Slashdot Mirror
Why US Wireless Isn't Wide Open
Geoffery B tips a story in Business Week about why the US cellular carriers' talk about opening up their networks rings hollow. "Even as the wireless industry chants a new gospel about opening mobile phone networks to outside devices and applications, some of the biggest US carriers are quietly blocking new services that would compete with their own. Would-be mobile-service providers, ranging from startups to major banks to eBay's PayPal, have encountered these roadblocks, erected by the likes of AT&T and Verizon Wireless. In some cases, cellular carriers have backed down, but only after inflicting costly delays on the new services."
I don't think it's out of the norm for a business in a competitive market to create artificial barriers to entry to protect their profit margins. In a capitalist system, a business must take certain steps to "get ahead" of current and would be competition to survive. These are typical tactics.
I feel like the summary is a tad sensationalist... I don't find a business not voluntarily allowing more competition to be suprising.
And you're surprised at this news...why?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The article is about foot-dragging and rejections for some short-code services that compete with the wireless carriers.
Even if they were completely open about what phones and services you could use on their network, it wouldn't amount to much thanks to subsidized phones. How many people will really pay full retail price for a phone when they can get one that is just as good, but locked down, for "free"? Yay, I can save $2 on custom ringtones if I pay $150 more for my phone.
Your first two statements would seem to contradict the third one.
Yes and has been for some time
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Yes, it's been offered for a few years now. Though not every carrier offers it.
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
No, you are wrong. Not about the USA being run by greedy corporations but in what our response should be when a corporation steps over the line. You see it is not always the most profitable to do what is most profitable in the short term. That is the lesson we need to teach corporations. When they alienate their customers by treating them like trash or worse like criminals (RIAA can you hear me now?) then the consumers need to respond by taking business elsewhere and raising public awareness. This will ensure that such moves are not profitable and then even their stockholders will demand that they stop being such greedy bastards with a short view of the future and look more at how they can foster a good relationship with their customers in the long term.
Under the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) "local number portability" (LNP) rules, so long as you remain in the same geographic area, you can switch telephone service providers and keep your existing phone number. If you are moving from one geographic area to another, however, you may not be able to take your number with you. These rules have applied for some time to wireless and most traditional, wireline telephone companies. In addition, the FCC recently extended the LNP rules to interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and determined that the rules would also apply to small wireline telephone companies that have not been granted waivers from the rules by their state public utility commissions. Therefore, subscribers remaining in the same geographic area can now switch from a wireless, wireline, or VoIP company to any other wireless, wireline, or VoIP company and still keep their existing phone numbers.
No they ALL have to
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Umm - as of ~3 years ago, all cell phone carriers operating in the US are required by the FCC to allow numbers to be ported to and from other providers. The same is true of local (landline) phone numbers as of ~10 years ago. It is not yet true of VoIP. Mind you the cell carriers don't actually have to implement it until someone asks for a port - but when they do, they must comply.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
That seems to be the heart of your 'argument'. Greed is not good, Gordon.
Blar.
Public deserves atleast a lowcost emergency phone which doesn't need the monthly and yearly contract slavery.
This already exists. Pick up any used cellphone from any carrier. They will always allow you to make 911 calls regardless of whether or not you are under contract. If you mean emergencies that don't involve calling 911, you can buy a prepaid phone card which will allow you to do the same without having any sort of contract or annual fee.
You should try to gain a better understanding of the problem before you try to propose solutions to it.
Mmmm.. Donuts
carriers take about half of premium sms cost (imagine visa charging 50% on each transaction) and at the same time they are protecting themselves against competition by reducing amount of premium sms they process?? reminds me of a dinosaur munching on his left foot who doesn't feel the pain yet as it takes time to travel in his long and stupid body.
Please point me to a prepaid plan where the minutes don't expire. Every one I have found expires after a few months, creating a de-facto annual fee.
Do you have the better understanding you said the OP did not have?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
...it's called the Homersaurus IIRC
I can to some extent understand the carriers blocking alternative phone plans, that is kind of logical competitive behavior. But what on earth is AT&T doign in banking? It would seem more logical to have an open system where all banks can talk to all phones -- that is a great way to drive traffic, and traffic is what a cellular carrier should thrive on.
For someone from Europe, the idea that cell carriers do these kinds of shenanigans is just amazing. Here, you can buy a phone with no contract, pop in your SIM, and off you go. And banking is done over WAP or HTTP in the phone's browser -- which can access anything on the 'net without restrictions. If I want to get the latest Nokia, I can. And paying 600 USD for a phone makes perfect sense if you know you can keep it for a few years, have bragging rights, and choose and cheap plan for it.
The US model is just so strange, fortunately it seems like the exception from the rule.
The article is about "short codes" for text messaging (e.g., "Text 105312 to vote for the next American Idol!"). The telcos are slow to approve new short codes. This has little, if anything, to do with open network access.
Illustrative example: The wired phone network is an open-access network (i.e., you can call whomever you want using whatever phone you want and transmit whatever data you want), but that doesn't mean the phone company has to give me a 3-digit access number (ala 911, 411, etc) if I ask for one. This article is stupid.
Because the field is completely dominated by huge corporations with great influence in Washington, free markets are incapable of demolishing, and in fact work in favor of monopolies, people are too apathetic to learn, let alone do anything about it, too scared of offending the corpogoverment and worst of all, too resentful of each other to believe they can work together for their mutual benefit.
But... the future refused to change.
The truth though is that in many companies are not customer focused, but competitor focused, expending more effort in body-slamming the competition than improving their goods/services. In these cases the customers are very definitely not advantaged.
As with most ideologies, captialism is not good or bad of itself. The goodness or badness comes from how the game is played.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What about contacting a towing company or police ?
Here, here. I can't stand this idea that by saying "it's just business" you get to absolve yourself of any discussion of ethics. People are essentially asserting that, by saying 'it's just intelligent business' that you ought to be able to operate in an atmosphere of applied amorality.
As much as many of his stuff annoys the hell out of me, Michael Moore had a line one time about "why doesn't Chrysler sell crack?"
When a company does something unethical, they say they have not just a right but a responsibility to maximize return for shareholders. So, if that's all that matters, why not sell crack? Or heroin, or Russian hookers, for that matter?
The obvious answer is that we as a society have decided (granted this is not perfect) that certain behaviors are so harmful or immoral or unethical that we say "nobody is allowed to do this", which is perfectly reasonable in a democracy.
Now, we could have a lot of room for debate over what exactly should or should not be allowed, but I'm sick and tired of people taking the approach that businesses should operate in a morality/ethics-free zone.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
When you buy those minutes, the cell company has to provision their network to be able to provide you with that service. In other words, if you buy, say, 100 minutes of airtime, the company has to have the capacity to reasonably serve you that 100 minutes of air time, *weather or not you use it.*
So, if those minutes don't expire, they have to continually pay to be ready for you to use them, without any sort of recurring revenue.
Here's an example: stale-dated cheques. Lets say you write me a cheque for $50. I have some amount of time, usually three to six months, to cash that cheque. If I try to cash it during that time, and you don't have the funds to cover it, you've done a bad thing. But what if there was no 'expiry' on that cheque? I could cash it a year, ten years, twenty years down the road, and you're required to have the funds sitting there to cover it. That's not cool.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Why isn't *YOUR* house open for me to use?
The OP's point was that there needs to be free spectrum, and then the GP post explained that you could get pre-paid without an annual fee. That doesn't seem to be correct, and your post supports that.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
No, the GP post said that you could use any cell phone to call 911 without that phone actually being subscribed or activated to a carrier. In response to your 'Public deserves atleast a lowcost emergency phone which doesn't need the monthly and yearly contract slavery.'
He took 'emergency' to mean 'can dial 911,' where you probably meant it as 'need to call Grandma and tell her I'll be late so she doesn't worry'.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.