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Skype Asks FCC to Open Cellular Networks
Milwaukee's_Best writes "Skype has just asked the FCC to force wireless phone companies to open their networks to all comers. Skype essentially wants to turn the wireless phone companies into just another network of the kind currently operated on the ground. This would require carriers to allow any phone to be used on their networks, and for any application. Users would simply purchase a voice or data plan (though these could easily converge into a data plan if VoIP calling is used) and then use the device of their choice to access the network of their choice. Think of it as network neutrality for cell networks. Given the competition that exists within the industry, is this needed?"
This is nothing but Skype trying to get the government to regulate a market for itself. If the cell provides saw business benefit in opening their network, they would do so. As it is now, they own the equipment because they paid to build it. They are free to do whatever they feel they can to capitalize on their investments. So as a humble user who wants to chat on IRC over a wireless carrier.... who am I to MANDATE to these sovereign owners any sorts of conditions?
Bah to this proposal!
Skype wants to take over and cause T4
Skype essentially wants to turn the wireless phone companies into just another network of the kind currently operated on the ground.
Yes, and the kind currently operated on the ground are facing a dead-end business model.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Skype should go first, by documenting their protocols and allowing 3rd party clients to connect to the Skype network.
I'm I right in understanding that the way cell phone companies control their towers now, I to call it a cartel?
Additionally, the cellphone makers are leasing public property (the airwaves) and building a fence around them to keep the public out (unless you buy a key / plan from them)
Are these metaphors off base?
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
"Network neutrality" in the case of the Internet is about customers' traffic getting the usual "common carrier" treatment. In the case of the Skype proposal, it's nothing less than an attempt to get something (access to cell towers and related equipment) for nothing (without having to pay for it). The writeup is both disturbing and misleading.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Competition? As in where I get to choose from one of [Verizon|Cingular|Sprint], all of which charge mostly the same, and whichever one I pick, I'm either stuck with them for 2 years or stuck paying exorbitant fees to "fire" them and switch to one of their clones? I'm intentionally glossing over the prepaid services (Virgin Mobile, for example) because they tend to piggyback on other carriers' networks (Virgin is actually Sprint's network, so in essence if you use Virgin Mobile, you're really using Sprint).
Saying there's real competition in the wireless industry is like saying that because Sony, BMG, and Warner all make CDs, there's "real competition" in that industry. Cable companies were forced to accept all comers (see Time Warner's cables being used by Earthlink, often at a lower fee than TW's RoadRunner service) - and hell, my cable company doesn't even lock me into a 2-year contract...
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I'm not ready to say that the FCC _should_ do this, but it would be interesting. It would be cool if you could use some sort of universal id and use whichever network was currently present or was the best one to use (signal strength, price, TOS, etc). A good handset would handle it automatically according to your preferences.
Please excuse the hubris of the next paragraph.
Just for the heck of it, should such a market come to pass in this or any other country, and should someone get the idea to create a device that automatically negotiates (whether passively or interactively) a contract with a provider, this post is prior art on any patent describing such a device.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
If the cell provides saw business benefit in opening their network, they would do so.
And if Ford saw business benefit to requiring Ford Gasoline in their engines, they would want to do so as well. Or if they wanted to create the Ford Expressway, allowing only Fords to be driven upon it.
Skype is arguing that we'll have a better wireless system if we have an wholly integrated wireless system -- that the spectrum, as a common good, should be shared in an open manner.
This isn't exactly rocket science or "New Deal" style expansion of government power. It's a request for a federal agency to take a look at the market, and do what it is legislatively required to do.
(And you don't get a vote on this. The entire reason for the FCC is to insulate the descision about the airwaves from politics.)
So as a humble user who wants to chat on IRC over a wireless carrier.... who am I to MANDATE to these sovereign owners any sorts of conditions?
I'm with you, but proponents of this would argue that the FCC basically gave monopoly of a public resource (spectrum) to these companies for a finite amount of time, and in exchange, the companies would build a network to use that spectrum. After a period, allowing the companies to reoup their investment, the network would become open.
I don't think their respective investments have yet been recouped, though it would be nice to see a little more choice of carrier. Sprint/Verizon/Cingular customer service are all terrible.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
This article seems to be a mishmash of specious and self-serving claims on Skype's part.
And the problem here is exactly what? It sounds to me like Skype is saying, "Hey guys, if you let us use your networks we'll undercut all your prices and undermine your business models. Then all that money you spent to build out your cellular networks will benefit us instead of you! Deal?"
No doubt it would. They're trying it in Venezuela. What's the basis for doing it here? Why should Skype benefit and the cellular carriers gain nothing?
"Block consumer choice" is an interesting choice of wording here. I've heard most of these complaints before. Then again, T-Mobile allows me to install third-party apps on my BlackBerry, and I can even use it as a wireless modem if I hook it up to my laptop. Presumably I could then run Skype on the laptop (though how well it would work is another story). Kinda makes me wonder what Skype is actually hoping to achieve.
What do WiFi and Bluetooth have to do with running Skype over a cellular network? This sounds like a red herring to allow them to start talking about "crippling" again. How have the carriers "crippled" their WiFi-enabled phones anyway? This one I have not heard of.
And they manage to avoid the most important question: If Skype is encouraging the government to pass regulation to allow Skype into the telcos' markets, can we therefore assume that Skype is willing to itself be regulated, exactly as the telcos are regulated today?
Breakfast served all day!
The real question here is whether it is in the public interest to have a heavily fragmented market of incompatible cellular networking.
Yes, it is their equipment, but it would be illegal to use it on public airspace. Is it in our best interest to allow companies to sell back what was once a public commons?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I've often wondered why data sent through the mobile networks (voice, internet etc) is so much more expensive than land based traffic. I mean you wouldn't sit around browsing the web over a mobile phone, even if it did have a huge screen, since you'd go bankrupt. Surely it costs more to dig up a whole city and lay cable than it does to erect some mobile masts, so why is data transferred by cable so much cheaper? Also aside from the initial expense of digging up a city, surely maintenance is more expensive for cable companies since it also involves digging and disrupting traffic etc. It seems to me that we are being massively ripped off.
As a free market libertarian, I vote against this.
I lost all respect for Libertarians after I heard one complain about how his town wouldn't plow his private drive.
Unfortunately, we tried the "libertarian" take early on in the US; business used to be largely unregulated. What did they do with this freedom? Grossly abused the workforce- preferring to employ children and women, who had little socio-political power and thus were easy to control and work to death. Polluted the hell out of groundwater and rivers by dumping their byproducts whereever they pleased, consequences be damned. Today's working conditions are what they are, purely because the government has raised the bar (slowly) on how workers may be treated after public outcry forced legislation. We're not alone.
Maybe if you grew up in a state like Massachusetts where children died getting crushed by weaving machines in fabric mills, and where PCBs were dumped by GE into rivers simply because they COULD...well, maybe just then you'd feel a little differently about regulating industry. Hell, they recently found near the Alewife T station, on the cite of an old dye plant, that people who grew up in the area had cancer rates that were astronomically high. These people, as kids, played on the site- and many of them remember that the ground was so contaminated, puddles would form spontaneously in depressions in the ground that were every color of the rainbow.
Please help metamoderate.
While we're at it, why not kill all of the stupid one or two year service agreements. These also seem to benefit only the carriers and stifle the market. The current state of the cellular phone market is designed to only benefit carriers. Consumers suffer as carriers pat themselves on the back thinking that their customers are happy.
42
I personally dont think theres any cell phone competition in the US.
/really/ gone down. My minutes have gone up slightly for the price, but with the ubiquity, thats the least they could do.
/every/ feature.
I mean look, my cell phone bill has never
These guys charge for things that barely use infrastructure thats already up (10c a text message? cmon).
They dont compete directly on price either. Or service. You can never have it all with these guys, its al a carte and they take you to the bank.
They neuter phones, and find other great ways to take your money.
If there was competition, wed all be paying $40 or less for
If the cell band opens up, the cell companies are screwed. People will come along and offer service and make a reasonable profit for 1/4 of the prices offered now.
Sorry for the tired, bitter, rant.
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
And if Ford saw business benefit to requiring Ford Gasoline in their engines, they would want to do so as well. Or if they wanted to create the Ford Expressway, allowing only Fords to be driven upon it.
It's seems unlikely that anyone would want to buy Ford cars, if they did that.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Given the competition that exists within the industry, is this needed?"
I don't know if I consider this industry all that competitive--it's an oligopoly mixed with a cultural monopoly (what I mean by that is it's the same type of people running all of the companies. The people who run what we now call, again, AT&T, are basically old phone company fuddy-duddies who think it's a privilege (I'm using that word in the worst way possible) that we all have phone service. The same applies to Verizon and to a lesser extent T-Mobile and Sprint/Nextel.)
I'm not sure what I think of the idea. Half of me thinks it would be great, and the other half thinks that the companies would decline to upgrade to 3G, thinking that they'd be better off financially keeping the network slow enough so that Skype couldn't work on it.
Obviously not someone comprehends the utility of opening access to a switched network built upon a ubiquitous public resource.
Please do not confuse a free market with an anti-market. Something that is as highly controlled (rightly or wrongly) as the radio spectrum doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being a free market. This is, in fact, nearly the textbook definition of an anti-market, where economic entities collude with governments to retain market control.
If you want real free markets, then you don't regulate at all. No spectrum allocations, no power regulations, nothing. Of course, that's chaos. So what do we do? We use governmental institutions to balance the needs of all stakeholders. And Skype is quite definitely a stakeholder in this area.
Everyone, everywhere, needs more competition; that's not just a good idea, it's a Natural Law. Eventually, the telcos will learn this.
Excellent, well reasoned reply. Thank you.
From TFA: "Unfortunately, the "invisible hand" has been a little too invisble here, and no operator actually offers a wide-open network."
Hmm, let's see. With T-Mobile, I can:
- Buy any GSM phone that I pretty much want to, unlocked,
- Put in my SIM card,
- Use all of the T-Mobile services,
- Enjoy wi-fi,
- Enjoy unfettered Bluetooth,
- Enjoy an all-you-can eat data plan (albeit, at EDGE speeds only).
So why doesn't everyone jump on T-Mobile? Well, on the other hand,
- I pay more for my service (no one is subsidizing my phone),
- Can't use all of T-mobile's services or voice plans (no "five friends" for me),
- Can't get any tech support (see, your phone is not supported, bye)
- Get scary warnings on the "my T-Mobile site" since they cannot identify my phone.
I have no interest in Skype. But I do have interest in a BYO phone plan at lower cost, and the option to enjoy all of the plans that T-Mobile offers. Perhaps they have a point.
jh
It's seems unlikely that anyone would want to buy Ford cars, if they did that.
It does seem unusual, doesn't it, that consumers would continue to choose a product when it continually locks them in tighter and tighter to the MotherCorp? It is, alas, not at all unlikely. Standard Oil, Microsoft and AT&T are all textbook cases wherein people continue(d) buying a product that ultimately cost them more than the alternative.
The market is not free, practically speaking. There is a constant need to outside forces to provide a tempering influence on some of its worst excesses. Government is not a good candidate for this role, but it's the best available candidate, I'm afraid to say.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
The cell phone companies are idiots and i for one am sick of it, this needs to happen just to lessen the grip of their control if nothing else. They should open the network, and open the phones as well.
.99 cents, if i sign up for a 3 year contract. That is the REAL reason they are 400-600 bucks, to force you into the contract. So now you have your $400 phone and your $60 a month plan for the next 3 years. Ok great, now you want the internet. What most of these idiots pass off as the internet is a tiered 17 layer system of bullshit with new charges along every step of the way. You pay $10 a month for 'internet' access. What this gets you is access to a bunch of crappy applications, and they are not free, each one costs money. Say you want ringtones, you pay $5 for the ring tone browsing application, and then each crappy tone (aka mp3 or wav file) is another $2. You want to get weather, maps, or anything else on your phone, another application, another 1 time fee for the app, and then usage fees on top of that. If you're real lucky, you can hook your phone to the computer via usb and add some wav files.
It seems most people don't even realize how screwed up the cell phone world is just because they don't know any better. Firstly, these pieces of shit are not worth $400, I can put together a low end computer for less than that. Or I can get one for
Then there's text messaging, what a crock of shit, tiny messages hardly more than a few hundred bytes for the maximum size message (compared to full duplex audio on phone conversations), and they have the balls to charge 20 cents each. If the 'internet' on phones was real, we could send text with it, for free.
Anyways thats my rant. I'd love to see more linux phones, and get the actual internet on phones as standard and stop locking people out of everything. Let everyone else have a stab at developing useful things for phones. Then we'll start seeing the true potential of having little computers in our pockets always connected to the interweb. I hope someday i can actually USE my phone like i do the computer.
In reality we are not talking about allowing the free market to exist, but debating the point at which the free market begins. Personally, I say "let Skype enter the cell phone provider market". It seems to work for local phone service, electric, natural gas, garbage collection, and many other public services, why not cellular?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
" Think of it as network neutrality for cell networks. Given the competition that exists within the industry, is this needed?""
There is one big difference between this (cell) and the PSTN. The cell companies were not funded by the United States Government. There were billions of dollars pumped into the PSTN. Since it was subsidized by the US Tax Dollar; hence forth should be open. Otherwise you are harming the people that paid for the network.
PS: For what it's worth. I have worked for Ma' Bell, AT&T, SBC, Ameritech, MCI, WorldCom, T-Mobile, US Cell etc through out my career. I have seen both sides of the fence. Would this expand competition? Yes, but to the detriment of the people who invested into these companies. There is currently (IMHO) enough competition to the currently cell market.
PSS: I am not to thrilled about all the acquisitions of late. Now that is harmful to the market; but not the investors.
What if your only choicies are a Ford and Ford gas or a Chevy and Chevy gas?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
We keep coming up on this question since the divestiture of AT&T by Judge Green in 1984. The problem with current carriers is that they want to control the transport, and the value that can be added. This really is the same debate as breaking the stranglehold on the local loop. He who controls the last mile wins!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
does skype state they only want access, or, if you RTFA you'd see it says "open to all comers". you can't get more free market then that.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The second largest bidder in the C Block Auction was BDPCS. They bid $2.5 billion. They did their bidding from the offices of US West (now Qwest). They then immediately defaulted, because... they were not actually a real company. They'd never existed before the auction, had never sold a product or service.
They had bid on all the territories in which US West sold cell phone service.
The court cases in which they contested their default lasted for years. Years in which there was no fourth competitor in US West's markets.
The FCC was fine with this.
Oh, and the bidding process? For each round of bidding, you had to download the results via a proprietary Windows application, over modem, from a 900 number. The download speeds you would get from this number, no matter where you dialed from, amounted to approximately one tenth of the speed of the modem connection.
Yes, the FCC is a public government agency, the data belonged to the public, and the Internet did, in fact, exist back then. But I added it up, and whoever ran that deal must have made millions from that procedure. A cousin of an FCC commissioner, perchance?
What I'm getting at, is that if you expect the FCC to enable competition for Skype or anybody else, in the best interests of the public, well. The FCC now, ten years later, is *much* more corrupt than it was then. When Colin Powell's son Michael became head of the FCC and was instrumental in approving the AOL-Time Warner deal (Colin was on AOL's board of directors at the time; the deal made him about $4 million)... Powell was when it started to get really bad.
Now, the FCC operates purely in the interests of those who can afford their favor.
I'm trained formally, as an economist, and I think these kinds of issues come down pretty much like this: My assumptions: 1) Wireless phones are a good thing for society because they lower the cost of transmitting information. 2) It requires lots of capital to produce an effective national wireless system. 3) No one likes risk and they will require profitable compensation on the matter. 4) Persons who build national wireless networks assume lots of risk, because building networks is a speculative endeavor. ----- Supplementary to assumptions: 3) & 4) - are patently economic axioms, so I'm not going to belabour those. 1) - Whether cell phones use is transmitting information, or setting of car bombs, I don't think anyone will dispute how useful the technology is. Systemtically, we must accept the cell-phone network as equally useful. 2) - This is largely empirically driven: if you don't believe it's costly, feel free to examine the last ten years of Verizon Wirelessess cash flows and income statements. ----- My analysis of this situation: Given my set of assumptions, I think the lynchpin of this situation isn't a discussion of "free-markets," and defending the rights of the networks. This isn't to say we must open them -- but at least think about what that would mean. Society benefits currently from these networks. Let's say 40 million persons in the USA have cell-phone contracts. They happily pay and engage in these contracts deriving benefit. Let's say the network providers, after operating and deprecation, re-invest 30% of their profits into expanding their network. They re-invest to expand and improve their network. Why would they do this: to expand market share, and continue to increase their levels of revenues. The network providers have little interest in decreasing marginal profits, and they seek to avoid these situations. This doesn't make them evil: this is simply a function of what they are definitionally. There is no benevolent free cell-phone network, not yet at least.... Network providers, are also, members of society. This isn't some kind of Enlightment-Era social contract argument, but just opening the door to the possibilities of government intervention. [Now I trot out my economics tool-box]: Let's suppose, of the 40 million subscribers, every user generates 1 use-point when they use their phone in their daily life over the course of the year. All cell-phone subscribers use their phones in many different ways and in many different contexts. Cell-phone subscribers also pay different prices for their contracts and add-ons across providers. Let's bracket that off, and simply say the average of the 40 million is $40 a month for their 1 use-point. Every year society gets 40 million use points from cell-phones. How do we know people get use points? They pay their bills and limit their consumption of other goods. (By my estimates, $40/$8.99 = many drunken nights on cheap beer, which is my equivalent metric of consumption). Let's suppose, government regulation opens up these networks and lets them retain a "fair" profit. This seems to be pretty common in the United States. I'm from Illinois, and our government regulates our nuclear power from ComEd by some kind of legislative process. In Massachusetts, I think the result will be the following (and this is based on supply & demand reasoning from economic axioms): Let's say this reduction means that providers go from 30% re-investment, as earlier, to 15% re-investment to maintain marginal profits. Simply put: 15% of their expansionary profit-base has been sliced away in the bargaining process. 1) Increased competition = Less monthly costs for contract 2) Decreased revenues = Lower profits then network providers forecasted on 3) Network providers cut back on network maintance, advertising, and labor pool to buoy company. 4) Previously constricted consumers sign up for cheaper plans from 1). It's 4) that's critical here. Suppose the quality of our network stood still or grew at a much slower rate -- counterpose this result with
Why won't this happen? Because Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T/Cingular will not let their networks be opened. These companies spent truckloads of money building networks that they will not let be taken away and I cannot see an administrative agency getting any sort of go ahead to do this.
Is it a good idea? No. They are private networks and they should not be taken away from their owners.
MEF
this is a great idea, but since AT&T now owns most of the cellular networks, big media's congress won't allow Jesus's righteous FCC to do this.
They're using their grammar skills there.
The fact is, with the way the major carriers are at this point it would be IMPOSSIBLE to integrate all the networks so that so long as there is a tower in range of your phone, your phone will work despite what carrier owns the tower or what carrier provides your service....
Because when it comes down to it all the major carriers use completely different signal types:
Sprint: CDMA*
Nextel: iDen
Verizon: TDMA/EvDO*
Cingular/AT&T Wireless: GSM
*I could have these two switched but I don't feel that double checking this detail is necessary to make my point as the general idea remains the same.
When it comes down to it you cannot unify the cell phone networks the way the landline networks have been unified....
The landline networks all use essentially the same protocol for communication. POTS (plain old telephone service)
And THEY'RE not even actually integrated! If the lines going to my house were put in by Verizon originally and I want AT&T to be my local and long distance provider, Verizon still comes in and runs the line from the pole to the network interface jack. The only difference is AT&T pays them to do it! Then an AT&T guy comes in (and if you live in the sticks it's a subcontractor not even a real AT&T guy) and does my inside wiring and then syncs me to the VERIZON network. However, the verizon account attached to my home phone line is billed to AT&T instead of me and then AT&T bills me in turn.
Isn't legislation great?! People demand to be able to choose whatever service they damn well please. this makes sense and is fair. but rather than investigating feasibility, the lawmakers said "YES! THIS IS IMPORTANT! SO IT IS WRITTEN SO IT SHALL BE DONE!" and POOF! they all integrate with a snap of some congressman's fingers! Right?! Wrong... instead all the phone companies had to come up with a scheme to give people a choice using hardware that wasn't really designed for this.... and so you wind up with a kluged* together billing and passing system. And the only reason it works is because the technology is all the same and so when your bill comes from AT&T you don't know that Verizon still owns the wire and AT&T is just acting as a middle man now and offering you their (very similar) plans.
*Kluge: To force something to work by cobbling it together poorly... think of forcing the square peg into the round hole. That's kluging.
So let's get back to cell phones... without the same hardware you can't even begin to try to kluge it the same way. In my honest opinion, Skype has opened a can of worms that if the FCC sides with them, we'll feel the pain from for years to come as the cell phone companies scramble to comply with an outrageous demand.
If you're in favor of a free market, maybe we should open up the radio spectrum for anyone to broadcast whatever they want, and maybe we should let everyone put data networks wherever they want whenever they want however they want.
Of course, when your street has been dug up for the 5th time to lay down cable, or cable hasn't been laid at all because the investment isn't worth the risk without some guarantee of a semi-monopoly, and when your local police departments, ambulances, and TV stations can't get a signal through all the interference, your opinion might change.
If there's one part of the private sector that I think the needs governmental regulation these days, it's our data infrastructure. Our ability to connect to the internet and communicate is becoming too important to have a company hindering the progress, dragging their feet, because they haven't figured out how change will effect their bottom line.
Ford Expressways, GM Streets and Chrysler Highways are usually four lanes wide, nicely maintained and have a practical speed limit of 80 MPH, and cost $100 per month. Daewoo Roadways are constantly mocked by late-night TV comedians for being slow and narrow, and they almost never go exactly where you want them to, but they only cost $20 per month to use. Just for the elite, let's say Lamborghini has a small system of double-lane highly elevated roadways that let their drivers reach speeds of over 200 MPH, but cost in the neighborhood of $10,000 per month. For the many places they don't serve, they have an arrangement with the big three to let their drivers use their roads.
Finally, there are public access streets that are little more than overcrowded, rutted, muddy, pot-holed goat trails, but they're free. Because the motoring public shuns them, they never get enough funding to fix them up, and so they remain the last roadways available to the poor.
You'd most likely buy a Ford (or GM or Chrysler) because that's what the vast majority of ordinary people use, and the roads are both cost effective and superior to the cheaper alternatives. You'd probably pick a car manufacturer based on whose roads carried you closest to your home and work, and what kind of discounts the dealer was willing to throw in. (And Eric Raymond would be out there encouraging people to buy and drive road graders in their spare time, but now I've carried the analogy too far.)
John
Using GSM, the networks don't really interfere with what devices I can use on the network - so long as it takes a SIM card and I've paid it up I'm sweet (they might lock down the phones they subsidise and sell to Joe SixPack, but that is their business, I can take the cheaper deal or find my own)
So if the cell networks open up and let people install Skype on their phones, fine, but if that is eating up their profits won't they just make data costs prohibitive? or make data transmission of the type Skype requires not viable - bump up the latency maybe? You might not get a charge on your bill that shows as a voice call, but there is still no escaping the telco sitting in the middle shuffling your bits back n forth.
(One painful, but only slightly on topic telco thing is that they got Microsoft to not provide any way to get at the audio of a voice call in Windows CE, very annoying)
"Free market libertarian" wants to let the AT&T/Verizon(/Qwest) cartel sell themselves access at puny wholesale rates, but competitors should pay prohibitively inflated retail? Similarly huge-scale competitors like the other 2 of the 3 can equalize roaming charges, but small competitors will never afford to get access?
Libertarians are people who believe in the minimum government possible, but no less. Free marketeers are people who believe that markets work best with the fewest barriers to competition. Free market libertarians recognize that people create governments as our only remedy to monopoly market abuse.
The term you're searching for to describe yourself is "monopolist corporate greedhead".
--
make install -not war
Do you realise that the hardware in this phone is identical to the Nokia E61?
The major difference between these two models (apart from the frequencies and those things) is that the WLAN (802.11g) support is disabled on the E62. I'll let you speculate why that is.
I have an E61. I also have an unlimited 3G data plan with my provider. I can use Fring to make Skype voice calls over the data connection, either using 3G or WLAN.
Now, ask yourself the following: Why is this impossible to do in the US, when it's possible in most of the rest of the world?
even mention the word consumer and say this.
Money is the root of all evil?
And I say as a libertarian, you need to recognize that the telecom and other industries in the USA are NOT a free-market, and if the gov't is going to give the telecoms exclusive rights (by limiting radio spectrum licensing or granting geographical monopolies), then those companies must open up that infrastructure to others for there to be competition. I realize that, economically, some things make sense for such monopolies to reduce having to unnecessary redundancy of infrastructure, but if those same companies are then able to sell services on those lines, then there's a huge problem. And that's exactly what we have now. Let's make infrastructure companies prohibited from offering services (they can only resell to other companies offering the end-services); then we can have true competition, much closer to a free-market.
Well...not murder. Let's be fair to him. It was manslaughter. And very probably obstruction of justice after the fact. But not murder.
Skype is trying to go down the path trod by MCI back in the day where it used a combination of litigation and whining at the government to convince them that the only way to "protect" consumers from the big, bad meanie that was until recently Ma Bell was to force AT&T to allow MCI to use their existing infrastructure for free, so that a competitor stood a chance of getting their foot in the door.
Going on thirty years later, we've all seen how well this particular arrangement has benefited consumers.
More to the point, Skype doesn't even have the old telephone/Internet argument that the American government or public at large has directly paid for the construction of the current US cellular network. The private firms and their customers have paid that as a cost of doing business.
Even though I don't use VOIP, I've held these companies in fairly high esteem up until now. But after this, I'm classifying Skype with the same bozos who write botting programs for MMORPGs. Quit leeching off other people's work and start a real business, jackholes.
If the cell provides saw business benefit in opening their network, they would do so.
This is exactly why America has, IMO, the most retarded mobile communications systems in the world. From the article:
Skype essentially wants to turn the wireless phone companies into just another network of the kind currently operated on the ground. This would require carriers to allow any phone to be used on their networks, and for any application. Users would simply purchase a voice or data plan (though these could easily converge into a data plan if VoIP calling is used) and then use the device of their choice to access the network of their choice. Verizon, Cingular, et al. hate this and would love to keep crippling WiFi and Bluetooth access on their phones in order to keep traffic flowing through their network, using their (high-priced) services.
Here in Europe there are organizations that keep the playing field level, by forcing mobile service providers to do just what Skype asks. Here it doesn't really matter which provider you chose; the're all good because they all have to compete in the same playing field. Why should it matter for a provider what 'type' of data is sent over their network, and by what device this data is sent? Data is data, and the more bits they transport the more money they get. Apparently in America this isn't so. Amazing.
-- Cheers!
Skype does not want wireless (or wired carriers for that matter) blocking their VoIP calls. This request is a warning to the wireless carriers that Skype will push for very disruptive regulatory changes if their traffic is blocked. While Skype likely has low probability of successfully lobbying the FCC on the matter, the impact to the carriers is huge so they likely won't want to gamble since call revenue lost to Skype traffic is only at least at the beginning is only a minor ammount.
That's the refutation to the argument that cell companies shouldn't play because they built the infrastructure. The deal is, they built the infrastructure on a property we all own. It reminds me of something I once heard Utah Phillips complain about (paraphrasing here): the federal government leases our assets to companies who then turn around and sell back to us the stuff we already own at a profit to themselves. He said it much better and more humurously.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Bah - here come the arguments by analogy. Yegads!
But first, on topic stuff:
TFA notes that Skype's motivation is clear - to boldly place their traffic where its traffic has not gone before. Not argument here from me.
My understanding of regulation in the land-line telecommunications world is that it was driven by the desire to enable service additions and competition in a business where there were - and maybe still are - significant barriers to entry. It's expensive to get into the telecommunications business, and when long-standing infrastructure is in place, it makes sense to ensure access to that infrastructure is available to competitors, given fair remuneration for the incumbent. The alternative is duplication of infrastructure - for example, last mile cable - which is bone-headed and, as noted, expensive. Regulate for re-selling of that infrastructure. You get competition which is a Good Thing, which should be fair, encourage innovation, etc. and the incumbent opens an additional revenue stream via the re-sale.
I think it is a fair comment to say that these barriers are not the same for a wireless service. The physical transport - the atmosphere - is already there, so it's not a question of a barrier to entry as a result of cost, at least not in the same way or to the same extent as it is with land infrastructure.
However the spectrum is a shared medium - that's what removes the cost barrier above. Just because someone occupies that shared medium before you do, should they gain an element of exclusivity? I say no. Of course, everyone can start banging their service out over the spectrum, but this doesn't scale, I don't think. Sooner or later, we reach a limit on the co-occupation of the spectrum. I don't know enough about RF communications to know where or when this is, and as such I may get hammered here. If service providers can reasonably co-occupy the spectrum, then this house is made of cards and no doubt someone will tell me.
So if co-occupation if a problem, then a regulatory mechanism to force resale of infrastructure is reasonable.
But Skype doesn't want resale - it wants unencumbered use for customers on wireless networks so that its service can operate in this space. This desire sits at the core of net neutrality, and I'm for it. The service provider is paid for the user's access to the transport, and as long as this is the case, it's none of the service provider's business what I choose to put on the 'line'. You're getting paid for your minutes - don't tell me what I can or cannot say or do.
OT:Re: arguing by analogy - I can hear the 'you must be new here comments', etc. already, but what the hell. Argument by analogy is attractive because it can help others understand the *concept* of what is being discussed or asserted. But it doesn't *prove* anything - it's just a method to clarify. And mainly, it just leads to people trying to talk about one thing by talking about something else. Predictably, this takes you, well ... somewhere else.
I'm not flaming here - but for god's sakes, what do Ford cars and Chevy highways have to do with Skye, net neutrality, or whatever? And moderators seem to encourage it - got a Good Analogy? That's +5: Insightful, baby! So you can't even configure your way out of it.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
Canada has the same problem in general. E.g. $50 a month with few features and limited airtime. But recently I went travelling and discovered SIMD cards. In Bali you can get a prepaid SIMD phone number with no contract for $2, and additional minutes are about 10c, a text is 2.5c. So I did some digging and discovered two of the carriers also sold pay as you go SIMD in Canada, and now I'm paying about $10 a month, although I do only use that phone to coordinate meeting up with people. Anyway, they just don't advertise this kind of thing, you have to know what to ask for, but seeing that the rest of the world works this way, they do sell them. Anyone find anything like this in the US? Surely they can't be screwing over an entire country like that?
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
You've got the "best" of both worlds.
Don't you remember the clip from back around 2000 that showed Bush obviously drunk at a party in the 90s, a decade after he claimed to have gone dry? Or the DUI he had?
The evidence for Bush the alcoholic is more solid than for Bush the coke head.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If you all think this competition is fair you're kidding yourselves.
Skype owns.
If this goes through the cell companies won't fight over towers. Roaming charges will disappear and people with 50$
skype phones will be able to make a free phone call to anywhere in the world!
The cell companies will fight this to the death.
All of the cable and wireless networks should be claimed by the government for public use. Everyone pays a fee every year or something.
Oops got a little socialist there...
I think this proposal has a snowball's chance in Hell. If we can't even get the FCC to outlaw hardware locking of phones, what chance would Skype think they have of getting the entire network opened up?
What we're seeing here is Skype realizing they aren't going to be the next Ma Bell, because their product is pretty much stuck in the home of the user. Yeah, you can run Skype off any internet connection, but with some businesses/hotspots using port filters and traffic shaping to prevent things like Skype and torrents from working, and the ubiquitous free metropolitan Wi-Fi not happening, Skype is finding themselves losing out to the cell phone providers, whose coverage is just getting closer and closer to gapless as networks slowly expand. Why get Skype with rate plans getting cheaper (per minute) and coverage working on most major highways?
If the FCC or Congress thought interoperability and open access were needed, it would definitely be within their mandate because of the whole public airwaves licenses which were purchased for big bucks.
Ayn Rand would just love you to pieces!
While I don't like Skype per se, they bring up a good point and have Congress's ear. The current mobile providers do everything they can to reduce customer choice and therefore competition. They lock phones, force users into long contracts, and charge outrageous prices. Look to Asia and Europe for examples of successful, open networks with no locked phones and no contracts (yes, you can get a contract for a lower price but you're not required).
Common carrier laws should be applied to the telcos and to Skype; in fact to any large network. The government is supposed to server the people, not businesses. Everyday I hope that somebody in Congress will remember this.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone
The main difference is that the cell phone networks are under a whole lot of technological flux. First, there was AMPS, then TDMA, then CDMA, and GSM (in the USA, anyway), now WCDMA (3G GSM), etc., etc.
Managing that is a bitch. POTS hasn't changed since DTMF was introduced, and their previous attempt at upgrading it (ISDN) failed.
Not that I have any sympathy for telecomms companies. They're all monopolistic bastards who will cheerfully screw the customer at every opportunity. It's the FCC's job (with our oversight) to make sure that there's enough competition in all markets so that they don't have that chance.
>the federal government leases our assets to companies who then turn around and sell back to us the
> stuff we already own at a profit to themselves.
So what would YOU be able to do with the bandwidth or YOUR minuscule share there of?
Your argument, like Utah's is patently silly. Cell companies Leases the airwaves, investors put billions into towers and infrastructure and networks and storefronts, an you imply ALL OF THAT should be done for FREE because we already "OWN" the airwaves?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Isn't the FCC the one who has to approve all these mergers of the cell companies? Sprint and Nextel=Sprint, Bellsouth+Cingular+ATT=ATT... They're well on the way to bringing us MaCellBell, and Skype thinks that they'll have a fart's chance in a wind tunnel of this actually happening?
It would be great if it did, especially since it might cut down on the collusion between the carriers and manufacturers (selling $100 worth of technology for $400+), but let's be real.
Put down the doob, dude.
I don't think It would be right for them to have to open their networks. I'm pretty sure their business model depends on their network being closed. Here in the UK you can use IRC/SSH/SMTP/DATA across all of our cell carriers, so there's no reason why the US should be any different - even if your networks aren't exactly the same. However, this doesn't require all networks being 'open'.
I'm trained formally, as an economist,
Obviously not as a typesetter.
Wall of text crits you for 4362. You die.
No, it shouldn't be done for free. But we should be negotiating for more, because we're on the losing side of this deal. And, hey! Guess what! We can!
If $30/month isn't enough for X bandwidth, of any type of data (not just email & occasional surfing,) then they can just get out of the business; Let someone else take our money to do it.
There is one thing I don't understand. The RTT in GPRS networks is about 600ms, maybe less in some cases, but 10 times higher than the recomended delay for a voice conversation. How are they supposed to solve this problem? In case you wonder how I got the 600ms figure, there's a wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS#GPRS_in_practice and personal experience.
How about the FCC making Skype open their protocol in exchange? This would be fair, right? :)
WikiCreole - a common wiki markup language
All these types can be served by a single DSP based software system. The fixed function single type cellphones are long gone. All current Cellphone radios and signal processing is all software running on DSPs. In fact many cellphones can work on many different network types and some can work on all four with only a reprogramming needed. There is enough of a transistor budget to do a universal handset. Video, audio, web surfing and other such applications use more transistors than this would need. Also the transmitter and receiver can be programmed to change frequencies beyond the authorized ranges. This is limited by the programming to prevent this from occuring. It would be like multibooting on a PC. One boot partition would be for CDMA programs, another for TDMA, a third for GSM and a fourth data partition for all the common applications.
It would attempt to see which network is visible that you prefer given some parameters say you would like to use GSM, if available. It then figures which types are available and selects the one with the highest weighted average score. It does this at each interval say every five minutes or when it loses the current tower. When a call is connected, it will tryt to keep it on that network until done or signal lost. If signal is lost, it finds the highest scoring network available and calls the same number again so you can continue the call. And it can use a different network for your data transfers. Even Wifi, Bluetooth or other such wireless type could be used with such a cellphone.
Soon here in Milwaukee we will have a city wide wifi type network. With Wifi enabled cellphones, not many would use their Cellphone provider with their exorbinent rates. Watch the prices for data movement drop on local cellphone networks.
And if you think that the networks can't interoperate, they already do. Its called roaming and they do charge more for it. Else you wouldn't be able to talk to a GSM phone from a CDMA phone or either to a land based POTS phone. I have a Noika phone and it can talk to CDMA, TDMA and GSM networks, It prefers the GSM ones because it comes from Cingular but, it can attach to the other two. It gives me a far more completely covered area all across the US and Canada than any single network. I like many stopped using it because the charges got outrageous towards the end of the two year agreement. I save more with POTS.
Not for free. As with anything, when a network is regulated 'open', it means that the owners of the network have to sell airtime to all parties who request it.
More often than not, those who request it request ubiquitous access at a prorate (ie: per-bit price).
This sort of regulation is one that I feel is OK. Cellular networks are WAY too pervasive to be considered 'private' anymore.
Meanwhile, if they shared network space, the cellular companies could have extreme amounts of service, it would enable them to provide 'anywhere' wireless broadband at affordable rates, and would probably end the municipal wifi push that they've been railing against.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Yes, we would be SO MUCH better off with the Government running it.....
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Vonage would make more money out of this than skype would, being that they already have a standard VoIP system, whereas skype works under a P2P network, which i assume means they would have to entirely rework their network to run over cell networks.
Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Ammo box. Use in that order.
Amazing!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I'm in Portugal and I can use skype on my iMate Jam. I just don't because mobile data rates are expensive as hell for whatever purpose (in my case, around 0,005/KB).
>cd /SoapBox
." Others chime in with their comments about how to define this mythical "free market," but I feel like these cyclical discussions about pros and cons miss the bigger point: ALL of these assertions spring from the same underlying trope; namely, money/wealth = most important human development ever. The market, be it free, regulated, or completely monopolistic, is a remarkably poor indicator of the human condition on the whole, mostly because it cannot by definition admit any of the noneconomic considerations which inform human existence, such as the feelings of love and contentment you get when your first child takes her first steps, or the awe and sense of "smallness" one feels when first confronting megalithic wonders of nature. From the time some clever schemer figured out he could lock up the food to coerce others into doing his bidding, we as a species have "bought into" the private-property-first concept as being the only real way of organizing our societies. This is a fallacy - one need only look to the few remaining aboriginal micro-cultures to see that there is indeed another way of conceptualizing existence.
Every time a story pops up involving government regulation of some facet of "business," the so-called libertarians come out of the woodwork with shouts of "Free Market!" and "Let the market solve . .
That said, I freely admit that to expect such sea change in our attitudes toward life is madness. We live in a world dominated by greed above all else. And it is to this basest of desires that political-economic theories like libertarianism appeal. Where the problem arises is that some people actually see VALUE and VIRTUE in these theories. Then they attempt to impose these illusory values on everyone else through manipulation of the political fora. Just as all the bible-thumping in the world will never convert everyone, so too will your efforts fail to convince everyone that Ayn Rand had even a rudimentary conscience. She'd happily poison her community's water supply if it meant a few extra nickels in the "Assets" column of her company's balance sheet (provided, of course, that her personal wealth afforded her access to a private well). The accumulation of private property and wealth cannot create liberty, or protect it. All that's really going on is a shifting from one person or group to another: as one gets richer--by locking in his customers to his wireless network, for example--his "liberty" increases because he can buy more methods to obtain it (like a private jet, or a private estate, or special access to political channels). Meanwhile, those he locks in experience a tightening of their "spheres of liberty" because they are now bound by his contracts, his protocols, and the features of his choosing. At bottom, the libertarian / free market ideology views the "spaces" of life--sociocultural space, cyberspace, geographic/terrestrial space--as necessitating exploitation for profit irrespective of social cost. Libertarians are nothing if not champions of the right to exclude, which is precisely what is at issue here.
In the world the libertarians envision, where Insatiable Greed and Sociopathy have replaced Humanities and Fine Arts in all school curricula, dividing up the broadcast spectrum into proprietary, non-interoperable blocks would result in greater freedom for everyone because it would invite wide-ranging competition. Of course, when you emphasize the right to exclude others, you correspondingly de-emphasize progress and development. Capital expenditure targeted at improving reliability, usability, or security will only be made where it directly correlates to an expected, quantifiable rate of return. The converse of this--as so many slashdotters have pointed out--is that an open, interoperable network dedicated to the public and divorced from the "this is mine you can't use it" mentality will foster improvement simply because improvements can be made. Improvement for improvement's sake is preposterous,
Your comment ignores the fact that wireless is already a heavily regulated industry. Any industry that is heavily regulated is prone to developing problems. The correct libertarian solution is to remove the legislation, but the chances of that actually happening in this case are exactly zero. Given that, a libertarian can, without ignoring his/her conscience, support changes to the regulations that keep the market as close to fair as possible.
Firebug. It will make your jaw hit the floor.
This already exists in the UK. The market for contracts is only limited to business phones. I do not have any friends which use contract phones. Even if the "pay-and-go" phones (the ones you can buy seperatly to your price plan) are locked to a provider you can usually walk into a mobile shop and pay £5-£10 to get it "unlocked" and avaliable to work on any providers. It works perfectly well in the UK. I see no reason for it not to work in the US?
Skype should obviously be openned too. Indeed, software copyright enforcement *should* require source code publication, period, no exceptions.
However, there is more need and justification to open the mobile operators since they rip everyone off more and they are using public resources like frequency and land (yes, they do use eminent domain powers to take your land & put up towers).
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Long ago, I recall many people complaining that Skype didn't use an open protocol like SIP. Many were also concerned that the software, itself continues to be proprietary. If Skype opens up to such ideas, I could become more open to Skype.
Here in Europe there are organizations that keep the playing field level, by forcing mobile service providers to do just what Skype asks. Here it doesn't really matter which provider you chose; the're all good because they all have to compete in the same playing field. Why should it matter for a provider what 'type' of data is sent over their network, and by what device this data is sent? Data is data, and the more bits they transport the more money they get. Apparently in America this isn't so. Amazing.
And Europeans generally pay more than Americans for that level playing field. You can call almost anywhere in the US to anywhere else for one flat monthly fee and don't have to worry about going from Georgia to Texas and getting hit with roaming charges; plus your fee includes the phone so you don't have to buy it seperately.
Is it "better" - no ; just different. I prefer lower rates to portability. I alos like no roaming rather than worrying what I will be charged if I use my Portuguese carrier's phone in Germany or having to buy a new SIM to get local rates.
Since US carriers offer cheap unlimited data plans Skye could make a decent client for PalmOS and Windows Mobile based phones; but they don't. I used their client on my WM Treo and it was less than impressive; plus since my service already allows me to call anywhere in the US without a surcharge it offered no advantages other than being able to make international calls for a lot less.
Skype should focus on making decent software rather than forcing the government to help them out when they fail in the marketplace.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
In this case its not about money or data charges or whatever else.
The carriers don't want you using VoIP over their networks even if it cost twice as much per minute of talk (because of the data charges) than what a normal phone call cost. Its about control. If the carriers let you use data services (such as VoIP) over their networks, it becomes much easier to jump ship to some kind of 802.11* (e.g. WiMAX) based network when one becomes available, leaving the telcos with no real market.
The real question here is whether it is in the public interest to have a heavily fragmented market of incompatible cellular networking.
Given skype's record, the last thing they should be given access to other networks. They should be forced to clean up their act with the products they already have.
If anybody questions this, I would point them in the direction of all the unanswered threads on the skype forums, particularly with regard to the Linux and OS X clients.
The GSM Carriers (T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T) in the US already do this. They don't care what kind of phone you have or where you got it from, just that you have a proper SIM card in it.
You will want to familiarize yourself with the term oligopoly.
This is what we have in the United States. Competition in a given market is limited, due to the available spectrum. Without true competition, prices are artificially inflated.
Ever marvel at how nearly everyone's price tiering looks nearly identical?
Here on long island land is at a premium. Cell carriers pay A LOT of many to get their towers mup. Their networks should not be opened up because they pay a lot of money for thier towers for things like the land it sits on, the ata conenctions to the towers and the equipment to run them. That would not be right. I know verizon and cingular are huge companies but that does not make this right.
Your comment would be SO MUCH more insightful, if studies hadn't shown that many government-run socialized medicine systems provide better care than the US's private system, at about half the cost per citizen, per year.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
I think it is a fair comment to say that these barriers are not the same for a wireless service. The physical transport - the atmosphere - is already there, so it's not a question of a barrier to entry as a result of cost, at least not in the same way or to the same extent as it is with land infrastructure.
I don't think it's fair to say that.
The physical transport is not truly there just waiting for you; towers have to be built, in significant number, and in close proximity to service users in any area; there are still high costs to acquire equipment and real-estate to place towers, and to effectively compete, tower locations must be fairly numerous. True it is probably less expensive to build each individual tower than to wire up all the customers presently in range; however, that's not where the differences in costs end.
For a competitor to survive, in the present day world, they HAVE to have a large service area from the beginning -- users of mobile services already expect to be able to go anywhere with their phone, frequently out of town, on business trips, vacation, etc.
Whereas with land-based services a competing local carrier, could potentially choose to serve a very small area, and still deliver a very high level of service, just the same as a major carrier can provide to a customer; a wireless phone carrier that chooses to serve only a small area is inherently delivering a service that does not meet with consumer expectations at the same level as the major providers.
So unlike with a land-based carrier, the wireless competitor has to put up many towers in the populated areas all over the country, before they can directly service their customers wherever they go...
This is not like land based service where you never move your phone or take it with you. Your local phone provider doesn't have to wire you up when you go on that vacation out of state, but your mobile phone provider DOES, they still have to provide you inexpensive service, or you will be unhappy as a customer, since the major providers all include a higher level of service.
Thus there can be no such thing as a "small service area mobile competitor," that can meet big provider pricing. So long as the small provider has to put up towers all over the country or pay extremely high lease/roaming fees to access other carriers for such frequent occurences, they won't be able to compete with the pricing of major carriers who already own all that infrastructure...
Licenses for suitable frequencies have to be bought by bidding on them in FCC auctions -- and it's not as if there is an unlimited number of them, or as if the cost is likely to be insignificant. The big providers can easily make sure a competitor doesn't get in, by paying a high price for the licenses the competitors would need, anyways.
"Your comment would be SO MUCH more insightful...." If you didn't drive a Chevy? What? that's stupid and offtopic? Well.....
There was a time in the USA where calls made on "land lines" would cost by-the-minute. Back then, you would pay to be on the phone with someone down the road from you by the minute. As a result of this, people would spend less time talking on the phone. Eventually we got to the point where this was dropped, and only extended distance and long distance calls were charged by the minute. Even now, there may be areas where land lines have a by-the-minute cost structure, though I can't be sure if this really is something that is gone.
A large reason for this change is because the infrastructure is in place, and the need to expand the phone networks has dropped except in developing areas and leads into the whole "Voice Over IP" area. Since the local phone companies don't charge by the minute for local calls, we have seen companies like Vonage, and most companies that provide high speed access also are starting to provide phone service, including the local phone companies. THEY know that in the long run, the Internet is how phone calls will be placed, and even long distance by-the-minute is almost a thing of the past.
So, what makes VOIP work, since that is the direction ALL voice communication is going in is having bandwidth available. If a VOIP provider runs out of bandwidth in an area, the phone service breaks down, and customers will leave.
So, I will finally tie this to the purpose of this discussion. The land area in the USA is quite a bit larger than most people in Europe seem to feel(knowing the relative size of the USA in your head doesn't mean you really have a sense for just how big this country is). There are many rural areas that are undeveloped, which is something unusual since Europe has more towns per square kilometer than we have here in the USA. As a result, we don't have cell phone coverage in many areas, and there are many more areas where the coverage isn't very good. Cell phone companies have been expanding their networks to try to fill in the gaps in coverage, but it is a long and difficult process since many towns try to block the building of cell phone towers(the east end of Long Island, NY has this as a major issue).
Cell phones still have a limit on how long you can talk on them before the by-the-minute charges start to come into play, and the bandwidth the cell phone providers provide to the phones and on the network backbone is also significantly less than we see from land based phone and Internet access.
Skype wants to be able to just use the facilities that cell phone providers have spent a LOT of money to put into place without spending the money that goes into maintaining the cell phone infrastructure that is still very new. The US government, unlike most of the world, has not been pushing to get high speed Internet access into every home, and as a result, has less of a say about what cell phone providers should or should not do. If they have BILLIONS of dollars they want to spend to help improve the cell phone networks just so they can sell something that works anywhere, then they would probably get more support from people.
That's the key, too many people are out there who forget how expensive it is to maintain even a small IP network with enough bandwidth to allow for VOIP and data traffic to compete, let alone have enough cell phone towers to cover rural areas where hills can block the signal, so require more towers than the distance alone might imply would be needed.
The US cell phone market is the poster-child for failed free market standards setting. We continually lag behind the rest of the world, pay more for the same services and get worse service (even in population dense areas). The big four have carved up the spectrum into incompatible nightmares and have generally f'ed things up. I will admit that with the 3G switch, the FCC mucked that up and failed to free up the same frequencies to be sued elsewhere, so we have an another generation of being in the "ghetto" of mobile phones.
You really should provide links when making claims like this (and a liberal jumping right in off-topic any chance you can get, huh? typical). I've been to several countries and I really don't see what you do. Even in Canada, all that "free" stuff only costs you about 48% of your paycheck. If you made $80K per year, I'd expect a free MRI and cosmetic surgery every month for $40K. Yes I know it goes to taxes and other things as well. It's just the concept that I get to keep 35% more of my paycheck per year.
That's the refutation to the argument that cell companies shouldn't play because they built the infrastructure. The deal is, they built the infrastructure on a property we all own. While we are discussing the "common good" maybe we should figure out who John Galt is.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Of course it shouldn't be free.
But we shouldn't allow them to lock us into particular handsets - just because they don't want competition in that market. And we shouldn't allow them to block non-harmful forms of traffic they already support (data) for no reason other than they don't want competition from that market (VoIP).
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Q: How many Slashdotters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Microsoft sucks.
This is a reasonable position, except for one thing: libertarianism and the whole concept of sovereignty is antithetical to the very premise of the discussion! Once you start talking about highly regulated businesses such a cell network providers, it's already assumed that such positions are rejected.
If you or I were allowed to open and operate a competing cell network right now, without having to beg government's permission, pay various fees and bribes, etc, then it would make sense that government has no right to interfere with how we use that network. But that's not the world we live in -- this is already a semi-public infrastructure, so squabbling over details of how the government, rather than the "owner", decides how it is used, is appropriate.
I'm offended as well, by the idea that government might tell me what to do with my network. But these people knew what they were getting into, when they came crawling to the FCC on their hands and knees (with a bag full of cash) in the first place. If you think it is inappropriate for the FCC to tell these people how to use "their own" networks, then the first thing to do is to abolish the FCC. Get rid of the other 1000 things that government is already telling these people to do. Is drawing the line at 1001 things, really upholding libertarian principles?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In your example, Ford would constitute a monopoly.
There is plenty of competition in the US cell phone market. Almost every retail mall in a relatively urban area has 5 or 6 different retailers hawking their version of the mobile communication device, and believe it or not, there are many many regional "mom-and-pop" cell phone providers (like Eloquoi Wireless, serving rural southern Kentucky), and there are scores of prepaid providers.
There is NO monopoly in the US wireless industry.
The two largest providers have roughly the same number of subscribers, actually.
Fortunately, the radically different wireless techologies Verizon and Cingular use prevent them from ever merging together in the forseeable future.
Compare this state of being to old Ma Bell.
I'm all about protecting a consumer's interests, but right now, there are plenty of options available on the market, and mobile service is VERY affordable.
Right now, if you want to use your own home-brewed device on a US wireless network, the free market allows you to choose one of the GSM carriers. The only restriction is that you must have a phone that works on their FCC-licensed frequencies.
I'm all for breaking up TRUE monopolies (monopoly != large corporation). But "protecting consumer's interests" doesn't always mean giving them everything they want.
"And you don't get a vote on this. The entire reason for the FCC is to insulate the decision (sic) about the airwaves from politics."
I have got to say I love the delicious irony of this, the FCC is one of the most political agencies in our government. It is unconstitutional in so may ways and yet it is protected by the "think of the children" trap so no one can touch it.
Next time lets not give pervasive control of information (in the name of "decency" no less) to an uncontrollable government agency if we want to say there is such a thing as free speech.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
It costs the citizens half as much per year, because it takes them the entire year to get a single procedure examined, approved, and addressed; by the time they've paid for one problem they're already halfway into the next fiscal year.
Yes, for the simple reason that one must always buy a new cell phone if one wants to change providers. There is no reason for a cell phone to be locked to a service provider other than to "lock in" customers. Just like software and those proprietary file formats everyone hates so much.Cell phone companies use the "discount" on "their" cellphones to justify charging early termination fees. This keeps customers from switching companies and so companies can provide crappy service with little repercussion.
If cell phones were unlocked, then there would be no reason for the high termination fees and one could take their cell phone with all the contacts, settings, etc, and use them on a competitor's service (assuming they are compatible services). The result would be companies providing better service.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I would like to see Skype to open up more. Publish the whole API.
Kees
I'm so tired of people just MAKING THINGS UP as they go along.
Federal tax rates in Canada are nowhere NEAR 48% for an average Canadian. Quebec has the highest tax rates of any province and if you made $80k in Quebec, you'd pay (on average) 32.61%. B.C. has one of the lowest tax rates and there you'd only pay about 25% on your $80k a year.
Furthermore, $80k is TWICE what the average Canadian earns. At $40k the tax rates of Quebec and B.C. are 23.7% and 18.7%, respectively.
So please, save it. I'm positive you won't have the gull to actually reply to this considering I just completely owned you, but I encourage you to do so nonetheless.
On a related topic, I'm sick of Republicans fear mongering over socialized medicine. The first things you hear out of their mouths when you talk of it is shit like "Great, let's just nationalize entire industries" and "Wait until we have Government Doctors. You won't even trust going to an American hospital" I've heard both of these comments in the past week alone.
Here's a clue: There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between socialized medicine and SOCIALISM. There is a radical idea called the "Mixed Market Economy" and it's THRIVING in such backwards places as, oh, I don't know, Germany, UK, Italy, and basically every NATO country EXCEPT the United States.
Furthermore, nobody is advocating a SINGLE PROVIDER health care system in America. What we're talking about is a SINGLE PAYER system. That means the hospitals will still be privately run. Unless you go to a VA Hospital you won't ever meet a "Government Doctor." The _only_ difference is who pays the bills. Right now, most americans with insurance belong to a group plan paid for by their employer. In the Democrats' plans (all of them) the only difference is that your employer will take the money they're spending on insurance, give it to the US Government, they'll raise tax rates nominally on all Americans to supplement his employer money, and the US Government becomes the "Single Payer" to _all_ insurance claims. In most proposals, the insurance companies themselves aren't even affected. You, as a citizen, get to chose which company you sign up with--offering competition and innovation--and the Government pays your premiums.
Yes, it means that I will be paying slightly more for insurance, since I already have it, and my tax rates would likely go up about one percentage point. However, that's a small price to pay. Right now 1 in every $10 dollars spent in America is spent on Health Care, yet we still have a HUGE percentage of our country without coverage. This is got to stop.
Vote Democrat in 2008! (Preferably Obama! Barack the Vote!)
You've driven in New Jersey, then?
Does that make you a Randian or an Aynus?
I don't think it's even a matter of that.
Right now we have 2.5G and 3G networks, all of which are relatively low bandwidth and high latency. That's slowly changing, but this is an industry that considers sub-100ms ping times "really really good". Everything that's bad about CDMA2000 and UMTS's W-CDMA will be fixed "RSN", always. EV-DO was supposed to fix 1xRTT. EV-DO Rev. A was supposed to fix EV-DO Rev. 0. EV-DO Rev. B will be available and solves all your problems (right.) HSDPA will solve all the problems with W-CDMA. HSUPA will solve all the problems with HSDPA. Yeah. Right. All of these suck. Even once the latency and bandwidth issues are dealt with, none of these standards are particularly power efficient if you're always connected, which you'd have to be if you want incoming Skype calls.
Building VoIP on top of current wireless data networks is a non-starter. It's stupid. The quality of the underlying TCP/IP transport is lousy, and third parties like Skype do not even have enough information to be able to determine if there's enough bandwidth for a call when they initiate one (imagine at peak time if everyone's phone calls suddenly dropped because there were slightly too many simultaneous calls in a cell. No, not just those trying to initiate new calls, I mean everyone already on a call.)
The probable solution is "4G", technologies like UMTS revision 8 (the Long Term Evolution project) and UMB, both of which are works in progress and are not expected to be even proposed as standards until late this year. They throw out CDMA and use OFDMA based systems. But it'll probably not be until 2010 until these networks start to become widespread. These networks, unlike todays, are designed from the ground up to be "All-IP", low latency, high bandwidth, and to use VoIP to implement mobile telephony. Even here though, there's a certain amount of work being done to make sure the VoIP implementations will be viable and that issues like congestion during peak times are dealt with, and that means running arbitrary protocols like Skype's isn't necessarily going to be as useful as people might think.
Skype is asking not merely for something that's arguably not reasonable yet, but something that'll not even help it in the slightest. I can just imagine how running Skype over EDGE will feel, and how much good it'll do for Skype users... and Skype's reputation.
Skype: it's in your best interests to wait. If you want, ask the FCC to mandate that future 4G networks are open, but please, please, don't try this with the existing networks, you'll be shooting yourself in the foot.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You nerds don't understand. You can't just "open up" the network. I don't like the cell phone companies either, but regulated spectrum is a must. Even if you could "open it up", I don't want to buy service from a bunch of bearded, plaid shirt wearing nerds who wear "got root" shirts when they go out to eat. Oh ya...has anyone ever seen nerds wire up a network? Scary.
The government is already involved in this market. They sold the the cell providers a government mandated monopoly on the cell phone spectrums.
I would make two arguments on this topic:
1) The American gov't isn't about making things better for the majority. That's not Capitalism. That's not in the constitution. If it were, minorities (not just typical minorities like race) could be treated unfairly to benefit society as a whole. Even if the majority of people vote for a referendum, if it conflicts with the constitution, then it won't get used.
2) The gov't has the ideal of not interfering with business if it can avoid it. But, because the FCC already interferes with controlling the broadcast frequencies, it may arguable that the FCC is actually ALREADY bias towards large companies that can afford to buy the very expensive wireless space. It could be argued that a more free market would be obtained if this were to pass, therefore the FCC would be interfering less than they are currently. My guess is this won't work, but maybe it will convince them to consider this type of policy for the huge amount of bandwidth they will be distributing from the shutdown of analog TV.
What I am suggesting is a SOCIAL PROGRAM, it doesn't make our government SOCIALIST, despite how many people you try to scare by saying so. It wouldn't make the US any more of a Socialist government than Social Security does.
Furthermore, you once again try to scare people by pointing at Canada and the UK and saying "See! That's what will happen!" Either you KNOW that's bullshit and you're lying to advance your agenda, or you actually just don't understand the difference. I'm not sure which is worse.
Canadas system was originally designed to emulate the UKs NHS. Both are SINGLE PROVIDER systems. Some provinces have recently begun to encourage parallel private-sector development of health care infrustructure that will eventually create a hybrid Single Provider/Single Payer system in that country.
NOTHING LIKE THIS is being suggested in the USA. So when you try to scare people about how Canadians are comming to the US for health care, using that as a dogma to prevent national health care in this country, you're misleading people unless you explain the difference. And the difference is a mile wide and mile deep. The only way their similar at all is that it's the government providing them.
It would be like saying "In italy the average prime minister only has a tenure of one year, so we shouldn't have a head of state in America." It's THAT misleading.
Furthermore, you say that national health care is bad for, among other reasons, "the government can run out of money." And then you suggest that in the private sector, people will just pay more when that have to. This makes me wonder if you really grasp the concept we're working with here. Wealth must be created somehow. At the end of the day, why is it any different if a company pays rising premiums to the Insurance Companies or if they pay rising premiums to the Government? The only difference is that in your world, taxes are bad and corporate profits are good. Giving the GOVERNMENT more money to provide health care is "raising taxes" but paying HUGE INCREASES EVERY YEAR to insurance companies (as has been the norm for 20 years now) is the free-market economy at it's best. Oh please.
Not to mention, your comment that a private sector has a "nearly unlimited pot of money" runs right in the face of consumers who are feeling the sting of compounding health care costs. There is NOT an unlimited pot of money. Our existing system is BROKEN and it needs to be fixed. Furthermore, American corporations are becomming increasing uncompetitive in the world market because they are saddled with the huge cost of subsidizing health care for employees and retirees while their overseas competitors are not.
You talk about how great out healthcare system is. First, it ought to be great, because it's loads more expensive per citizen than any other first world nation (Even those that are Socialized). This takes wind out of your argument that it will somehow drive prices up (As if the free market was pushing them down. Puh-leese). Not to mention, how good do you think it is for the FIFTY MILLION AMERICANS that don't have coverage? We spend TEN PERCENT of our GDP on health care--it's by far the largest industry in America--and still, 50 Million people remain without the health care they need.
In other words, your post showed a complete lack of understanding of the history of American health care, where it is today, and how we compare to other nations.
And please, if you want to argue against it, leave your straw-men out of it. There is no comparsion between any of the Democratic plans and the SINGLE PROVIDER systems used in the UK and Canada. Debate it on it's merits or just keep quiet about it.
A, what you describe wouldn't happen. We don't have enough land for these roads to be constructed.
B, returning to what this analogy was based on we can see that, given infinite road expansion capabilities, this probably wouldn't happen. Compare the cell phone networks. They're all the same. There's very little difference between plans from one carrier or another carrier. Network quality differs only regionally; there is no network that has a universally better network, just as none of the Ford roadways would be any different from any of their competitors.
Not that I'm saying Skype's idea is good or bad, just that your ideas exist in the land of purist thought, not the land of reality.
If I remember rightly, years ago Ford bought up inner-city land and created Ford-only carparks. It increased demand for Ford cars considerably.
That's partly because they shove the entire burden of the cost of researching new drugs on America. If not for single drug buyers (who don't pay enough over the cost of the pills to fund research), they wouldn't be as cheap.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
No, it's not beside the point; it is the point! Since the polluter is part of the economy, if it's less economically efficient for the economy as a whole it's ultimately also harmful to the polluter (again, in the long run). The reason these costs get ignored is that -- unlike in a classical "perfect competition" scenario -- everyone does not have perfect knowledge of the market. If the polluter -- and the polluter's customers -- were aware of these costs, they'd act accordingly and the market really would regulate itself (including being environmentally responsible). The purpose of government regulation is to compensate for the imperfect distribution of information.
First of all, instead of talking about being equal to the cost of cleaning up the pollution, it would make better sense for the fines to be exactly equal to the cost of not polluting in the first place -- then the companies should, economically speaking, need no further "punitive" encouragement. Even "cost of not polluting" + $0.01 ought to be sufficient.
That said, the punitive fines can be justified in two ways. First, by the fact that there's imperfect enforcement: having a 50% chance of having to pay the "exactly equal" fine means that the true cost is only half of "exactly equal," so it would make more sense to pollute and risk it. To fix this, the fine would have to be "exactly equal" * 2. Second, higher fines are justified by the fact that it's most likely more expensive to clean up pollution after the fact than it would have been to not create it in the first place. Therefore, "exactly equal [to the cost of not polluting]" wouldn't cover the additional cost created by the polluter's initial stupidity.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
By "property" I was referring to airwaves, not ground.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Ok so let me get this straight. You're telling me that my inherent right (God-given or otherwise) to move around as I please, as a living, breathing human being, should be predicated upon the willingness of some private corporation to SELL me the right to use their road? You don't possibly see how this can only lead to a stifled, nearly motionless civilization (in the abstract sense) - one in which, so locked down by ownership of MOTION ITSELF, nobody bothers to move ANYTHING?
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
There might be a lot of competition but Cell phones are still expensive to use. Cheap plans severely limit the number of minutes you can use, or give no free minutes. The expensive plans are very expensive, and in the middle are the "Normal" plans which can easily cost double or triple what a land line costs, and still limit your minutes.
I used to own cell phones, but in the past year I haven't had one. It's an extra cost I can't justify. I don't want to waste money locking in to a specific provider, or pay bundles of cash for a decent phone, or worry about minutes because I talked longer then normal. I save myself $50 or more a month.
I'll only get back into a cell phone once the networks are more open, the services is unlimited, and it's not as expensive. (or, my next employer gives me one.) I feel that BECAUSE there's so much competition and there's so many cell phones in use, cheaper prices are possible. They're milking it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I do want to point out one misconception you seem to have about the existing proposals, including the John Edwards proposal which, right now, is the most detailed.
In their plans, there would still be multiple insurance companies. In fact, the insurance companies themselves would see no difference (or very little..) in the way they operate.
You would, as an individual, be able to chose which insurance company you sign up with. This brings market forces to bear, which will cause companies to compete on the level of services offered. So you go onto the Guv website for such matter, review available insurance plans--probably still a mix of HMO and PPO, each with different co-pays--and select the one you want. Upon doing so, the government simply pays the insurance company in the same way your employer is now.
The money to do this comes from a tax on businesses and a tax on citizens. In Edwards' plan, he levies no taxes upon the middle class, and instead choses to pay for it by restoring the 2000-era tax code for the top 1% of wage earners. In other plans, they raise taxes on all americans by an average of 1 percentage point (NOT one percent).
There would still be competition among providers, there would still be competition among insurance companies. All the existing healthcare infrastructure would be utilized and kept in place. The only companies that WOULD suffer are so called "benefit management services" like UMR who handle the busy-work of maintaining an insurance program. My company, for example, hires UMR and pays them a huge fee every month and they use that money to select the best contact with, say, Aetna. These companies would probably lose much of their revenue and I believe that there should be provisions for 3 months of federal unemployment assistance and training grants for these employees, in addition to their state unemployment compensation.
Furthermore, there will be federal jobs created for this program.
The cell companies will be turned into commodity providers one way or the other.
e ss+projects+map/2009-1034_3-5690287.html
The cell phone companies are going to have face up to becoming commodity infrastructure providers within the next 3 years.
If they don't lead the way, free municipal WiMax networks will leave their tire tracks on the cell companies' faces, at least within urban metropolitan areas, and likely in rural areas as well, once roaming/signal handoff specifications and revenue deals are set up between the different municipalities.
Municipal broadband nationwide - a few big examples:
LA/SanFran/SanJose/SanDiego and most other major California cities, Chicago, NYC, Philly, Boston, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Houston, DC, Minneapolis, Denver, Atlanta, St. Louis, Vegas, Portland, Cleveland, etc.
check out the map and mouse over each state to see what they have cooking.
The cell phone network companies will be toast.
http://news.com.com/Municipal+broadband+and+wirel
Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, etc. will all have WiMax and/or WiFi radios built into most handset models within 3 years.
Sprint sees the writing on the wall on WiMax and they will be rolling out a nationwide WiMax network that will address 100 million Americans by the end of 2008.
Before GSM I used TDMA, and since that didn't have a SIM card, I just called the carrier and told them the ESN of the phone I was switching too. CDMA works the same way.
If they want the FCC to force the cellular carriers to open their networks, Skype should open their own network first. They should publish the technical specifications needed for compatability, so that third parties can write Skype-compatible client software, SIP-to-Skype gateway software, and build Skype-compatible phones.
Don't have enough LAND? Are you fucking crazy or just stupid?
"You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Utah_Phillips
--- Duey Finster http://www.dueyfinster.com
You have to follow the chain. You claim they are the sovereign owner of something and that government shouldn't force them to use it in other ways.
But what is it they "own"? The spectrums they use are licensed to them by the federal government, (as if it really should be doing it). Stepping away from academic idealism, the facts are right now that the federal government has placed large barriers to competition in this space due to licensing of radio spectrums for use by competitors. Should the government be able to create such monopolies? No. Have they? Yes. Should they place additional conditions on those who seek de jure monopoly power and say it has to be open? IMO, absolutely. Particularly since tax dollars were used to build certain portions of that infrastructure.
Who are you? You are someone who has had the opportunity to chat over IRC over a wireless carrier kept from you because the government decided it had the right to create scarcity in the spectrum and then decide who can use it and for what purpose. The cell carriers have no interest in providing a pipe for you to use as you see fit. Why? Low pricing. Our society expects a flat-rate fee for access, and that flat-rate better be low. Very low. So low that your margin on each is minuscule.
Now compare that outlook to one of specialized and limited access capability. By locking you in and limiting what you can do they are not merely providing a pipe, and thus the expectation of very low price is gone (for now).
As a free market libertarian, would it be OK with you if the fedgov mandated that certain businesses could decide what cargo can be transported along the interstates that the fedgov built/maintains using tax money? or should anyone who can meet the technical requirements of cargo vehicles be allowed to transport people, packages, mail, food, etc. on them without paying some private company?
If the government did not license bands of the spectrum and thus create a false scarcity for them to control, I'd agree with you. Since the reality is the fedgov does precisely that, as a free market libertarian I can not agree with your conclusion. There is nothing inherently free market or libertarian in allowing the government to create and support a monopoly, and then cry free market or libertarian principles state that said monopoly dictate you leave it alone.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Nobody is saying that cellular service should be free. It cost money to build the infrastructure, and of course the carrier should be able to get a return (and a profit) on that.
What people are saying is that they should not be allowed to abuse their monopoly (or near-monopoly) position in one market by wielding it as a club against competition in another market. (Here, it's using their market power in wide area wireless digital access to block competition in the POTS "call termination" market.)
It's especially problematic when the government created the monopoly and sold it to them in the first place.
This is what the antitrust laws are all about. They may be out of favor with the current (rather radical) government, but they've been around for over a century and are hardly an unproven (or "socialistic") concept. In fact, the antitrust laws, on the relatively few occasions they've been honestly enforced, have generally proven to be a win for everybody.
Go to NYC and tell me how you're going to build 3 sets of 4 lane highways that can bring a person anywhere in the city. That land is all used up.
Building sets of roads that connect NYC to Chicago is pretty pointless. Ford is only going to make money off of building roads we use on a daily basis.
Who's stupid now?
They wouldn't do so because by opening up their networks without all others doing so, the business benefit would disappear quickly. They'd be paying costs for maintenance on their lines when everybody else is using them and not sharing theirs.
If the FCC mandates it, everybody does it all at once and the business benefits (if any) become balanced.
"if studies hadn't shown that many government-run socialized medicine systems provide better care than the US's private system, at about half the cost per citizen, per year."
Of course they do, why, because our system of medicine promotes the innovation and research that creates the treatments the socialized medicine systems use.
I agree that socialized medicine has it's appeal, as I've been uninsured for months now, however if the US wants to continue to innovate, socialized medicine must not gain a foothold.
What I would like to see however, is a law that requires that the developers of a drug or medical technology who use any government funding or funded research to sell that product to the government at the cost of production. If the government hadn't aided them in the first place, they wouldn't have created the product.
This would save medicaid/medicare billions, and ultimately save the one bastion of socialized medicine we have here in the US.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
The problem here is that the RF spectrum is carved up by the government and the barriers to entry are artificially high. Therefore big business does indeed like big government because big government can regulate and legislate in favor of big government. Meaning that if the government wasn't so involved in the entire situation, smaller firms could compete and there would be more firms. More firms means more competition.
Libertas in infinitum
I'm used to sites accepting preformatted input, you insensitive clod!
I certainly don't support this particular model -- quite the opposite, I much prefer it when society invests in the common good. I think good public schools lead to better educated people who are more able to take care of themselves, and good public infrastructure leads to a better marketplace for products and jobs. I think privatization of truly common resources (such as roads) would lead to a widening of the gap between rich and poor, and that leads to all manner of ills, including increased crime and civil strife.
John
ROTFL. And I suppose that's why Michael Powell quit in disgust because he couldn't get anything done?
I would just like to say I thought it was a very good, well thought out post. You're correct. It's not about free market, it's about making sure companies continue to see the rewards when they take risks.
But there are a couple things that I want to point out. I tend to blather about things I'm passionate about so I'll try to keep this concise. I usually hate the "rebut every sentence" format, but i'm going to use it sparingly here.
"Well what happens if the amount of money owed by the Government to providers exceeds what is in the gathered funds pools?"
Ask yourself this: What happens now when the amount of money owed to healthcare providers exceeds what is gathered in the pool of funds an insurance company accrues from premiums? Three things, usually: 1. They have re-insurance to help distribute the load geographically. 2. They raise premiums to cover their more expensive re-insurance and to ensure that it doesn't happen again (for a while, at least), and they deny more treatments. This is what we've been putting up with for 20 years. It's status-quo for private insurers.
"Why should I have my taxes raised to pay for other people's health care if I only had 3 or 4 inexpensive Doctor's visits throughout the year?"
But you already are! This is how insurance works! You pay more in a year than you actually use. This is why insurance companies can afford to pay for those $1MM surgeries you mentioned. This is also why Government is such a great fit for health care. You see, healthcare in america--Insurance companies themselves--are already "socialist." They already work by pooling together "groups" of people into a Group Plan and distributing risk across a popultion. The only difference with the national healthcare system is the group is much larger.
What about the millions of illegal immigrants? In the current system the corporate entities (hospitals, clinics, etc) that you dislike so much are the ones who are forced to eat the cost of providing care to these individuals. First, I don't hate hospitals or clinics. In fact, if you'd read my posts, I'm (loudly) advocating a single payer system. This means the corporate hospitals et al will still exist, mostly unchanged. American hospitals _are_ the best in the world and that's something we shouldn't change.
Furthermore, the hospitals themselves are not eating the costs of the indigent, poor, and illegals. In every state in America as well as Puerto Rico, there is a network of state-subsidized hospitals. Traditionally there is one in each county. Often the "County General" or whatever. Furthermore, many hospitals (but still a tiny percentage of them) fund similar care thru donations. Still, a large number of hospitals get funding as well as indirect funding like state write-offs and such for treating such patients. So in reality, you're already paying for it.
Additionally, if I'm already being taxed for healthcare, why would I want the "benefit" of my employer contributing money for me? Why would they want to provide it? Your employer would pay it because it would be the law. We have only two options for funding such a system. First, we have a "Personal Mandate." This is similar to auto insurance. It's the law that if you drive a car you must have insurance. It's a "mandate." It's the law that YOU must pay for it, thus the "personal" part. In 1992 when Clinton tried to enact healthcare, the competing plan, led by Bob Dole, was for a Personal Mandate on health insurance. Recently, in his SOTU, Bush suggested a similar program. This works by the Fed Govt offering tax credits and such and then making it the law (the LAW) that _you_ must pay for your own health care costs. In Bush's recent plan, the money that companies are paying today would show up on your W2 as taxable income, which would be mostly offset by the tax breaks Bush is suggesting.
The other option is an Employer Mandate, which works basically the same way, but the burden is on the employers.
The Edwards plan calls for a combination of Employer Mandate with higher taxes on the top 1% of Americans (those earning > $350,000 a year) to pay for the un- and under-employed.
I agree that costs must be cappe
My guess is that the cellular companies will fight this vigorously, but that might be short sighted. If they provided competitively priced Internet access, they would take the wind out of the municipal network and hotspot movements. More important, an open wireless network would be an important piece of infrastructure, providing a much needed boost to the US economy and our sagging Internet.
There will be powerful companies on both sides of this important issue -- make your voice heard by signing an FCC petition.
The Skype petition is not yet posted on the FCC Web site, but we will update this post with a link when it is: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2007/02/petition-to-ope n-cellular-networks.html.
I have a treo 650. I've had 4 palm phones. All previous allowed me to check email etc. for minutes. The new phone and contract dictates data separately. I opted for pay-as-you-go and tried it for about a half hour. Poor performance as always but got a bill for $50 extra for 4 meg of data use. Cancelled the data plan and figured out how to dial my Earthlink account... still using minutes but OK no free lunch. Tried it for a bit longer and this month got a bill for $65 for 7 meg. That's like 5 minutes of RR. My $300 phone only works with Cingular and there are more complaints with that. My only real option is $45 additional per month to get what was free with my prior phones on the same plan. Bend over folks there is NO COMPETITION in the cell arena. Hurah for Skype!!! How do I write the FCC?