Spectrum of Greed

If you are a wireless executive, this guy is VERY scary!

It is that time of year when everyone starts to think about spooky things, so who can blame Charles Golvin for making the comment that headlines this article?  Golvin is principal analyst with Forrester Research, and he made that remark regarding the reaction of wireless companies to the FCC’s current plan to extend Net Neutrality rules to include wireless providers.  The gentleman to our left here is not the star of the new “Saw” movie, or Halloween 57, or Friday the Thirteenth, part 34 - he is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.  And he is the really, really spooky dude who is causing the big bad wireless providers to seriously reconsider how safe it is to go out and loot the general public with their standard trick or treat activities.  The New York Times talked about it a month ago, and just today the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Net Neutrality.  This is to those who are advocates for Net Neutrality a day to celebrate, not a day to fear!  Check out the joyous coverage at Savetheinternet.

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They are the antithesis of grassroots organizations, the ‘wolves in sheeps clothing’ - big business telecom organizations posing as ordinary citizens in order to convince both legislators and the unsuspecting public that Net Neutrality, open wireless standards &  iPhone independence are NOT good for consumers.  FreePress has launched a new information campaign to expose these fake grassroots organizations for what they are, just as things are heating up on the FCC playing field in Washington.  According to a Computerworld article, several related investigations are now being made into current wireless industry practices by the FCC.  As extensive as the FreePress list of organizations is, believe it or not there are more.  In the state of Michigan, the Consumers for Innovative Technology group is one more that could be added to this list.

Click on the puppeteer arms above to learn more about each of the puppet masters that are putting on quite a show in Washington.

Wireless Revenue Juggernaut

It is past April fools, but I couldn’t resist.  AOL isn’t really charging per IM - but cell phone providers are.  As a means to grasp what is going on in the text messaging world, downloading the song Complication by Nine Inch Nails would cost $9,512.50…if you paid current text message rates of .24 per 140 characters of text sent.  That’s right - IMing on a cell phone generates big bucks!  SMS, or text messaging, is the fastest growing part of the cell phone providers product portfolio, and the least costly to provide.  Compared to downloading music or video, the little text messages barely make a blip on the traffic monitors of internet service providers.  This means BIG margins for those that provide text messaging services.  This explains why in America’s toughest economy in more than a decade, cell phone provider profits were up substantially.  Maybe AIG isn’t the only place that a little outrage should be directed.

Gregg Christofferson, who’s 13 year old daughter Dena sent 10,000 texts to friends in the course of a month and received a similar number, received a shocking bill for $4,756.25.  The total amount of data that was moved by the wireless ISP for this charge?  2.67 Megabytes.  If Comcast or another wired ISP charged this for people using IM, the nation would be outraged.  Dad was understandably outraged, and took his frustration out on his daughters cell phone.  Great headlines for the media to play with, but shouldn’t we look a little harder at these incidents?  (continue reading…)

Wireless Achille's heel

Group urges FCC … Wow, deja vu, man!  If you do a google search of the first 3 words of this post, a truism is apparent: over 135,000 entries testify to the futility of asking the FCC to intervene on behalf of the citizens of this country.  The rest of the headline repeated today is …urges FCC to open AT&T 3G network to Skype on iPhone.

I am encouraged that many in the media have picked up on this particular effort when wireless battles traditionally go unsung by the press.  I think they have because a different tack is being taken by the Free Press advocates in addressing the FCC.  In the past, they have aimed at the large, overwhelming grievances enacted on consumers by carriers when they are limited in choice and restricted in use of both wired broadband and wireless services, of which only a sub-set is internet.

There is no specific remedy for large grievances that can be pursued under the current rules that the FCC has deployed, as so many of them are vague and being violated in one form or another.  This time however, the advocacy group is playing with more finesse, approaching their adversary with more respect and aiming their energy at the Achilles heel that has been exposed by the popular iPhone and the highly publicized Skype Voice over IP internet service.  Many are watching these events and quietly getting excited, because the chance for real change may actually be upon us. (continue reading…)