Walt Mossberg Pushing For Gov't Intervention In The Mobile Phone Market

from the is-it-really-necessary? dept

Walt Mossberg has been talking about this for a while, but his latest column follows a few other recent calls for the government to step in and mandate more open wireless networks. The idea is that mobile networks should be more like the wider internet. That is, when you buy a computer, you don't buy one locked to a particular ISP, or with only what that ISP wants you to access included. That openness has resulted in tremendous innovation in the PC, internet and software worlds -- and it's quite likely that a similar openness would lead to much more innovation in the mobile space as well. The problem, though, is that it's really not that simple.

As we've discussed before there are a lot of complicating factors here, and perhaps the biggest issue is that it's unclear that government regulation is really necessary. Early on, all the mobile operators tried to focus on completely walled gardens, not allowing users to access the wider internet. However, most operators have realized that was a mistake and have pulled away from that model (and benefited for it). There will be a greater and greater realization that this actually makes the most sense for mobile operators anyway, and there's no reason to think that it should require immediate government assistance. We're already seeing companies like Google pressure the market to be more open and certainly there's plenty of consumer demand there. That means this is really more of an opportunity for mobile operators to embrace this kind of model than one that requires gov't intervention. In the immediate future, there are technical limitations, but if you follow the direction that next generation wireless networks are taking, it should become less and less of an issue over time. On the flip side, if we do bring the government in to mandate openness, you risk a situation where a bunch of politicians without an understanding of either the technologies or the trends are pressured to make laws that will eventually have a detrimental effect (and, don't kid yourselves, the telco lobby will make sure those laws favor the telcos in the long run). Since I agree with Mossberg and many others that there could be much more innovation by embracing openness, I would like to see it happen. But I'm optimistic enough to recognize that market pressures should help drive us there without risky gov't intervention. The real breakthrough will be when one of the mobile operators steps forward and embraces these concepts on its own.

Filed Under: carterphone, mobile phones, net neutrality, walt mossberg, wsj

EU About Ready To Allow Phone Calls While Flying

from the let-the-airlines-decide dept

While the US government has basically decided not to allow mobile phone calls from airplanes due to complaints from people worried about sitting next to people who are too chatty, the EU seems to be taking a more reasonable approach. Recognizing that the technology problems with calling from airplanes have basically been solved, the EU is ready to let airlines decide for themselves how they want to handle the issue. In other words, rather than having the government decree that people shouldn't suffer sitting next to half a conversation, why not let the market decide? If people are really annoyed by it, then airlines can simply advertise themselves as "mobile-phone free" or set up "mobile-phone free" sections.

Filed Under: airplanes, in-flight voice, mobile phones

Purse Snatcher Tries To Ransom Mobile Phone Back To Owner... For $185,000

from the perhaps-he-should-plead-insanity dept

This one fall into the stupid criminal files. A guy who attacked a woman and ended up stealing her purse and mobile phone later tried to ransom the phone back to her for $185,000, a number he seemed to have picked out of thin air (found via The Raw Feed). Apparently, the ridiculousness of the request soon became apparent, as he was quickly negotiated down to $200 ransom. Of course the whole negotiation was taken place with police listening, and so it was the police who greeted him at the transaction location, rather than a woman with $200. The guy's now in jail. If the judge had a sense of humor, he would have set bail at $185,000, rather than $100,000, while also pointing out that he wouldn't negotiate down to $200.

Filed Under: mobile phones, stolen

New Rules On Willful Patent Infringement Likely To Save Qualcomm Some Cash

from the willful-just-doesn't-mean-what-it-used-to dept

Qualcomm's run into plenty of trouble in its ongoing patent battles with Broadcom, but the company finally received some minor good news. Back in August, we had noted that the appeals court that deals with patent issues had changed the standard under which patent infringement is considered "willful" (and, thus, subject to triple damages). Before this, the standard had been fairly low, causing all sorts of silly things like firms forbiding employees from looking at patents for fear that this makes the liable for willful infringement. However, the new higher standard is already making waves through the court system. For example, Qualcomm had already lost the court battle over patent infringement on some Broadcom patents -- and the ruling had said that Qualcomm was guilty of willful infringement, leading the judge to double the fine from the $19.6 million the jury suggested to $39.3 million. With the new standards in place, however, it's not clear if Qualcomm really is guilty of willful infringement and the judge is offering Broadcom a choice on how to proceed. Either it can drop the claim that the infringement was willful -- or it can drop the original decision and start again. If Broadcom drops the willful part, then the ruling will stand, but the fine will be reduced. If Broadcom wants to push for the higher damages of willful infringement, it'll need to redo the entire trial and make sure the infringement lives up to the new willful standards.

Filed Under: patents, willful infringement
Companies: broadcom, qualcomm

Verizon Wireless To Hand Over Your Info To Advertisers Unless You Opt Out?

from the making-friends,-pissing-off-customers dept

Jeff A. writes to let us know that Verizon Wireless is trying to change its policy on what it can do with your calling record info. Basically, it sounds like they want to start selling it to marketers, so they had to change their terms of service. What they did was send customers a letter telling them they had 30 days to call and opt-out of this new plan to hand over your calling records, or you'd have automatically accepted their changed terms of service and Verizon Wireless could hand over the info to advertisers. Of course, many people will probably just see this as junk mail and toss it out, not realizing that they've just agreed to get a lot more advertising sent their way -- and, more importantly, opened up access to (what they thought were) their own private phone records. This is doubly sneaky, because the FCC recently released new rules on how telecoms shouldn't release info to third parties without "explicit consent from a customer." Verizon Wireless seems to think that sending this letter with its fine print and demanding people opt-out within 30 days falls under "explicit consent," though some customers would likely disagree.

Filed Under: advertising, opt-out
Companies: verizon wireless

Bluespam: Now Legal In The UK, Still Dumb Everywhere

from the don't-bother dept

Bluespamming -- the process of sending marketing messages to mobile phones via Bluetooth -- has been a pretty dumb idea from the start. You're basically bothering people who are on the go and who don't care to hear from and effectively invading the "personal space" that is their mobile phone. Unfortunately, it appears that over in the UK, they've now decided that bluespamming is legal. The Information Commissioners Office there removed bluetooth as a marketing medium that requires opt-in notification. However, there's also some good news on the bluespamming front. Companies that are doing it are discovering that it's useless. It doesn't deliver results and is a waste of time, effort and money. But, it's legal!

Filed Under: bluespam

When Do We Get The Third Stage Of VoIP?

from the it'll-come dept

Tom Evslin has a very interesting post looking back at the predictions he made keynoting Jeff Pulver's VON conference ten years ago, and noticing that of his three stages of the VoIP adoption path, the third never happened. Evslin predicted that the first area of VoIP adoption would be the straight arbitrage play of offering cheaper calls on the backend, especially for international calls. That absolutely happened. The second stage of VoIP adoption would be to move the calls to the internet, rather than a separate IP network for VoIP calls. That also happened. The third stage, however, would be when VoIP offerings became more common because they allowed people to do things they simply could not do with the traditional POTS (plain old telephone system) offering. That's always the definition of a true killer app. It's not about moving one service from one system to another, or about just making something cheaper or better. It's about enabling something that wasn't even possible before. Yet, Evslin notes, this hasn't really happened with VoIP. Instead, most VoIP plays are still quite similar to the telephone. Evslin thinks that, in retrospect, his mistake was in forgetting that the new VoIP offerings needed to remain backwards compatible with POTS, and that has limited the ability to really create new offerings.

Instead, he believes the real third stage of VoIP adoption will be to totally bypass POTS and make it obsolete. He notes that social networking communication systems are starting down that route, where there are many different ways of communicating -- and voice will just slot right in as one of many modes of conversing (along with videos, text, pictures and other options). I'd argue that this isn't that far off from his original vision -- and he seems to downplay things like Skype, GizmoProject and Yahoo IM that really have started to allow people to do things that weren't possible before, such as adding presence and mobility to VoIP, while still connecting back to the legacy POTS system. I'd also argue that a second issue holding back the adoption of cool new features and benefits from VoIP has been the ridiculous patent lawsuits from the incumbents, trying to halt any real innovation in the space to protect their cash cows. Perhaps Evslin's right that the only way to get around these things is to leave POTS in the dust -- but hopefully once the dust clears on these patent lawsuits, real innovation can start happening.

Filed Under: voip

Apple Beware: CA Supreme Court Gives Go Ahead For T-Mobile Phone Unlocking Lawsuit

from the folks-in-cupertino-may-be-interested dept

Just a few days after a class action lawsuit was filed in California against Apple for locking down the iPhone, the California Supreme Court ruled on a different case that may have an impact on the Apple case. It's given the go ahead on a separate lawsuit against T-Mobile for locking its phones and requiring an early termination fee. T-Mobile had argued that the terms of service required that any dispute go to binding arbitration, so that it didn't make sense to take it to the courts. Of course they want binding arbitration because companies almost always win in binding arbitration. The court found that it's perfectly reasonable to take this issue to court. How the courts will actually rule on the issue could make a big difference in the Apple/iPhone case -- as there is the possibility that the courts may find that (in California at least) locking a phone to a single network is not allowed. It may depend on the specific wording of state laws, as the specifics of such a case can get rather technical. To be honest, if a mobile phone operator wants to lock a phone to only their network, and people agree to it in the contract (or agree to an ETF), then that should be a contractual issue. It's a dumb business practice -- as many operators are starting to realize. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it should be illegal.

Filed Under: california, early termination fees, mobile phones, unlocking
Companies: apple, at&t, t-mobile

AT&T Buys A Little Head Start On 700 MHz Spectrum

from the gotta-start-somewhere dept

Just as the FCC is pushing back the start of the highly anticipated 700 MHz spectrum auction, comes the news that AT&T couldn't wait for that spectrum to come on the market and decided to buy up a different chunk of 700 MHz spectrum licenses from Aloha Partners for a mere $2.5 billion. There's plenty of speculation about what the company is planning to do with the spectrum, with some thoughts that it's going to ditch its Qualcomm partnership for mobile video and go it alone, but that seems like a market that's DOA.

Instead, it seems likely that this is just the beginning of AT&T lining up to get its hands on the auctioned spectrum to combine with this batch. There's been plenty of speculation about who might be the top bidder for the spectrum, with random startups, Google and Apple being tossed around as possible names along with the big telcos. Verizon's been making plenty of noise (apparently both publicly and behind the scenes), but AT&T has always been up there as well. Now, that additional spectrum becomes even more valuable to AT&T, so it might be time to push up how much AT&T is likely to bid on the auctioned spectrum. And, in the worst case, if AT&T doesn't win the auction, it can use this new spectrum it bought to try to barter a sharing arrangement -- or, alternatively, as Glenn Fleishman posits, be able to keep a locked up network going, while whoever buys the auctioned spectrum will have to be more open. If true, that seems likely to backfire. It could give AT&T an initial leg up, but those walled gardens tend to have long-term problems when competing against open systems.

Filed Under: 700 mhz, spectrum
Companies: at&t

Are Short-Sighted Sprint Investors Throwing Out The WiMax Opportunity With Forsee?

from the risk-vs.-reward dept

As per the rumors circulating for just a few days, activist investors, and disgruntled shareholders have ousted Sprint CEO Gary Forsee. There are three main reasons for the ouster -- and not all of them make sense.

1. Sprint has a relatively high churn rate among the majors, and is acquiring new customers much more slowly than chief wireless rivals AT&T and Verizon. For the next quarter, Sprint has issued guidance that they will suffer a net loss of over 300k subscribers, which is atrocious in a time when AT&T and VZW are net adding about 1.5M each. There seems to be no resonating marketing message, and the brand is suffering.
   
   My take: This is a problem that can be blamed on Sprint management and marketing execs, and possibly right up to Forsee. Sprint needs to find a message that resonates with customers, stick to it, and rebuild the brand. Realistically, their service is scarcely better or worse than the other oligopilists, but the perception is that it is worse.



2. The Nextel merger is not going as well as expected, with delays in integration, and frustration and churn among Nextel's formerly loyal blue-collar Push-to-talk (PTT) base. Prior to acquisition, Nextel was the goose that laid golden eggs, with ~$70 ARPU, but that goose is plucked.
   
   My take: The roots of this problem stem from the "Nextel Spectrum Swap" that was in motion long before Sprint stepped in. Nextel is vacating spectrum that it promised not to use because it was interfering with Public Safety radios in the 800MHz band. As it vacates, existing Nextel users are getting crammed into a smaller band, and quality is suffering. The only cure is to speed up the rollout of EV-DO Rev.A, and get Nextel users migrated to PTT services over CDMA. Sprint is showing every sign of doing this, so is there any executive culpability? Perhaps the Nextel merger was simply ill-conceived, and overpriced.



3. Investors are not thrilled about Xohm, Sprint's big venture into WiMAX service at 2.5GHz.
   
   My take: This is a serious fundamental disconnect between investors and management. The Xohm effort is something I earlier described as follows: "Sprint's 2.5GHz strategy is tied in my mind for "gutsiest US telco project" with Verizon's FIOS project. If Sprint succeeds, they will have a sustainable advantage that their competitors cannot easily copy (for lack of spectrum)."
   
   The disconnect is that investors in Sprint are risk-averse, Blue-chip, dividend seekers. They invested in Sprint when it was a utility company. But Sprint's "gambit" into WiMAX has taken them way out of the "utility company" comfort zone -- and the reaction of the investors is as expected. With Xohm, Sprint's risk profile is looking more and more like a big tech firm, say Yahoo or Apple. Today's Sprint needs risk-seeking investors, not fixed-income seekers. Of course, the result is that Sprint is churning investors faster than it churns subscribers. And it's easier to lose old investors than to gather new ones.
   
   Perhaps existing investors would rather see Sprint sell off its 2500MHz spectrum to some VC, private equity-backed group that could take the risk, and pay a dividend to shareholders. But that doesn't make sense. It's exciting to finally see a telco do something bold, take risks, and...yes...even get a bit desperate. Because it is in desperation that the telco will break ranks and do radical things, like give the customer what it wants. Xohm promises no long contracts, open-access to any compatible device, ample bandwidth, and reasonable and varied pricing plans. Damn, does that sound like a breath of fresh air! Techdirt is firmly in the camp that so doing, a telco would actually INCREASE the value of their products, and grow profits.

By no means is Xohm a slam dunk. WiMAX is, as yet, largely unproven. Timing is essential, and any significant delays will reduce the Sprint advantage. But an early success would radically change the wireless landscape, and could not be readily copied by competitors. In Sprint, we have the best of the capitalist system, where the effort could succeed or fail, but in pushing the envelope by merely entering the race, things are better for all consumers. Forsee or not, I hope Xohm lives on.

Filed Under: gary forsee, wimax
Companies: sprint