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?"

Comments

As a free market libertarian, I vote against this.

[wasabii]

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!

Please regulate openness

[elronxenu]

Sounds like a great idea.

Skype should go first, by documenting their protocols and allowing 3rd party clients to connect to the Skype network.

Re:Please regulate openness

[wallior]

Completely agree. This request is disgustingly hypocritical. In Australia and UK (I think UK) Hutchison (3) will eventually used Skype for data calls across their network. You can bet that Skype won't be pushing for openness on these networks.

Cartel?

[thesupermikey]

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?

"Network Neutrality"? I call BS

[Scareduck]

"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.

Competition?

[ShaunC]

Given the competition that exists within the industry, is this needed?

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...

Re:Competition?

[WafflesMcDuff]

If they didn't allow you to activate a handset that you say is 100% compatible, then I can almost certainly guess what the problem was. A few years back the FCC passed a law requiring all cell phones being activated to be cell 911-compliant. Basically these newer phones contained the ability to automatically connect you to the correct 911 call center when you dial 911 to make sure the emergency services get to you in time. (without this you may as well be calling Delouth Minnesota's call center from New York City). They allowed phones that were ALREADY active without this ability to remain active, as it was deemed unfair to customers to make them go out and buy a new handset against their will all of a sudden. So as long as grandma keeps paying her bill she can keep that brick that sits disused in her drawer active. However, if she deactivates it and then decides she wants it again after all, she will now have to go buy a new phone (or get a free one with a 2 year contract). In reality, your handset is probably 90% compatible with the other 10% being the 911 accessibility that is mandated by law to activate a handset.

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[Planesdragon]

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.)

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[Creepy Crawler]

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?

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[Mr2001]

If the cell provides saw business benefit in opening their network, they would do so. Obviously. The whole point of regulation, however, is that if the only thing guiding your actions is "business benefit", it'll often lead you to trash the commons or screw people over some other way. For example, if dirty factories could save money by polluting less, we wouldn't need environmental regulations - but in fact polluting less tends to cost more, so we impose regulations to give them an incentive to do it.

Expensive Data Transfer

[MrSteveSD]

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.

Re:Expensive Data Transfer

[Bluesman]

Supply and demand.

There is only so much bandwidth available on a cellular system, as the frequencies at which you may transmit are limited (extremely limited, I might add).

The frequencies sent over cables are not regulated, so you can multiplex to your heart's content and achieve massive bandwidth that way. (It also helps that there's much less interference and loss in wired communication.)

The reason the wireless phone service price hasn't changed is because if it got any cheaper, the network would become saturated because people wouldn't self-limit their phone usage as much. The reason that all phone companies charge about the same is more due to the physics of radio communication than collusion. I guarantee that if Cingular could charge half of what they do and still make a profit, they would, because they'd put all the others out of business, and it's a very competitive market.

The phone companies know exactly how many users they can support at what data rates down to insane degrees of accuracy. There are ugly equations with many logarithms and square roots in them that tell them this.

For example, you can determine, based on the frequencies you're allocated and how you're multiplexing your users' data, what signal-to-interference ratio you need to support 336 users with a 2% chance of a dropped call during the peak usage hour.

The problem is, you can't just add network capacity without limit. It's a tradeoff between cell size, signal strength, and interference. Decreasing cell size might give you the ability to support more users, but you'll also have to decrease the signal strength at the same time or you'll just be adding interference. Using directional antennas will help with the interference problem, but you'll have to handle many more hand-offs and overall QoS may suffer.

Whereas, with wired communication, if you have one wire and then you add another, you've just doubled your bandwidth. Wireless is a much more limited resource, and always will be.

no competition

[Brat Food]

I personally dont think theres any cell phone competition in the US.

I mean look, my cell phone bill has never /really/ gone down. My minutes have gone up slightly for the price, but with the ubiquity, thats the least they could do.

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 /every/ feature.

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.

competitive industry?

[JimBobJoe]

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.

Re:Free ride for Skype?

[zarthrag]

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.

By disabling features such as OBEX push/file transfer, you can be kept from sending files directly from one phone to another, or another computer...without using your cellular modem (possibly at a per-KB rate). Moving pictures/video from your camera would then become a costly affair if you actually use that feature often.

Wifi generally cannot be used for voip at all. This isn't necessairly crippling, but a complete oversight of what consumers want. I have a wireless network at home, why can't my phone support using it instead of a per-minute rate when I'm here, or at work, or at the bookstore.

By opening the network, device makers can be free to innovate in ways that will make the iPhone look like a turd on the sidewalk.

We have an anti-market, NOT a free market

[mpesce]

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.

T-Mobile is mostly open, right?

[hirschma]

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

Markets are not free (enough)

[grcumb]

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.

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.

How the FCC enables wireless competition

[straponego]

I was involved in handling the technical aspects of the bidding on the FCC PCS Wireless C Block Auction. This auction was supposed to enable a fourth cell phone carrier to buy spectrum across the US in every market. The auction was limited to small businesses, owned by a woman or minority. You know, fresh blood to compete with the huge incumbents to spur competition, lower prices, and encourage innovation. The I-Phone's random access voice mail? I put that in our business plan, in 1996. Anyway.

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.

Re:who are you to MANDATE conditions?

[amRadioHed]

True, but they couldn't have made a useful network without the government's assistance. If everyone was able to their own radio devices and broadcast one whatever frequencies they wanted then the airwaves would be a useless mess. The government has put regulations in place in order for radio to be a usable medium and exchange people and companies who are given license to broadcast on part of the spectrum have to play by the governments rules. It's a fair trade I'd say.

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[plover]

Oh, I think they'd sell a lot of Fords. You just have to imagine the big picture of a Libertarian private roadway scenario.

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.)

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[tsa]

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.

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[anagama]

It's sort of a shame you used a car analogy because this being slashdot, everyone got on board with that. The really insightful part of your post, and the one that should be discussed is this:

the spectrum, as a common good, should be shared in an open manner.

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.

Re:This will never happen

[n3umh]

No one is proposing taking the networks away from the cell companies. They still get your money when you use Skype over their network.

What they would be taking away from the cell companies is the stranglehold they have on the data services you can get. I think Skype has a good case.

The advancement of wireless communication is not well served by the current crop of cellular providers. They want to use the data capacity they've built to charge you $3 for the latest Justin Timberlake video, and to let you get your email at exorbitant rates. They really don't want to be in the network business, they want to be in the gouging-for-fancy-things-you-don't-need business.

They built their networks believing (correctly, so far) that they'd have this stranglehold. That may have been an incentive for them at the beginning, and I'm sure that someone will say that the nationwide cellular networks wouldn't have been built without that incentive, and maybe they're right, but it's about time for there to be some regulation. The radio spectrum is a public, limited resource.

Purchasing exclusive rights to public property with expectation that you'd be able to hold and abuse those rights forever is a bad business plan. It would be different story, and would not require regulatory intervention if Skype could just go ahead and build their own cell towers and set up their own wireless data network to deliver wireless Skype to their customers. They can't do that. Neither can anyone else who might want to try to bring new services to customers over wireless. The cell phone companies have little incentive to innovate outside of getting people their ringtones and music videos faster. There will eventually be intervention here. I think the precedent referred to in the article is very strongly applicable here.

Competition is Good

[Bellum Aeternus]

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.

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[geminidomino]

I'm trained formally, as an economist,

Obviously not as a typesetter.

Wall of text crits you for 4362. You die.

Re:As a free market libertarian, I vote against th

[0123456789]

Finally, there are public access streets that are little more than overcrowded, rutted, muddy, pot-holed goat trails, but they're free.

You've driven in New Jersey, then?