A proposal to live in a free mobile telecommunications world

-- By DiegodelaPuente - 29 Sep 2011

1. Open your mind

By the end of 2010 there were approximately 5.3 billion mobile subscribers according to the International Telecommunication Union. This means that mobile network owners have an immense power and control over the life of millions who must submit to their will and rules. Therefore, I argue that a change is needed and that technology advances are the way to achieve it. Unfortunately, mobile network operators and the U.S. government have opposed this change through the years and will continue to do so.

Nowadays, the most used technology to perform phone calls is Voice over IP (VoIP? ), also called Internet Telephony, which transforms voice into data packets that travel through the Internet to its destination. Almost all mobile operators and phone service providers over the Internet, such as Skype, are using VoIP? . Given this, we do not need mobile network operators if we could have the possibility to be connected to a giant Wi-Fi network and make mobile phone calls everywhere.

VoIP? : http://transition.fcc.gov/voip/

2. How to achieve the change?

My proposal is to use of Wi-Fi enabled VoIP? phones under super Wi-Fi environments. Unsurprisingly, mobile network operators have opposed this idea through the years, because they considered that it would represent a serious threat for their revenues. Instead, I consider this a threat to their existence.

2.1 Super Wi-Fi networks

Super Wi-Fi network is the concept of turning entire cities into wireless access zones by means of wireless mesh networks. A mesh in this concept is a series of radio transmitters that are able to communicate with at least two others, creating a cloud of radio signals through the city. Municipal wireless networks are among the most discussed projects in this field during the past years. Many local governments around the world have done various initiatives to build citywide Wi-Fi networks and fortunately some of them had been successfully deployed. Even so, it is true that technological improvements are needed to obtain a high quality product, since poor quality or lose of signal can be generated by immense amount of traffic in the bandwidth or by bad climate conditions.

In respect to the financial matters, the business model of local governments may vary between projects, but generally the service is rendered based on a fixed minimum payment that is proportionally divided according to each citizen’s income and that could be paid monthly or jointly with the annual tax payment. Then, the consumer’s economical advantage over this scheme is the possibility to make local and long distance calls by just paying a minimum fixed fee for high-speed Internet access.

In spite of these positive attributes, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opposed this scheme due to their concern for the possibility of generating (i) unfair competition among private and public sectors in the wireless industry and (ii) harmful interferences to local TV stations. The U.S. government dramatically changed its position on this topic when in 2006 FTC listed Wi-Fi first on its list of major technologies used to provide citywide wireless Internet access; in 2010 FCC, in its National Broadband Plan, referred to Wi-Fi only as an important complement to licensed fixed and mobile networks. What happened between these years was a great pressure from mobile telecommunications companies, so much so that even several states passed laws restricting public Wi-Fi. Moreover, some courts, deferring to FCC’s interpretation, have ascertained that it has the regulatory authority over wireless Internet access points mounted on utility poles. This is another legal barrier to avoid the deployment of citywide Wi-Fi networks, because of its power to change the actual standards.

2.2 Wi-Fi Phones

Wi-Fi phones, like computers, use VoIP? technology to make calls. This means that they do not need to be supported over the classical mobile networks architecture, they only need to be in a Wi-Fi covered area to start functioning.

Mobile companies’ rejection of the super Wi-Fi network has delayed the massive production of pure Wi-Fi phones or the development of new software that can be used in actual GSM, CDMA or WCDMA to allow the performance of phone calls over the Internet without having to be realized in a mobile network. Nonetheless, anyone can buy a Linksys, Locktec or ZyXEL? phone with an open protocol for approximately US$90.00. In that order of ideas, once the construction of super Wi-Fi networks starts, the most important manufactures of mobile devices are going to turn their eyes toward this new field and build thousands of new models of mobile phones that will be supported only by the Internet network. I can guarantee that when that day arrives mobile networks will face their end.

3. Conclusion

We have identified that freedom does not exist with today’s mobile network operators. Unless we try to change the regulatory policies conducted by the U.S. government by showing an interest in this matter, this situation will remain for many years, because it favors mobile operators’ power and income increase.

Information sources

VoIP technology

- http://transition.fcc.gov/voip/

- http://www.truphone.com/en-US/

- http://www.fring.com/what-is-fring

Super Wi-Fi networks

- http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/Turn-Your-Cell-into-a-VoIP-Phone.aspx

- http://drdobbs.com/mobility/202600424

Wi-Fi phones

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_VoIP

- http://www.pcworld.com/article/129114/new_voip_service_for_cell_phones.html

- http://communication.howstuffworks.com/ip-telephony9.htm

- http://www.pcworld.com/article/129114/new_voip_service_for_cell_phones.html

Technological utopianism

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-utopianism

Articles

- Mike Masnik, Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period (link: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml)

- http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/dual-perspectives/2009/04/20/The-End-of-the-Cell/

- http://technostreak.com/web/mobile-voip-technology-and-its-future-affects-on-cell-phones/

- http://www.itproportal.com/2008/05/19/3-skypephone-mobile-phone-review-future-mobile-voip/

- http://www.technologybloggers.org/voip/the-future-of-telecommunication-belongs-to-mobile-voip/

- http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Present-and-Future-of-WiFi-VOIP-Phone-Technology&id=2197854

- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/wifi-phone3.htm

- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/wifi-phone2.htm

- http://www.broadvoice.com/wifi_voip_phone.html

- http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9962474-7.html

- http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/

- http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/material/FactsFigures2010.pdf

- http://www.jthtl.org/content/articles/V9I1/JTHTLv9i1_Lemley.PDF

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi

- http://gigaom.com/2004/07/04/review-zyxel-voip-wifi-phone/

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yft47G0328w

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hUtbUkBGpE&feature=related

- http://www.amazon.com/Locktec-WP04-WiFi-Wireless-Phone/dp/B003ZW920O

- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/municipal-wifi.htm

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_wireless_network

- http://www.wirelessphiladelphia.org/

- http://news.cnet.com/The-citywide-Wi-Fi-reality-check/2100-7351_3-5722150.html

- http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/10/muniwireless.shtm

- http://www.ftc.gov/os/2006/10/V060021municipalprovwirelessinternet.pdf

- http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/super-wif/#ixzz12OMKNRty

- http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/136391/

- http://legal.tmcnet.com/topics/legal/articles/220453-fcc-rules-limit-use-super-wi-fi-populated.htm

- http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/38635/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-09-20

- http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-announces-public-testing-first-television-white-spaces-database

- http://www.muniwireless.com/2011/10/19/european-commission-seeks-9-billion-for-broadband

- http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2007/09/wheres_my_free_wifi.html

It would be helpful to put links into the body of the text, where they support individual statements, in addition to tossing together a source list at the end. Such a list is more useful if you comment on the sources, to help people to decide what to read.

Some technical issues should be identified. Handing off phone calls from cell to cell when the handset is moving (potentially rapidly) during a call involves routing activity that is not the same as that provided by the ordinary Internet routing protocols. Higher power levels than those that are within the regulatory framework for 802.11 can be required in order to reach handsets without special antennas in sparsely populated landscape.

The nature of the economic disruption involved can probably be indicated by a couple of sentences summarizing the earnings of mobile network providers. The political consequences can also be summarized briefly, so that the reader can see why you confidently expect governments to be uninterested in freeing personal telecomms.

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