Response

Not a hearty endorsement and it will be of interest to see if Google antes up to sit at the table.

link from Consumerist.

Like a German submariner of old stalking an Allied convoy, the FCC has launched what I consider a rather significant torpedo to the Verizon/ATT/Sprint wireless franchises.

Open Platform

The licenses of the upper 700mhz band C block of spectrum shall be required to provide a platform that is more open to devices and applications. This would allow consumers to use the handset of their choice and download and use the applications of their choice in this spectrum block, subject to certain reasonable network management conditions that allow the licensee to protect the network from harm.

Now this may not be the most perfect of options vis a vis an open source mindset to the C block. But it does several things:

• It blows away the stranglehold the carriers have on the CPE market vis a vis use of their networks. When a customer can go to anyone buy their Belkin or Nokia 880 tablet communicator insert the equivalent of a SIM card and walk away happy; the days of closed source cell phones is pretty much over. No more 24 month contract - handset shuffles. You keep what you like till you either get bored with it or it dies.
• Flat Rate is Here. I will expound on this in a future post but suffice to say, per minute charge rates will be going away. The best way to meet the FCC mandate on portability and usage is with a data centric infrastructure. Essentially extending Ethernet to the wireless arena for CPE. The consumer is used to flat rate plans for data streams regardless of whether its FIOS, xDSL, or ISDN. Attempting to carry the minute usage model into this space will meet consumer resistance. Once flat rate is in place legacy carriers have only one choice — flat rate plans for legacy cellular. Either that or prepare to lose their embedded investment as customers abandon the space.
• “…more open to devices and applications.” Can you spell Skype? Or Gmail Talk as your voice grade subroutine? No need for channels for voice and data defined by the carrier. Now the customer can decide how to slice it since what will be hitting the antenna is all digital. And that flips the voice grade cellular model on its head. Its no longer the network as much as the device-application pairing utilized.

Of additional interest is this little piece:

“For licenses based on REAG’s licenses must provide service sufficient to cover at least 40% of the population within four years, and 75 percent of the population with the license area by the end of the license term.”

Now let me ask you, gentle reader, have you ever known a Telco to be able to meet that kind of build out schedule? Well neither have I. Who benefits? Well possibly Google. How? Google is a service business. They will want to induce additional services using the bandwidth. Their mindset will be less interest at layers 1,2,3 of the OSI model. There up there at layer 9 and above. I could easily see Google come out with a spec for use of the bandwidth, partner with the OEM product developers for the hardware and work a cobroker arrangement like FON is attempting with WIFI in this band. Customers buy the equipment relieving Google of the capital cost and deployment headaches. The customer recoups their investment through customer attraction and revenue sharing. Its viral, a model Google is very familiar with.

Anything lacking? I can only think of one - interoperability is not mentioned in the preliminary notice. It would be a shame to come this far and not at least have that kind of ability on the nationwide bands. Hopefully that will be covered in the auction detail to follow.

Ref

The soon to be auctioned 700 mHz band offers the promise to deliver the elusive Third Pipe to the internet. New competition for the firmly entrenched duopoly of Telcos and Cable TV operators is what is needed to make the internet and voice communications in the US truly competitive.

It seems there’s something for everyone except the little guy in the FCC rules for the 700 mHz action that have just been announced. The are calling for “limited” open access for a “portion” of the spectrum - this phrase is an oxymoron! Access is either open or not.

Fortunately, the spectrum will not be auctioned until January 2008, so there is time to to raise hell with Congress.

Official FCC news release

Article on Marketwatch

Technorati Profile

The city of Rosario, Argentina, the counties second largest, has implemented a free WIFI network system. In the early stages of deployment, the operation uses Linux open source software as a component of the system.

Why is open source critical to this discussion? In Rosario’s case it appears to be a matter of politics. Lacking the funds to populate a commercial solution and not wishing to trigger inquires for funding requests the IT team used an Open Source OS to overcome the issue. Which begs the question, how many other Muni WIFI solutions are ‘rolling their own’ out there?

Read it here.

Verizon has consummated an acquisition of Unicel (aka Rural Wireless). The deal representing $2.67billion was completed as an all cash transaction. Unicel service area covers portions of Washington, Oregon, Minnesota and major portions of the Northeast
(map).

At 716,000 customers this acquisition is a small blip vis a vis the 47m customer base that Verizon Wireless possesses. It will be interesting to see how Verizon manages the conversion of those Unicel customers that were using the advanced GSM CPE back to CDMA.

link [HT: Consumerist]

In a recent interview with Cnet Chris Sacca states: The strategy is best defined by the goal. And the goal is, “What is going to make the Internet most available to the broadest number of people at the lowest price possible?”(complete story and interview on Cnet)

Google dangles $4.6 billion in front of the FCC by ZDNet’s Larry Dignan — Google said Friday that it would bid a minimum of $4.6 billion for the federal government’s upcoming wireless spectrum auction–if the Federal Communications Commission creates an open wireless platform. The wireless spectrum auction, which covers the 700 megahertz band, is expected to garner interest from numerous players such as wireless carriers look to get more [...]

The United States is falling dangerously behind other industrialized nations in terms of availability, bandwidth and cost. We are losing competitive advantage while lawyers and politicians continue to guard the last mile from any real competition. The most definitive contrast is at the cutting edge. In Japan NTT residential connection (100 Mbps down/up) costs $49 a month. In US, Verizon FiOS (30 megabits down/5 megabits up) costs $179.95 plus taxes.

See: US Broadband is really expensive on GigaOm