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Google Begins Taunting Cell Phone Carriers |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Thursday, 19 July 2007 |
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Page 2 of 2
This report in the Mercury News suggest that "all-out war has broken out between the two sides" over an area of spectrum currently used to broadcast UHF TV.
This spectrum is suitable for a new high-speed mobile network
that some believe could send the already heated mobile broadband
business stratospheric.
Akin to the Net Neutrality argument where carrier believe
control over data should rest with service providers and Quality of
Service should be subject to their business rules, the telcos (such as
AT&T and Verizon) are opposed to any idea that there should be
equal and open access to the spectrum or any new network built upon it.
IT industry players, such as Google and eBay were not at all
happy by a proposal circulated which argued that the new network should
be accessible to new applications and devices, but fell short of
requiring the spectrum licensee or network owner to wholesale broadband
access to third parties.
According to the report AT&T has outright threatened to
sue the FCC if it cedes to Google's argument that access should be
equal and open: "Google's request - to obtain a leg-up in the auction
process through the artifice of 'open access' regulation - is a
self-serving attempt to obtain spectrum at discounted rates that would
turn the clock back on a decade of bipartisan consensus on the proper
approach to wireless deregulation, deprive taxpayers of billions of
dollars, inhibit the explosive growth of wireless broadband and -
perhaps most importantly - expose the commission to reversal in the
courts."
Those are pretty strong words to aim at the regulator, so clearly there is a lot at stake here.
The situation is somewhat similar to the Fibre To The Node
(FTTN) conundrum currently being played out in Australia, where Telstra
(the incumbent carrier) is the only organisation that really has the
infratructure in place (copper to the home) to make a roll out a
national fibre network feasible. However, Telstra refuses to invest its
money do build it unless the regulator will guarantee its competitors
will be locked out or at least forced to pay dearly for the right to
access the network.
Telstra says nasty things to the ACCC (Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission) as well -- clearly there is a lot at stake.
This issue is just one along a spectrum of issues caused by the rapid
incursion of convergence into markets traditionally characterised by
substantially high barriers to entry.
Another example is the area of VoIP as exemplified by the
restrictive practices wireless carriers use to hamper the take up of
mobile VoIP. The Mercury News article paraphrases Christopher
Libertelli, senior director of government and regulatory affairs at
Skype, as saying: there is "a growing list of discriminatory and
anti-competitive practices" in wireless, and the FCC's auction rules
for the new spectrum should balance the interests of carriers and
software developers. Such an approach would maximize the value of the
airwaves and be in the best interest of consumers.
In a similar example, a mobile VoIP startup in the United Kingdom
called TruPhone recently won a pre-trial court injunction forcing
mobile network operator T-Mobile to terminate its Internet telephony
calls.
T-Mobile was the last of the wireless operators in the UK to agree to
interconnect to the mobile VoIP provider and initially argued that it
was purely a commercial dispute. Nobody (including the judge) really
believed that and hen Truphone agreed to pay whatever price T-Mobile
wanted (in the short term at least) the wireless carrier's argument
looked a bit weak in court.
It's unlikely the case will ever go to trial on competitive grounds as
T-Mobile will most likely accept its fate. TruPhone complains that
carriers have gone to other lengths to hamper the uptake of mobile
VoIP, such as having the VoIP capabilities of Phones like the Nokia N95
disabled prior to sale.
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