{"id":192365,"date":"2009-04-07T23:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T04:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/07\/why-the-us-mobile-phone-industry-is-a-horrible-model-for-the-internet\/"},"modified":"2009-04-07T23:08:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-08T04:08:00","slug":"why-the-us-mobile-phone-industry-is-a-horrible-model-for-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/07\/why-the-us-mobile-phone-industry-is-a-horrible-model-for-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the US Mobile Phone Industry is a Horrible Model for the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The advocacy group Free Press has <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123876873806886721.html#mod=rss_whats_news_us\">filed a complaint with the FCC over Apple and AT&amp;T&#8217;s ban on the use of Skype on their network<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The money quote on this is from a typically clueless AT&amp;T spokesman, &#8220;Customers are free to download and use the apps they want, but we have no obligation\u2014nor should we have\u2014to facilitate or subsidize our competitors&#8217; businesses.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It sounds reasonable, but what is <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">really<\/span> going on here is that AT&amp;T is using monopoly power, it is the exclusive licensee for the iPhone in the US, and it&#8217;s customers incur <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">hefty<\/span> roaming charges on other networks, in order to lock a potential competitor out on a service that their <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customers have paid for<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>This is why network neutrality is necessary, and it is yet <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">another<\/span> example as to how the US privatized largely unregulated telco markets do not serve the consumer: it creates businesses whose model is largely predicated on creating, and maintaining, a monopoly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The advocacy group Free Press has filed a complaint with the FCC over Apple and AT&amp;T&#8217;s ban on the use of Skype on their network. The money quote on this is from a typically clueless AT&amp;T spokesman, &#8220;Customers are free to download and use the apps they want, but we have no obligation\u2014nor should we &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1067,1111,985,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communications","category-monopoly","category-regulation","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}