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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.
Not sure how my Verizon CDMA phone is going to roam its data on over to AT&T's GSM network.
...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.
Well, my T-Mobile plan is pretty good. I have a 5 Gig "cap", which isn't a hard cap, it just means that I get throttled if I go over it. I don't, however, ever lose connectivity or get extra charges. I pay for HSUPA speeds, and I actually get about 7-8 mbits/sec out of it (that's using a USB tether to my laptop and running a bunch of speedtests, including broadbandreports.com.) I have a G2, and I track my usage (T-Mobile's site gives you that info as well, and they match up pretty well) and I've never gone above about 1.5 gigs in a month. That's just me ... obviously your mileage will vary. I can tether and use VoIP software without getting yelled at (or charged.) And yes, I'm thoroughly pissed off at AT&T for screwing up a good thing by buying my provider. Fuckers.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"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.
No... they're not like standard data. They're more like the overhead involved in connecting a phone call.
When was the last time you saw a mobile carrier charging you $0.10 or $0.20 per mobile-to-mobile call to connect the call? Oh right... they don't... because it costs less than $0.01 per call to do that; you could make 100 calls in a day, and they probably won't care. Now calls you make to subscribers of other telephone companies, meaning the provider of the person you called gets to collect the few-cents per-call fee for terminating the call (Carrier Access Billing), might be a problem.
I wouldn't claim an individual SMS messages is as cheap for the carrier as an IP packet.
It may have more parity with the cost of transmitting an e-mail message through a mail server.
"15 million SMS to one mobile" is totally unrealistic -- it would hurt the MSC just in the same manner as it would hurt a mail server if a user suddenly sent 15 million e-mails..... I believe the term for that is called spamming
And go where? That's the point. The only way you can avoid this is by either not having a phone at all or restricting yourself to landlines. And if you're in public, good luck finding one of the increasingly hard to find pay phones.
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.
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.
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