Corporate Intranet

While the senators in Washington to mull over issues related to network neutrality, as they relate to the terrestrial cable and telco networks, eBay VoIP provider Skype has asked the FCC to open up cellular networks outside applications and devices. While obviously serve themselves, suggests the petition to wind up the debate on just what role should the consumer choice to play on the public airwaves.

In particular, Skype asked the FCC to applyCarter Phone Case of 1968, the mobile industry today. Determined before this decision, AT & T, which type of device could be connected to their network, typically a mobile device, which was sold exclusively by them.

Presented as a result of the Carter phone, the phone company was from the control of the network to the telephone jack. The consumer, you could choose from an onslaught of new devices and technologies in the market. By answering machines, faxMachines, and finally the modem - a major factor in the Internet boom of the nineties.

Since the FCC began auctioning the public radio spectrum in the 1990s, the growth of the mobile phone industry mushrooming, changing the face of telecommunications and the way people communicate and worldwide. New technology flourished, and today the air can only carry voice, but even an expansion of the Internet.

Developers andDevice manufacturers have come with mobile applications like SMS, e-mail-blown Internet browsing, music and video download and upload up to mobile office applications, VoIP and much more. The new generation of mobile phones are now called smart phones, and can pretty much anything you can do to your computer. Mobile phones with multiple radios, cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in and can access frequencies can be seamlessly switch a call from a cellular network, with the much cheaper Internetvia VoIP over WiFi connection.

U.S. mobile phone, Denial of Service

While many of these applications and functions are available on the overseas networks in the U.S., it is a different story. As quoted by Dr. Tim Wu in his paper Wireless Net Neutrality, "... the phones widespread in the United States are only a small fraction of the devices in the world."

As it stands today in the U.S., the mobile industryran on four major suppliers are based on two different technologies, and they jealously guard their networks. Verizon and Sprint (using the CDMA standard (Code Division Multiple Access), and AT & T formerly Cingular Wireless) and T-Mobile employ the GSM standard (Global System Mobile), which currently enjoys about 73% world market share.

As with AT & T before Carter Phone, all carriers sell their own phones, and block access to theirNetworks of the other in varying degrees with different methods. The CDMA phones use an electronic serial number (ESN), which is registered by the carrier network. Verizon will not allow a phone number in their system, which is not sold by them. Sprint allows you to not register a Sprint device, but very detrimental to them and does not provide technical support for such phones.

GSM networks with a SIM card, a chip that contains information and participants is designed to switch phonesNetworks by inserting the SIM card of the appropriate carrier. Phones sold by AT & T and T-Mobile are disabled by the SIM card, effectively locking them up with the network. It is possible, though not easy to do this potential to telephones and is also legal, as in the United States. Not wanting to cover too much pressure, AT & T and T-Mobile so that the release of their mobile phones after an initial period of ownership.

In an attempt to keep users on their networks, and thus gains thecellcos have other applications that crippled the world enjoy. This very popular activity of downloading music, pictures and video are in fact in the U.S. mobile market, but try to email or upload to a site not approved, and you will probably find their efforts blocked. You can upload an additional fee, of course, and share your media on sites that are approved by the institution.

Bluetooth wireless technology allows devices to talk about lowShort-range radio frequency band. Bluetooth-enabled printers, computers, cell phones and cordless headsets, the users up-and download media files and send photos to a printer, and you talk on your cell phone hands free. But U.S. airlines have some time or another crippled many of the features available via Bluetooth technology.

Probably the breakthrough technology for the mobile industry is WiFi. The 802.11b / g standard enables wireless broadband --Connection suitable for e-mail, browsing the Internet, including communications equipment, and the dreaded, extremely cheap, voice over Internet protocol. Internet telephony can bypass the cellular networks by voice directly over the Internet via a landline or a wireless connection .

WiFi, and device manufacturers can incorporate the technology into their phones, but the cellular carriers in the U.S. have resisted tooth and nail by paralyzing WiFi in their devices, and demanded thatManufacturers make less WiFi versions of their mobile phones for the U.S. market. While it would be technically possible to load third-party applications such as Skype to the mobile phone to do so on a WiFi-enabled mobile phone to jeopardize the business model of cellcos.

Today you will find very few phones in America, the WiFi-capable. Right now, cell phones are always in Europe, which can operate on the cellular network, as well as corporate wireless LANs,Integration into the enterprise IP / PBX telephony system.

In conjunction with AT & T, Apple has recently announced that its premier iPhone coming in June will have WiFi capability, but to what extent remains to be seen. Unfortunately for Skype and others will not allow third party applications on the iPhone.

The major airlines in the U.S. also provide broadband Internet access over their networks, especially through an antennaplaced on a PC card to a laptop. Mobile broadband access is in direct competition with the Wi-Fi hotspots popping up in airports, hotels, corporate LANs and other public facilities. Developing countries also threatens to 802.16 WiMax technology for the Metropolitan-LAN in the competitive situation of mixing.

While WiFi is much faster than cellular networks, it is must be designed primarily for short-range networks and hot spots will be searched. Thecellular networks, may, on the other side, broadband access offer, whenever it enters the network.

The U.S. airlines to limit the types of services, applications and functions are allowed on their network, and will stop and the charges for access to the suspected breach of their contractual agreement. Basically, broadband services are only accessible by e-mail, browsing, and intranet can. The downloading of music and videos from unauthorized sites (iTunes,YouTube, for example) and P2P file sharing is prohibited, and in some cases by being enforced strict bandwidth limits for users.

As the Net Neutrality movement refers to the mobile industry

If the early evolution of the Internet is the American Wild West are compared, then the rise in the U.S. wireless industry can be compared to Stalin's Soviet Union. Carrier networks typically developers, device manufacturers, and consumers with an ironFist, so that only the services and functions of their choice on their networks.

To be sure, there are some significant differences between the Internet and mobile networks. U.S. airlines have spent billions on its stake in the wireless spectrum, and the right to keep what functions are available to identify the consumer. Corporate executives claim that there is fierce competition in the cellular industry that is the determining factor in selection for consumers should, as in contrast tostate regulation.

The early days of the Internet experiencing massive technological innovation from developers and manufacturers due to its inherent openness, American mobile phone networks were proprietary, and serve right from the beginning itself.

The concept of Net Neutrality created a grass roots movement, as cable and telco managers to talk about charging high-bandwidth have, such as Google, Vonage, YouTube, to use their lines. Fearthat these companies could therefore control what content would be available to vulnerable consumers, the basis of a free and open Internet.

The cell phone companies on the other side were beginning to companies in a free market society and as such have every right to determine which offer services. Lack of a public outcry of consumers the right to vote, to regulate the industry seems to be anything but a foregone conclusion.

Thatsaid that the implementation of the principles Carter Phone seems a logical step to prevent the monopoly tactics, such as from an industry that is entrusted with the public airwaves, too. The other players in the telecommunications industry, including cable companies, and must abide by the ruling.

What is confusing is that wireless companies could actually open up more revenue by offering services that consumers would gladly pay extra. Downloading music and videos from iTunes forFor example, could be achieved by bandwidth usage billed charges and could cellcos implementation that uses the protocols would be to include phone calls over the Internet.

Of particular interest to the economy of the concept of fixed-mobile convergence, with a phone with a phone that cellular and WiFi networks can be transported, so that calls made via VoIP and conventional landline network, in addition to the cellular airwaves.

Equipment manufacturers likeNokia phones do already, that integrate with corporate IP network / PBX systems from Cisco, Avaya, Siemens and others, and calls on the best network available. While great advances in this technology in Europe and other regions, the U.S. market is made is stifling for developers and manufacturers of both.

It will be interesting to see how the Skype application is playing with the FCC. The application of the possible opening of the Carter Phone CaseDoor to new development and technological innovation. If not, the U.S. mobile phone industry must be based on market forces is slow to catch on with the rest of the world.