The Big Deal yesterday was the FCC’s announcement of two additional proposals to its enforcement of Net Neutrality: non-discrimination (ISPs can’t play favorites when it comes to network traffic), and transparent management (ISPs should be upfront with their network management practices, like blocking BitTorrent during peak hours). That’s all well and good—I don’t think you’ll find anyone across the Crunch Network who doesn’t support Net Neutrality—but this is thought to apply to “traditional” ISPs: Comcast, Time Warner, etc. The question becomes, then, how should Net Neutrality affect the wireless Internet? Should AT&T be subjected to the same regulations that Time Warner is vis-à-vis the iPhone? What about Sprint and the Palm Pre (and Pixi!)?
Go ahead and ask these companies, and they’ll tell you: thanks, but no thanks. They argue that the wireless Internet is inherently different than the “regular” Internet because of the much more limited bandwidth they’re dealing with, and the way in which that bandwidth is used. Host some sort of tech convention in Anytown, USA, and you’ll quickly find that Anytown’s mobile Internet has exploded. (See SXSW this past March. AT&T was pretty much unusable for several days in Austin, TX.)
Besides, if you [the public] want the mobile Internet to keep expanding at such a rapid rate, then the last thing you want is regulation. (That’s the VZWs of the country talking.)
Of course, to call the United States’ mobile networks “advanced” would be a bold-faced lie. Go to Japan or Europe and tell me that the shitty service you pay for here in America is “advanced.” “Can you hear me now?” WHY IS THIS SILL AN ISSUE?
Also remember: this is the same wireless industry that charges 20 cents per text message, when there’s absolutely no reason why that should be the case. So tread lightly when dealing with these guys and their complaints vis-à-vis dirty, dirty regulation.
Can you heat us now? Croudsourcing coverage problems for the FCC.
FCC is right.He should force this wireless provider for Internet Neutrality
In fairness, it’s not exactly the same thing. In most cases, it’s the device itself that blocks such things. Granted in many of those cases the device blocks it because the carrier pushed for that(iPhone especially), but I haven’t heard of any packet discrimination for wireless internet carriers, probably because it’s just not necessary. Without an app to do it, how are you going to use bit torrent on the iPhone, or even tethering for that matter?
Try running the BlackBerry ICQ client on Sprint and you’ll see what they’re getting at. Of course you’re not going to be running BitTorrent through your phone, but things like streaming video… remember that bit about not streaming TV over the network in their TOS?
In india,china and europe incoming calls are absolutely free and some carrier offer free text messages.They are cheap also and 3G service is better than US.
with the iphone and some netbooks already having the ability to utilize mobile internet for high-bandwidth content (the latter using more, of course), it’s only a matter of time until this really starts affecting mobile internet.
Considering what they carge for mobile data services in the US, (~$30/month for ~500MB of total data transfer), carriers should not be allowed to impose ANY restrictions whatsoever, including VoIP over 3G and tethering as well.
Main reason why the service providers have been opposing net neutrality is that they wish to charge multiple times for the same data.
Mobile data, data plan.
Tethering, extra charge.
Gaming data, even more.
Running a web server on your phone… all your life are belong to us.
view site http://www.sizlocore.blogspot.com/
Nic,
I think you missed the point or at least some of it. In many parts of the world incoming calls are free and the carriers decide how the handset is setup from the manufacturer e.g. in Australia one major carrier will order say 100,000 units of a Nokia handset and have their deck only accessible and off-deck access only achievable if you know how to configure the phone. Even more disturbing is that the same carrier sets the handset up to only ring 3 times, why? Because there is so much revenue made by people accessing their voice mail and then the comfort in knowing that the user will return the call in most cases on the carriers tariff.
Now lets look into the future…do you really think that my carrier will be happy with me subscribing to a data only plan and initiating calls via SIP provider (VoIP), that is say in Singapore? I doubt it the carriers are very scared in releasing LTE (4G) and will trad very carful not to rock the Voice/SMS goldmines. Most data on mobile networks don’t forget is handed off at the tower and backhauled over regular IP networks.