSM

GSM is not 4G.

Duh, I never said that it was

Verizon dumps CDMA for GSM-based LTE in 4G networksengadget.com

In fact, there *is* no 4G, no such thing exists.

It doesn't?

Verizon had a choice of three competing 4G technologies: LTE, WiMAX, and UMB. UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband) was formerly known as EV-DO Rev. C, and is supposed to be fully backwards-compatible with other CDMA technologies while providing a significant speed boost. The technology has had few takers so far, however, and Verizon's decision to move away from EV-DO may doom UMB to a niche.arstechnica.com

Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO for AT&T's wireless unit also his commitment to LTE, for the company's upgrade path to 4G.telecoms.com

Perhaps you should write to Verizon and AT&T and tell them they have no clue what they are talking about. They could probably use a good consultant like yourself.

This actually makes sense. While Sprint does sell their own branded SprintPCS service, they are increasingly selling the network itself. Qwest Wireless and the Virgin prepaid services are good examples: they buy access to Sprint Spectrum's wireless network at wholesale rates and then sell their own branded service. AT&T was *going* to launch a new cellular service in this manner until Cingular acquired them outright.

As for data, which would be necessary for an "iPhone," SprintPCS already offers EV-DO which can reach some pretty good speeds, but they've also signed a deal to test WiMax with Motorola, the rumored maker of the "iPhone."

I am not going to go Cringely and suggest an Apple-Intel-Motorola-SprintPCS merger, but there is a very strong synergistic opportunity here.