Large cell service providers won almost all of the licenses in the recently concluded FCC spectrum auction. Google didn't get any and won't be entering the wireless business. Verizon Wireless was the big winner, laying out $9.4 billion for enough regional licenses in the "C" block to stitch together nationwide coverage, except for Alaska. On this spectrum Verizon will have to allow subscribers to use any compatible wireless device and run any software application they want. AT&T paid $6.6 billion, Qualcomm picked up a few licenses, and Paul Allen's Vulcan Spectrum LLC won a pair of licenses in the "A" block. One analyst called Google a "happy loser" because it got the openness it had pushed for. The AP's coverage does some more of the numbers.
Now verizon can't make you use a shitty phone. Now Verizon can't lock you into their ringtones only. Now Verizon can't stop you from using generic Android-sporting phones.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday March 20 2008, @04:58PM (#22812470)
yes they can.
"Oh sorry, internet acccess requires our patented "poopboost" technology. and we are not ready to license it yet. it's only available on verizon licensed phones."
You bet your arse they will do everything they can to lock you into their crap-phones with everything disabled. They will find a loophole, they hate the customer that much .
They will find a loophole, they hate the customer that much
It is interesting to see how people take the actions of particular corporations personally as if they were "out to get the little guy" for no other reason than simple spite. The spectrum auctions provide a limited monopoly for their winning bidders. The rational (i.e. profit maximizing) behavior for a monopoly firm in any market is to price discriminate or in other words they charge each customer the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a particular amount of goods or services (or as close to that amount as their metered pricing schemes and various contracts can get). Now, this time there are conditions attached to the winning bid that will supposedly prevent some of the previous worst practices from being repeated, but corporations are famous for circumventing, capturing, and generally corrupting attempts by the government to regulate them so I don't have much confidence in these "strings" attached by the government. However, the actions of a particular corporation, should not be viewed in a good or evil way, but rather from the standpoint of a completely amoral and dispassionate entity who seeks to maximize his profits.
feel however you want, but hate implies an active dislike which cannot be the case with corporations (they are just legal entities). The people in charge of them might not like you, but they are other people, not "the corporation".
feel however you want, but hate implies an active dislike which cannot be the case with corporations (they are just legal entities). The people in charge of them might not like you, but they are other people, not "the corporation".
While I understand your point and agree with to a certain point, my experience has been that corporations or their divisions or other business entities develop a corporate culture that is more than the sum of its parts. Individually, the people in it can be quite nice away from the office, but when they are in the workplace, they become part of the entity. A couple I have seen (and thank all gods never worked for) were run like Nazi concentration camps. They hated everybody, and the places were run on total fear. More commonly, you do see businesses that have a culture of looking at their customers as victims to be abused. You can go to work in such a place as the nicest guy in the world, but if you stay long enough, the hive mind will take you over, and you'll start abusing grandmothers. Fortunately, most of us will quit such a place before we're too badly damaged.
The point is that customers should be patrons of businesses, not enemies. We are not merely talking about companies charging higher prices for more services: we are talking about companies going out of their way to expend a positive amount of effort to make their service worse for customers so that they can charge a higher price for doing less to make their service purposely bad. This sort of market-driven antagonism is "amoral" on the part of firms in the sense that a sociopathic killer is amoral compared to a killer who commits a crime of passion.
I don't know about you, but I would define "completely amoral and dispassionate entity who seeks to maximize his profits" as evil -or a sociopath.
Also, if it weren't for a company trying to "circumvent" monopoly regulations, there would never have been a "Berkley Standard Distribution." So I suppose sometimes good can come from their "evil" ways.
However, the actions of a particular corporation, should not be viewed in a good or evil way, but rather from the standpoint of a completely amoral and dispassionate entity who seeks to maximize his profits.
You assert this but give no reason for it. And to a lot of people (I'd venture to say _most_ people), seeking to maximize profits without considering the other repercussions of your actions can easily be evil (depending on the actions it leads you to take).
The rational (i.e. profit maximizing) behavior for a monopoly firm in any market is to price discriminate or in other words they charge each customer the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a particular amount of goods or services (or as close to that amount as their metered pricing schemes and various contracts can get).
Most people believe that to be bad, hence the heavier legal regulation of firms that have monopolies.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday March 20 2008, @06:33PM (#22813488)
> If they were dumb enough to do that, then they would be forced to license the patent, or loose the spectrum.
Or in some strange parallel universe, they might just go right on doing business without any consequences to them whatsoever. Thank god we don't live there and companies are actually held accountable, eh?
Sure... I will bet you money Verizon will find a way to make the requirement to "allow subscribers to use any compatible wireless device and run any software application they want" not a feasible option. Something like "With our stuff you get data discounted to 2 cents a byte. With yours it is the full price 2000 cents a byte..." Betcha money...
Fortunately there is always the option to vote with your wallet and not use verizon service. There are two national GSM carriers and tons of regionals. You almost always have the option of picking a carrier who uses a truly open network (GSM). For information on GSM carriers see GSM World [gsmworld.com]. I have long been using unbranded/locked devices on ATT's network and the experience is far and above that you could get with any of the crappy proprietary devices. And when I travel abroad, I can easily grab a prepa
You almost always have the option of picking a carrier who uses a truly open network (GSM).
It might be truly open, but it sucks for data. I'll take EVDO over EDGE any day.
I think it's pretty slimy that verizon does things like disable USB on devices in order to force users to transfer their pictures over their pay-per-transfer type service.
I don't think they've done that for quite some time now. They do disable some Bluetooth features, but with a USB data cable (available from Verizon or eBay), you can use free software like BitPim to transfer pictures, ringtones, and contact lists. Or, since most of the new phones have microSD slots, you can just save your pictures directly onto a memory card.
At the risk of being OT..... I got a new Nokia/T-Mobile phone recently. According to Nokia's documentation, the phone has an email client. I have been through the menus (including the ones in the manual that reference email) and there is no email client in the phone, so I assume that T-Mobile has disabled this feature.
Now, since there is no e-mail client, why would I want to have Internet access on the phone? I probably would have signed up for Internet access, but since T-Mobile doesn't want me to use email
Nearly all nokia phones can be flashed with the generic Nokia firmware which enables all the features.
The worst you'll have to do is change the product ID. Nokia even fix phones thus modified under guarantee (as they are running official Nokia firmware) as long as you didn't break it by fucking up the upgrade.
Of course you'll lose the T Mobile branding.. but you didn't want that did you?
Nearly all nokia phones can be flashed with the generic Nokia firmware which enables all the features.
I updated the phone's firmware using Nokia's updater software, but it retained all the branding and limitations. Is there some other way to update the firmware?
You needed to change the product code first, so the software update gets the unbranded version. You could find that you now have the most up to date firmware and you'll need to wait for the next Nokia release.
However, you may find third parties who are able to flash the phone to the generic firmware. You'll need to pay a fee though.
just google for "nemesis service suite" - it's a windows app that will change all sorts of things about your phone including the product ID, which then means the Nokia Software Updater will allow you to install generic s/w which is usually the latest version. I have de-branded quite a few N95s and my own E65, and they're so much better for it. Note that this can also brick your phone, so be sure to check the product code BEFORE is compatible with the intended code AFTER.
I'll pass on using mod points because I don't see anyone else asking this yet: Is there anything in the requirements that says that Verizon cannot charge for people to use any compatible device? Can we run our applications without them charging us money? Do they have the right to 'shape' bandwidth once somebody figures out how to torrent stuff over this network? Can I IM without them exacting an exorbitant fee per message?
In short: Are we gonna get screwed through a loophole?/rhetorical
Recall that the original auction specs had a mandate to re-sell bandwidth in bulk (costs + reasonable fees), but Verizon lobbied hard to get it dropped for some reason. My random guess is that they wanted to have monopoly and set their own prices (translation: you are screwed).
Also, Verizon is making a killing selling those $100/month "unlimited" plans and $2 ringtones. Therefore, there is no way in hell they would undercut that by allowing something like a reasonably priced VoIP over their network.
If they can't find a way to make a profit at $100 per subscriber their entire executive board needs to be fired and replaced by competent people. They should have significantly lower cost per subscriber than wireline service providers due to reduced infrastructure costs and the wireline providers exist on much lower revenue numbers.
Of course not. I haven't read the full thing, but as far as I know, it's going to be run GSM style. If you want to use the network, you'll have to get it's equivalent of GSM's SIM card (and the contract that comes with it), usable in any device that supports this network.
Nothing new here, the rest of the world has been doing this for over a decade and a half.
"In that regard, we emphasize that C Block licensees may not impose any additional discriminatory charges (one-time or recurring) or conditions on customers who seek to use devices or applications outside of those provided by the licensee. " FCC Open Access Requirements Paragraph 222 in FCC 07-132 No charges for using the device by the consumer. Of course, you are still charged service fees and if the contract is 10cents/kilobyte transfered there is nothing to stop Verizon from doing that so long as they cha
Great, they announced that Verizon took everything but Alaska. So, who won Alaska? I ask because I read the messages and couldn't tell who won it, and I live here. Is there a link to the actual results, rather than an analysis that says everything but Alaska but doesn't specify who took the elusive 49th state?
Looks like a newly created VC company made for the express purpose of bidding on this. That sucks for us. The last useless company that won lots of spectrum in Alaska never paid for it, never used it, and it was tied up in court for years because the FCC tried to repo it like a car that wasn't paid for, and the bankrupcy courts said they couldn't take it back. By the time it was done with, the spectrum had dropped in price (they speculated when the bidding was high a
Of course, Verizon could very well just sit on this spectrum and do nothing with it. Why would they want the competition? They'd have to do all that engineering to come up with a protocol that's bound to be tangled with lawsuits relating to the new regulations.
And, after all, you've already signed a two-year contract for "unlimited" talk at $100/month. Why would they want to upset that gravy train? It's not like any of the other carriers can use it...
Why does everyone assume verizon will use the spectrum for wireless when they have just as much need to deliver Video as they do wireless?
They could run a completely wireless 'cable' network over this spectrum and the only compatible device would be a set top box with a wireless interface that was compatible with their head end equipment. Was there something in the auction that requires the spectrum to be used for Cell phones or Internet access? I missed it if there was. Anyone know?
I recently had a phone interview with Qualcomm for a position in their MediaFlow division. Apparently they are planning to use recently freed UHF frequencies to digitally broadcast "cable" TV directly to cell phones . I wouldn't be surprised if they continued to expand this type of service with the additional licenses they picked up in the auction.
Google got exactly what they wanted here, a nationwide network that is forced to be available for thier android platform. They never really wanted the spectrum, if necissary they might have done it anyway but this would have been the prefered result.
Everyone is talking about the open access rules regarding Verizon's spectrum, but it is interesting to point out that AT&T does not have to deal with any restrictions on its 700mhz spectrum.
AT&T's 700mhz coverage includes the spectrum acquired from Aloha Partners combined with the B block from the auction (totals 95% of the USA). This means that AT&T can still deploy a completely locked down network if they choose.
I don't know why everyone is saying Verizon is the big winner. AT&T won the vast majority of the B block which, paired with the 12MHz they bought from Aloha, gives them 24 MHz for less than Verizon paid for 20 MHz.
And there are no open network requirements on AT&T's spectrum.
Yet another incompatible frequency band. Why can't the US get together with the Europeans on frequency allocations so that the same devices work everywhere?
Verizon paid 9.6 billion for C Block licenses, but Sprint-Nextel has a market cap of only 18 billion, so for 9 billion (more or less) Google could buy controlling interest. Sprint owns WiMax spectrum that reaches everywhere the C Block reaches, and has infrastructure in place that Google would have needed to capitalize on 700 MHz spectrum. Why buy spectrum when you can buy comparable spectrum PLUS a phone company? Google wouldn't have to buy them outright, or buy even 50 percent, either, just put up a few billion, and Sprint would essentially be theirs. Plus, they could still make use of unlocked Verizon and AT&T services.
Google's lobbying for open access was incredibly smart. What they didn't pay for spectrum could buy a whole phone company, one competing against companies burdened by all that auction debt.
Google was lucky to have not bought into the spectrum.
Antenna design scales linearly with frequency. Lower frequencies invariably require larger antennas. There are some ways you can get around this, i.e. accept low efficiencies, or narrow bandwidth, etc. Either way, you DO NOT want to lower your center frequency.
Secondly, and most importantly, the next gen for wireless communications will involve MIMO. I assure you, from practical experience and graduate research, you will not see multiple antennas in the 700 MHz spectrum. Nor will you see it at the 900 MHz spectrum. You might be able to pull it off at 1800 MHz, but you'll get at most two antennas. One needs to move into the 2.5 GHz and above to make a reasonably sized handheld WITH multiple antennas. You can't just place the antennas any which way and expect MIMO to work. The antennas need to have low coupling between them, so you need significant electrical distances between them. It's EASY to design multiple antennas for different frequencies (i.e. Quadband), but VERY difficult to design multiple uncoupled antennas at the SAME frequency (i.e. MIMO).
How is this "open access" thing going to work? What's open about it anyway?
It'll be open in approximately the same sense that AT&T and TMobile's GSM networks are open. I have an HTC TYTN II that works with my AT&T SIM card, despite the fact that the Taiwanese firmware in my TYTN II is not crippled like the AT&T firmware in the TILT. Contrast that with Verizon's network, where you cannot use a phone without their royal seal of approval, a 1 hour wait at a Verizon store to have it registered in their system, and when that's all said and done, you have a horribly crippled phone that requires you to use their for-a-fee wireless data transfer to load on a ringtone or pull off a photo. My phone, I just plug in a USB cable and transfer files through the windows file explorer.
I have an HTC TYTN II that works with my AT&T SIM card, despite the fact that the Taiwanese firmware in my TYTN II is not crippled like the AT&T firmware in the TILT.
Fair warning. This magic GSM mojo works for 3G and GRPS, but not EDGE. If your Asian phone has to touch EDGE it becomes an Asian brick. Otherwise my HTC Trinity would have been perfect.
Android (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Android (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh sorry, internet acccess requires our patented "poopboost" technology. and we are not ready to license it yet. it's only available on verizon licensed phones."
You bet your arse they will do everything they can to lock you into their crap-phones with everything disabled. They will find a loophole, they hate the customer that much
.
Parent
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Corporate Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
While I understand your point and agree with to a certain point, my experience has been that corporations or their divisions or other business entities develop a corporate culture that is more than the sum of its parts. Individually, the people in it can be quite nice away from the office, but when they are in the workplace, they become part of the entity. A couple I have seen (and thank all gods never worked for) were run like Nazi concentration camps. They hated everybody, and the places were run on total fear. More commonly, you do see businesses that have a culture of looking at their customers as victims to be abused. You can go to work in such a place as the nicest guy in the world, but if you stay long enough, the hive mind will take you over, and you'll start abusing grandmothers. Fortunately, most of us will quit such a place before we're too badly damaged.
Parent
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if it weren't for a company trying to "circumvent" monopoly regulations, there would never have been a "Berkley Standard Distribution." So I suppose sometimes good can come from their "evil" ways.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the actions of a particular corporation, should not be viewed in a good or evil way, but rather from the standpoint of a completely amoral and dispassionate entity who seeks to maximize his profits.
You assert this but give no reason for it. And to a lot of people (I'd venture to say _most_ people), seeking to maximize profits without considering the other repercussions of your actions can easily be evil (depending on the actions it leads you to take).
The rational (i.e. profit maximizing) behavior for a monopoly firm in any market is to price discriminate or in other words they charge each customer the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a particular amount of goods or services (or as close to that amount as their metered pricing schemes and various contracts can get).
Most people believe that to be bad, hence the heavier legal regulation of firms that have monopolies.
Re:Android (Score:5, Funny)
Or in some strange parallel universe, they might just go right on doing business without any consequences to them whatsoever. Thank god we don't live there and companies are actually held accountable, eh?
Parent
Re:Android (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Android (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Phone company idiocy (Score:3, Interesting)
I got a new Nokia/T-Mobile phone recently. According to Nokia's documentation, the phone has an email client. I have been through the menus (including the ones in the manual that reference email) and there is no email client in the phone, so I assume that T-Mobile has disabled this feature.
Now, since there is no e-mail client, why would I want to have Internet access on the phone? I probably would have signed up for Internet access, but since T-Mobile doesn't want me to use email
Re: (Score:2)
The worst you'll have to do is change the product ID. Nokia even fix phones thus modified under guarantee (as they are running official Nokia firmware) as long as you didn't break it by fucking up the upgrade.
Of course you'll lose the T Mobile branding.. but you didn't want that did you?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Phone company idiocy (Score:4, Informative)
You needed to change the product code first, so the software update gets the unbranded version. You could find that you now have the most up to date firmware and you'll need to wait for the next Nokia release.
However, you may find third parties who are able to flash the phone to the generic firmware. You'll need to pay a fee though.
Parent
Re:Phone company idiocy (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Does Open = Without charges? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Does Open = Without charges? (Score:5, Informative)
Recall that the original auction specs had a mandate to re-sell bandwidth in bulk (costs + reasonable fees), but Verizon lobbied hard to get it dropped for some reason. My random guess is that they wanted to have monopoly and set their own prices (translation: you are screwed).
Also, Verizon is making a killing selling those $100/month "unlimited" plans and $2 ringtones. Therefore, there is no way in hell they would undercut that by allowing something like a reasonably priced VoIP over their network.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does Open = Without charges? (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing new here, the rest of the world has been doing this for over a decade and a half.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
" FCC Open Access Requirements Paragraph 222 in FCC 07-132
No charges for using the device by the consumer. Of course, you are still charged service fees and if the contract is 10cents/kilobyte transfered there is nothing to stop Verizon from doing that so long as they cha
Who won Alaska (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who won Alaska (Score:4, Funny)
LOL
Parent
Re:Who won Alaska (Score:5, Informative)
https://auctionsignon.fcc.gov/signon/index.htm [fcc.gov]
Login to Auction 73 and click 'results'.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like a newly created VC company made for the express purpose of bidding on this. That sucks for us. The last useless company that won lots of spectrum in Alaska never paid for it, never used it, and it was tied up in court for years because the FCC tried to repo it like a car that wasn't paid for, and the bankrupcy courts said they couldn't take it back. By the time it was done with, the spectrum had dropped in price (they speculated when the bidding was high a
Except Alaska... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Except Alaska... (Score:4, Funny)
There, I fixed your spelling...
Parent
Re:Except Alaska... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Conspiracy Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
And, after all, you've already signed a two-year contract for "unlimited" talk at $100/month. Why would they want to upset that gravy train? It's not like any of the other carriers can use it...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe there is a requirement they have to use it for phone service though.
Re:Conspiracy Theory (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Does it have to be a cellular network? (Score:4, Interesting)
They could run a completely wireless 'cable' network over this spectrum and the only compatible device would be a set top box with a wireless interface that was compatible with their head end equipment. Was there something in the auction that requires the spectrum to be used for Cell phones or Internet access? I missed it if there was. Anyone know?
Re:Does it have to be a cellular network? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Google DID win (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T's Spectrum Does Not Hanve Any Restriction (Score:4, Interesting)
AT&T kicked Verizon's butt (Score:5, Insightful)
And there are no open network requirements on AT&T's spectrum.
Sounds like AT&T came out on top of this deal.
yuck (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay I goggled "a Happy Loser" (Score:5, Funny)
Sprint + Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Google's lobbying for open access was incredibly smart. What they didn't pay for spectrum could buy a whole phone company, one competing against companies burdened by all that auction debt.
Google is lucky (Score:3, Informative)
Antenna design scales linearly with frequency. Lower frequencies invariably require larger antennas. There are some ways you can get around this, i.e. accept low efficiencies, or narrow bandwidth, etc. Either way, you DO NOT want to lower your center frequency.
Secondly, and most importantly, the next gen for wireless communications will involve MIMO. I assure you, from practical experience and graduate research, you will not see multiple antennas in the 700 MHz spectrum. Nor will you see it at the 900 MHz spectrum. You might be able to pull it off at 1800 MHz, but you'll get at most two antennas. One needs to move into the 2.5 GHz and above to make a reasonably sized handheld WITH multiple antennas. You can't just place the antennas any which way and expect MIMO to work. The antennas need to have low coupling between them, so you need significant electrical distances between them. It's EASY to design multiple antennas for different frequencies (i.e. Quadband), but VERY difficult to design multiple uncoupled antennas at the SAME frequency (i.e. MIMO).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Call me ignorant (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Fair warning. This magic GSM mojo works for 3G and GRPS, but not EDGE. If your Asian phone has to touch EDGE it becomes an Asian brick. Otherwise my HTC Trinity would have been perfect.
Re: (Score:2)
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Re:Where's the money? (Score:5, Informative)
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