Slashdot Mirror
Advocacy Group Files FCC Complaint Over Verizon Tethering Ban
Hugh Pickens writes "Cnet reports that the advocacy group Free Press has filed a complaint with the FCC that argues Verizon Wireless shouldn't be allowed to block tethering apps that let people connect their computers to the Internet through their phones' 4G wireless data network. 'This practice restricts consumer choice and hinders innovation regardless of which carrier adopts such policies, but when Verizon Wireless employs these restrictions in connection with its LTE network, it also violates the Federal Communications Commission's rules,' says the group. Those rules say Verizon 'shall not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of their customers to use the devices and applications of their choice.' Google has made tethering apps unavailable through the Android Market for some phones that use wireless services from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, saying in May it did so at the behest of carriers."
Of course they have to charge extra for data over tethering. The screen on a laptop is bigger, morans.
They own the network, but they license the spectrum. The spectrum is managed by the government for the public good, and as a result, Verizon pays for the privilege, and they have an agreement with the FCC detailing allowed use.
I predict a respone that is a bureaucraticly worded 'Fuck you.' The FCC is fully bought and paid for, they already just let one of its commissioners take a blatant bribe from Comcast under the condition that they give them the ok to merge with NBC Universal.
They can do as they please.
People who tether are not harming the network that the carriers own. What is the carrier's complaint, and how does it square up with the Carterfone decision? At one time, AT&T charged extra for the "tethering" of the day, namely the privilege to use a modem on a phone line. It also limited modems to using acoustic coupler technology. Had this continued, had Carterfone not opened up the market to equipment in the customer's control, we very likely wouldn't have had home Internet access in the 1990s.
If they didn't the mifi would go byebye
https://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobilebroadband/?page=products_mifi
The problem isn't Android. The wireless tether apps were removed from the Market. There are already plenty of alternative markets. If you're saying that Android should support wireless tether out of the box, and that we need a fork of it in order to do that, that's also nonsense. The carriers wouldn't allow their phones to ship with that OS, and without them you won't be able to pay the people working on the fork. You'll have a handful of people doing it in their spare time and they'll only be able to support 1 or 2 devices, not the entire spectrum. (This is like CyanogenMOD, by the way).
There are plenty of OSS apps that do tethering. Google has no lockdown on Android, you can install out of market apps. Heck, CM7 makes all kinds of changes to android, CM7.1 adds the ability to block permissions.
http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/
It is GPLv3.
You might not be trolling, but you are quite uninformed.
What we need is the entire spectrum run by a single entity and the carriers just compete on service.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Verizon does have plans where people can tether without restrictions on the apps and devices. It is just separate from the mobile phone only plans.
Tethering using the USB cable...got an app that works fine there with Verizon DroidX. I can work very efficiently this way and make calls through Google Voice btw.
If you're saying that Android should support wireless tether out of the box,
I know several people who have android 2.2+ phones, and theirs had wifi tethering out of the box. 3G network in, wifi tether out. If it isn't working "out of the box", someone removed it from the box.
Which is ironic because it's was Google who got the 'shall not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of their customers to use the devices and applications of their choice' clause in the LTE spectrum in the first place to prevent carriers from denying people's ability to use Android devices.
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
I would note that technically sprint charges an extra 10 bucks for allowing tethering.
In an environment where the carriers tell the FCC what the rules should be, or where companies buy legislation ... the 'market' has already failed.
Why does everyone continue to believe that the 'market' is this self-regulating entity which comes up with optimal solutions and gets corrected by competition and other factors? It simply doesn't work that way, and it never has.
The 'market' isn't there to serve you or me, it's been set up so the major players hold all of the cards. It sure as hell isn't 'fair'.
*laugh* So, you think regulating the market into uniformity and proscribing what they can do will lead to competition and fairness?
Your beloved market doesn't work that way, and the carriers would balk and say they're not willing to spend the money or not be differentiated by being incompatible. Seriously, if someone on the FCC can rule there's no problem with a merger ... and then take employment with the beneficiary of that merger ... do you expect any regulation to not be stacked in favor of the big players?
It's an idealized economic model ... it doesn't operate the way people think of it, and it never has ... it doesn't have these wonderful self correcting measures, and regulation/legislation only distort things ... and, really, even if it *did* work that way, the big players would game the system to get an advantage.
Years of watching this kind of stuff have convinced me that this 'market' and 'competition' of which you speak is a myth. Start out with a fair one, and you'll get cartels and price fixing within a short period of time ... and competition won't naturally create better solutions, it will create better solutions at exploiting you.
People don't have perfect information, they don't make rational informed choices, and everybody is out to fuck everybody else over. All subsequent assumptions are distorted ... and, occasionally when we see the markets tank, we get to see how badly the underlying system has been manipulated so that someone gets rich at everyone else's expense. Selling off bad debt as if it was AAA rated investments, for instance ... one big shell game. A Ponzi scheme on a massive scale. And, yet, its proponents continue to claim that it will fix everything.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
While you're on the subject of weak arguments, you should probably examine your own. You're falling prey to the "device" mentality. "Device" has nothing to do with it. Throughput is what the company is selling, and throughput is what you're consuming. By the same rationale, your ISP could sell you an "unlimited data" product and argue that it only extends to your modem, not to the machines behind it.
If your network access "device" cannot support other "devices" by providing access to the data connection, then surely your network access "device" does not have unlimited access. They're ones and zeros. They go through your phone. If you have an unlimited data contract for your phone, then you should have unlimited access to the data connection.
I don't understand what's the big deal. In the grand scheme of things, I know blocking tethering apps may be against FCC rules, but I'm not betting the carriers will actually follow those rules. But here's what you CAN do:
Step 1. Get an unlockable, rootable phone. ALL carrier phones are locked, but some are easily rooted and all of them can be unlocked for a small fee. So you can still get a subsidized phone, just be careful which one you pick. As a rule of thumb, never pick up a brand new model, but almost every single 3-6 month old model is rootable.
Step 2. Install a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod.
Step 3. Use the tethering capabilities built into your ROM, without the need of any extra apps.
If you can't follow these steps, then find friends who can or pay somebody to do it for you. My gf, who doesn't have a clue how to unlock and root phones, is using CM7 nightlies on her HTC just fine.
I filed an FCC complaint last month regarding AT&T charging for tethering -- basically the same complaint. As expected, the FCC didn't do anything except give my contact information to AT&T so that AT&T could contact me to tell me that my contract basically allows them to impose whatever restrictions they want.
Obviously I realize the contract sucks, which is why I filed the complaint. If I have a 2GB plan, I should be able to do whatever I damn well please with those 2GB of data.
Hopefully this group (and the voices of others) will have more success. You can file a consumer complaint online here: http://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints_tcpa.html if you're so inclined, though be aware that the FCC will give out your contact information to your carrier. Also false/anonymous, complaints probably won't help.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Maybe the better analogy would be if the carriers charged you for the privilege of being able to send voice to your bluetooth headset.
Tethering has value to the customer, and that's why they buy phones that feature tethering, or applications that enable it. Tethering is not a service provided by the carrier, so they have no business charging for it, just like they have no business charging for the installation of any other third party applications that may use the supposedly unlimited data connection. You cannot argue that the service provider offers anything on your system other than the data connection, because it does not.
There's nothing Marxist about this. It's about service providers delivering what they claim to provide, and about treating the customer with respect.
Depends - what weighs more:
1) a pound of bullshit?
2) a pound of telecom?
They are in the business of selling data access. Just charge an extra $10/GB (or whatever the market will bear) and be done with it, and quit lying to customers about having sold them an "unlimited" plan in the first place.
There is something seriously innovation-chilling about the company dictating what the source of the data is...