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FCC Requires Data-Roaming Agreements
itwbennett writes "The FCC has voted to require data roaming agreements between carriers in a move largely targeting AT&T and Verizon, the two largest mobile carriers in the US. 'What good is [a] smartphone if it can't be used when a subscriber is roaming across the country or even across the county?' said Commissioner Michael Copps. 'Our regulations must reflect today's reality and not make artificial distinctions between voice and data telecommunications.'"
Stop posting stories with summaries that actually make sense. You're confusing us.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
From the article:
"This is so simple that a grandmother could understand it".
As a 49 yo grandmother, c programmer and feminist, I find this offensive.
Not sure how my Verizon CDMA phone is going to roam its data on over to AT&T's GSM network.
'Our regulations must reflect today's reality and not make artificial distinctions between voice and data telecommunications.'
Then can you guys do something about the ridiculous text messaging fees? I shouldn't have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a minuscule amount of data.
...the FCC can start by abolishing all policies, abandoning all stances and cancelling all position papers that distinguish between a voice network and the Internet. That includes imposing any regulations from regular phone services, such as common carrier constraints, monitoring constraints, price gouging constraints and peering obligations.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why do cellular providers get to make artificial distinction within the data service.
Email to you phone included in data plan.
Phone mobile hotspot so your laptop can get email... EXTRA $$$
It's all just 1s and 0s, so stop dicking us with "unlimited" data plans that have limits and advertised service speeds that are far from approachable.
"What good is [a] smartphone if it can't be used when a subscriber is roaming across the country or even across the county?"
It's good for someone without $600+ a year to spend on mobile data. My Droid is quite happy with the phone unactivated and running off WiFi.
This is stupid. it's clearly a case where capitalism should find an equilibrium between absurdly good coverage, cost and cosnumer demand.
they shul dbe putting all their eggs in the net neutrality basket.
the only use of this is a gambit to give this chit up to get something else. more likely they will just piss off some libetarian congressman and rue the day,
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I've had roaming randomly kick in while I was sitting in front of my PC at home. If I didn't set it so my web access would be shut off whenever this happened, it would have shown up on my bill.
So if I own a phone company, can I just randomly flick switches that say people are roaming and then charge them an arm and a leg if they want to continue using the service they paid for? It used to be that you weren't roaming unless you actually left your service area; just like long distance calls over land lines.
It's nice that the FCC finally had its balls drop and started taking some advances in a (what I consider to be) better direction.
Now if we can only get Congress to stop screwing everything up by voting on issues they have no idea about that'd be amazing.
That and a more radical president.
God forbid the consumers vote with their feet who are unhappy with bad roaming service.
BB Worldphone aside how many devices are really capable of roaming from GSM to CDMA data networks anyway?
Seems like alot of hot air.
Voice and data are not the same, they are not 0's and 1's as you say.
GSM carriers have what is called a link budget. Basically it is the amount of time slots available on any given channel. You can assign multiple voice calls to one channel simply by using an alternate time slot combination.
However, when on a PS call (packet switched), chances are you phone is at least a multislot class 10 or 12 device, which means that you are taking up 5 slots!
Thus, there is less room for another caller.
Or course networks will automatically reduce your slots to fit a new voice caller by design.
UMTS is similar in concept, though the mechanism is more complex than GSM.
Roaming is nothing compared to the rip off of txt messages. That is happening on the control plane, which are bit that must go to you phone anyhow. The actual cost really is as close to zero as one can get without being zero.
Voice and data are indeed exactly the same. It's all binary on the T1 / E1 (or multiples thereof), the distinction is entirely arbitrary these days and your explanation is apples and apples (and a little bit wrong). Whatever your phone does in the local loop will almost always be converted to something else as soon as it hits the first junction box or cell site. That conversion is always in favor of the carrier, be it DCME or lossy encoding to increase capacity - this is how it has always been, the mindset is a hundred years old. Increasing capacity for voice is cheap and easy. The carriers are not complaining about this.
Along comes the internet, people want it on their phones, they want it on their laptops, in the car, motorbike, train, bus, everywhere. The carriers are definitely whining because they have to start aggregating T1's just to appease our need for bandwidth. We pay them, they make billion dollar profits, they use hardly any of that money for better infrastructure. Gravy train will not leave the station without some kicking and screaming along the way.
The problem has been solved already.
Remember this, the 'rip off txt messages' - that same concept extends to absolutely everything the carrier does. Everything.
Its stupid that I get voice anywhere in the US, but only get Data in major metropolitian areas. My phone provider uses the same data technology as Verizon, and half the time when I am supposed to get coverage, I get Verizon Error messages. Granted, I knew this was the case when I ditched AT&T back in December, but the provider DID say that it offers data in many areas where they don't, and my phone goes to Data Roaming. This is a great ruling!
At the end of the day this boils down to plain and simple theft. Verizon and AT&T (and their customers via bills) have put respectively very large capitol investments in their networks. Now they are being forced to allow other carriers who did not make these investments access to their private property. The cost of maintenance and other such elements will not be accurately passed on to these smaller carriers, and as a result Verizon and AT&T subscribers will pay more... If the government wants to compete in the wireless space so badly why don't they go build their own network funded by tax dollars, and then compete that way rather than stealing money from private industry. For the record.. I don't believe the government should be involved in any of this, and instead they should allow capitalism to work as intended.. If the space wasn't already so locked down (due to the less than open FCC control of spectrum and auctioning process) then we wouldn't have been in this non competitive environment in the first place.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
How many people are going to feel bad for poor ATnT or Verizon? I don't know anybody who doesn't have some hate for ATnT.
I still find it amazing how well the corporate propaganda has worked to brainwash so many people into screwing themselves; I'm sure I'll be surprised if we ever find out how many fake online identities marketing firms are using to spew more BS.
To put this into proper perspective, traditional phone companies have had to share their networks for a long time without huge marketplace disasters, they simply get a small break using their own network and pay a small fee to use another's network. All the DSL and dial-up providers have been sharing networks in various ways thanks to the FCC requiring them to do so. Yes, the private monopolies would have banned dial-up internet providers if they could have. (AOL wouldn't have existed so 1 good thing would have come out of that.)
LIMITED RESOURCES:
It is OUR airwaves they buy monopolies on and our institutions manage them - if they do so poorly its because we the people are incompetent. We currently have a system which sells off bandwidth to the highest bidder and barely regulate the monopolistic usage; this is about as free-market as it can get without the costly chaos of letting anybody make radio noise. I suppose we should allow Verizon to install signal jamming devices or should we regulate that nobody can jam the competition? What constitutes jamming? Who decides? What if two providers bump heads over bandwidth-- the stronger signal and client hardware wins... a temporary battle...
People seem to forget that something as basic as FIRE and POLICE have been privatized in the past and that insanity resulted-- in something that is morally simplistic and necessary; yet they somehow other areas are going to be more civil and more effective by introducing free market anarchy??
Anarchy has a PR man and its the US Chamber of Commerce. "Free market" is just a PR creation.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"Nothing stops you throwing a 'smartphone' on a plan without cellular data and still using it to make calls and SMS." ... if you [use] a phone that THEY consider a smartphone [...] they will automatically detect what kind of phone you [are using] and change your plan to a smartphone plan without telling you.
Sounds like smartphones need a "user agent switcher" feature, to let them masquerade as dumb phones when using no-data calling plans.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way