Apple To Sell Wi-Fi-less iPhone In China 114
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the also-adding-special-tinfoil-bezel dept.
from the also-adding-special-tinfoil-bezel dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Business Week reports that the Chinese government has received an application from Apple seeking a Network Access License to sell the iPhone for officially-sanctioned use in the country. However, the application is for an iPhone that does not include Wi-Fi connectivity, a sticking point in negotiations with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which wants the phone to only run on the cellular networks. 'Apple was hellbent on having the iPhone be Wi-Fi-enabled,' says analyst Matt Mathison. 'The Chinese government has been just as adamant that it not be.' For many years now, China ministry officials told wireless consumers that Wi-Fi would not be allowed on mobile phones for fear that consumers might be tempted to illegally load VoIP apps and make calls over the Net, undermining carriers' interests. However Glenn Fleishman says that China uses WAPI, a homegrown proprietary extension to Wi-Fi that only a handful of Chinese manufacturers have access to, and that equipment sold in China must have WAPI support and chips made in China. Fleishman speculates that China's WAPI standard contains backdoor technology to allow China to monitor any communications sent over 'secure' links."
WAPI not for the proles (Score:5, Informative)
WAPI is only for the inner party. The proles get bog standard WPA2 consumer equipment.
Also, Chinese consumers will get the WiFi enabled one on the black-market.
In general, the more government interference, the better developed the black-market will be.
It's all about the benjamins...er....yuan (Score:5, Informative)
Let me translate:
Illegally load VOIP apps and make calls over the net = cut into the revenue stream for one of the state owned telecom monopolies that doles out substantial sums to friends/relatives/mistresses of the same folks that regulate the telecom industry in the country.
You don't really think those government functionaries who earn the legitimate equivalent of a secretary's salary in the west can afford the garages full of luxury cars, the multiple homes, and the expense of sending their children to overseas universities, eh?
Welcome to China.
Re:And what does our FCC think about this? (Score:2, Informative)
Can you stand up to the gov' in any western country either?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bernstein [wikipedia.org]
Bernstein brought the court case Bernstein v. United States. The ruling in the case declared software as protected speech under the First Amendment, and national restrictions on encryption software were overturned.
http://www.waemploymentlawblog.com/blog/2008/09/transsexual-wins-sex-discrimination-lawsuit-against-federal-government.html [waemploymentlawblog.com]
Transsexual Wins Sex Discrimination Lawsuit Against Federal Government
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge#Aftermath [wikipedia.org]
The surviving members of the Weaver family filed a wrongful death suit and Randy Weaver received a $100,000 settlement while his daughters received $1 million each. Kevin Harris received a $380,000 settlement. (With firearms they lost, in court they won)
Just a few samples found in a couple of minutes.
Re:And what does our FCC think about this? (Score:5, Informative)
Go out in the street, stand in front of your local courthouse, and chant "The FCC is killing babies." Now, go try the same thing in China, except substitute "The MIIT is killing babies." See how far you get. Come back and let us know how it went.
There is a substantial danger that the US will become China, but the actions of the FCC WRT licensing are not an example of such a warning sign. The actions of the FCC Re: "obscenity" are that warning sign.
It's unfortunate that you were modded Troll, though... Every word of this sentence is true:
It's funny, there are so many similarities between China and the U.S. Both are huge world powers that use their military and economic power to intimidate neighbors. Both are led by an oligarchy of unremovable political parties. And both have populaces that are brainwashed and fiercely patriotic.
Every word of this sentence is highly defensible, and more to the point ontopic when we're talking about Chinese oppression.
Re:And what does our FCC think about this? (Score:5, Informative)
I know anti-US comments are an automatic +5 Insightful on Slashdot, but this is absurd.
The MIIT employs huge blocks of censors filtering content, has people arrested for using the Internet wrong, employs huge amounts of people to flood web 2.0 sites with nationalistic messages, places strict limits on the number of foreign movies that can be imported, censors the content of these movies, has banned Cannes-wining filmmaker Lou Ye from making movies for five years because his movie didn't pass government censors, blocks Youtube, Facebook, and some of the most popular internet sites on the web, cuts off all telecommunications in places where minorities are getting killed and might want to report on what's happening, and that's just a few modern examples off the top of my head.
If the FCC did all of this in the US, people (hopefully) would be revolting in the streets.
The FCC has its problems but the MIIT is a terrible monster backed up by a government with a willingness to go military on its own people, and really you're doing a disservice to the very real evilness of the MIIT by saying "Oh yeah America has a version of that too." Honestly you don't have an even casual acquaintance if you think they're fundamentally similar.
Re:Load illegal applications? (Score:5, Informative)
You noted that the story is from China? And are aware that China has different laws than the US? It appears that VOIP capability on cell phones is indeed illegal in China, which would make loading such an app on an iPhone (or Blackberry, or Pre) in China indeed illegal.
Re:Double hobble (Score:3, Informative)
You have noticed that virtually any cell phone you get from any carrier is crippled somehow, have you not?
Re:And what does our FCC think about this? (Score:3, Informative)
Your nickname is a bit ironic here.
Oh, it's not ironic at all. BadAnalogy guy is a meta-troll who posts things that are blatantly factually incorrect, but gets modded up because he knows how to play on the biases that exist on Slashdot. For example, it is very popular with the "elite" Slashdot moderators to negatively compare the US to any other country in the world, no matter how despotic they are, and BadAnalogy guy did this to get moderation points here. Then somebody who actually has a clue about what is really going on invariably corrects him, but unfortunately is often not up-modded to match the original troll. In that regard, it would only be ironic if his name was GoodAnalogyGuy.
Re:WAPI not for the proles (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Apple has been selling iPhones liberally in Singapore and Taiwan (?) with none of the restrictions it put on sales in the US and Europe precisely to create a black market supply for China.
The people getting the iPhone in China are not rice paddy peasants, they are the urban rich, and there are shitloads of them. The mobile market in China is already absurdly big. In a report on notes from Analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros, AppleInsider wrote:
"[China Unicom,] the smaller of the two Chinese carriers has 'just' 133 million carriers compared to [state-run] China Mobile's 488 million but is in the middle of deploying a 3G cellular network that uses UMTS [rather than China-proprietary TD-SCDMA]."
AT&T & Verizon+Alltel in the US have around 78M and 80M subscribers respectively. That's why everyone is talking about China.
China Unicom leading the pack for iPhone deal [appleinsider.com]
Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble [roughlydrafted.com]