Members of Congress Call for iPhone Freedom
July 11th, 2007 by tkarrBipartisan members of Congress spoke out Wednesday to free the iPhone and other next generation hand-held computers from the grip of phone incumbent like AT&T and Verizon.
During the hearing of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, representatives from both sides of the aisle called for a more open wireless system where new innovations aren’t held hostage to the competition-killing carriers that control the network.
Users ‘Trapped’
In what’s been dubbed the “iPhone hearing” Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and “Chip” Pickering (R-Miss.) called for a different system – where wholesalers could compete and new applications and devices could be connected regardless of carrier.
“The iPhone highlights both the promise and the problems with the wireless industry today,” Rep. Markey said holding up before other members his newly acquired iPhone. “On the one hand, it demonstrates the sheer brilliance and wizardry of wireless engineering. On the other hand, the advent of the iPhone raises questions about the fact that a consumer can’t use this phone with other wireless carriers.”
Markey highlighted myriad problems with our wireless marketplace, where “many consumers feel trapped having bought an expensive device or having been locked into a long-term contract with significant penalties for switching.”
Representative Pickering called for more openness in the marketplace stating that “openness is creating a wholesale market” for competition between services.
“Openness is creating interoperability for devices so that you can use a device, whether it’s an iPhone or another device, with whatever function you choose,” the Mississippi Republican said. “If you want to go to a Wi-Fi or WiMax spot and use it, or if you want to have the access to other networks, you can do so. That’s openness in wholesale.”
‘Calcified’ Markets
Markey and Pickering spoke about the current dilemma in America’s wireless system. The iPhone is shackled to AT&T and won’t work on any other network. The reason? We have allowed carriers to exert almost complete gatekeeper control over all devices, services and content in the wireless sector.
This has left the U.S. generations behind other nations, a failure that prompted New York Times blogger David Pogue to call American carriers “calcified, conservative and way behind their European and Asian counterparts.”
Regulations That Work
“I’m a small business owner. I don’t like regulators,” Jason Devitt, co-Founder and CEO of Skydeck testified during the hearing.
“In the context of wireless spectrum I do not have a choice between no regulations and regulations. We have a choice between badly written regulations and regulations that work.”
‘Mad as Hell’
Devitt continues:
“[I] flew here from Silicon Valley to tell you that we have a regulatory system that doesn’t work and the only way we’re going to fix it is if you have some form of open access …
“I am an entrepreneur and I am mad as hell that I require permission to innovate in the wireless market. I don’t have to go to the great companies that built our public highways and ask them for their views for what kind of cars I can put on those roads…
“For some reason I have never been able to understand, I have to ask permission of Verizon Wireless to attach a computer or the computers that they now call phones to their wireless networks and I have to ask their permission to run applications and services on those phones.”
DeWitt told representatives that we can fix the problem through open access regulation. “By open access, essentially it’s what Mr. Pickering said, it is the opportunity to attach any device to the network. It is the opportunity to run any service on the network.”
Spectrum Oligopoly
Professor Tim Wu of Columbia University testified that there’s “something weird” about America’s wireless market.
“It’s not like consumer electronics or software markets. It’s not like the Internet,” he said comparing the current wireless market to the old vestiges of the AT&T monopoly model. “It’s that model which has failed us.”
Professor Wu said that the one area that America has not been a technical leader is in the wireless space. “We have allowed one way or another there to be a spectrum-based oligopoly in wireless that has controlled innovation,” he said. “This Congress and the FCC has a duty to set us back to a direction towards and open market.”
Wu recommended that the U.S. implement wireless Carterphone principles and create an open access standard across the spectrum so that the next iPhone isn’t held captive by a locked system.
Our Last, Best Chance for an Open Network
These concerns echo actions by the SavetheInternet.com Coalition to open the upcoming government auction of valuable radio spectrum.
In May, Free Press, Consumers Union, Public Knowledge, Media Access Project and others called upon the FCC to implement an “open access” model that included Net Neutrality conditions for content and applications and permitted third parties to access the network as wholesalers and provide a wide variety of wireless broadband services, devices and access alternatives.
In June, more than a quarter million SavetheInternet.com supporters put the FCC on the spot when they flooded the agency with comments and urged Chairman Kevin Martin to open these airwaves to wholesalers and Net Neutrality.
The upcoming auction has moved the debate over open networks and Net Neutrality to the wireless industry where carriers exert multiple layers of control over services, applications, devices and content. Their stranglehold on wireless has chilled innovation across the sector while shackling cell-phone users to pricey contracts, phones and termination fees — severely limiting choice across the market
The airwaves on the block are frequencies being vacated by television broadcasters as they switch to digital signals. The auction is our last, great chance to create a “third pipe” for Internet access in a wired line marketplace that is controlled by many of the same companies that hold the wireless market in their grip.
Join the Fight
Coalition groups such as Consumers Union, Media Access Project, Free Press and Public Knowledge are fighting for both wireless and wired line freedom in the broadest sense.
In the wireless world this includes the freedom to use any device on any network, the freedom to choose among competing providers and the freedom to access any content or services without gatekeeper interference.
July 11th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
I am strongly urging people to spend a few minutes and let the FCC know that the Internet must remain free. Companies are seeking to control it which is VERY inappropriate IMO. The only way it can stay free is if we fight for it.
My experience is like many throughout the country. Comcast was my ISP for nearly 4 years. They arbitrarily decide who stays and who is terminated for 12 months. What am I talking about? With an unlimited use residential account, I understood I could download without a problem and without limit. Sure it sounds like it’s too good to be true. And it was.
You get a phone call then you are gone for a year. Even after upgrading to a business account they said they couldn’t turn the Internet back on. We had to wait a year then we could apply again. Right.
What does this have to do with Net Neutrality? Well… from the outside nothing. But think a little here. If a company can make a decision to terminate someone’s account and not provide any guidelines for what IS acceptable use, what is to stop them from stating google or msn.com is unacceptable use of their service? They can make decisions for you and you have no recourse. There is nothing to prevent them from making these kind of decisions. You don’t like it? Go slower wireless or dial up (yeah right).
These companies must be stopped or the Internet is gone.
http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
July 12th, 2007 at 11:48 am
I am all in favor of a free and fair internet, but this particular hearing was patently ridiculous and another example of Rep. Markey seizing on the latest hot topic to act as the House’s deisgnated gadfly. A couple of weeks ago Rep. Markey was assaulting PHRMA reps with questions about specific drugs that they could not not possibly have answers to then berating them when they didn’t have the answers and now he’s complaining about the iPhone. It would not surprise me if Rep. Markey hauled in the Chinese ambassador next week to ask him a bunch of pointless rhetorical questions about product safety next week since that’s what’s been in the news this week.
The fact of the matter is that there are more than just access issues at stake here. The design of the iPhone and the implementation specifically of the voicemail system made it necessary for the phone company that ended up with the iPhone to change the implementation of their voicemail system. Also, Apple was able to get a much better internet access deal for consumers than the rates AT&T was giving customers pre iPhone.
I wouldn’t have any problem with Rep. Markey taking advantage of items in the news if he were elevating the discussion on these topics and not just spewing invective every time a newsworthy topic comes up on the committee floor. In this particular instance, he seems to be arguing against consumers’ rights to flat fee internet access and arguing in favor of companies that charge the higher rates.
If Rep Markey really wants to help out consumers on the internet access front, perhaps he could bring in some of the broadband proivders and find out why it is that we pay much higher rates for much slower broadband internet access than any other industrialized country. Maybe instead of whining about perfectly legitimate business deals between service providers and suppliers, he could hold up the Apple-AT&T deal as an example of how the rest of the wireless industry should be treating consumers. That is to say: create better devices and charge a flat rate for internet access.
Rep. Markey needs to leave the muckraking and fear mongering to Rush Limbaugh and the folks at Fox “News” and start acting like a responsible represenatative of the people in his district and in this country. Spend less time trying to get on TV and spend more time trying to figure out how to get us a decent healthcare system and bring about an honorable end to the war in Iraq that leaves it at least a little better than we found it, and ensure that consumers are getting a fair deal when it comes to internet access.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I do believe that the internet should remaiin free. The fact of the matter is that we are still tax payers, and it is our money that goes into the internet. So shouldn’t we have the choice to view and purchase what we want? I don’t see any good coming from having gatekeepers over the internet and wireless devices. It is in our history that we do not take well to limits. By having a gatekeeper over the internet and wireless devices you are limiting our choice, and that it not why people come to this country to have their choie- thier freedom to expand- taken away from them. If anything, this will set us back decades. We were progressing so well as a nation.
July 17th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
[…] In a recent post on the Save the Internet blog, we see numerous quotes, all representative of the complete lack of understanding of the business these people actually have. Let’s take one and examine it. […]