U.S. Cell Phone Denial of Services
While many of these applications and capabilities are available on overseas networks, in the US it's a different story. As cited by Dr. Tim Wu in his paper Wireless Net Neutrality, "...the cellular phones widely available in the United States are just a small fraction of the phones available in the world."
As it stands today in the US, the cellular industry has boiled down to four major carriers based on two different technologies, and they all guard their networks jealously. Verizon and Sprint use the CDMA standard (Code Division Multiple Access), and AT&T (formerly Cingular Wireless) and T-Mobile employ the GSM standard (Global System Mobile), which currently enjoys about 73% world market share.
As with AT&T before Carterphone, all of the carriers sell their own phones and block access to their networks from the others to varying degrees, using different methods. The CDMA phones use an Electronic Serial Number (ESN) that is registered by the carrier network. Verizon will not allow a phone on their network that is not sold by them. Sprint will allow you to register a non Sprint device, but strongly discourages it and offers no technical support for such phones.
GSM networks use a SIM card, a chip that contains subscriber information and is designed to allow phones to switch networks by inserting the SIM card of the appropriate carrier. Phones sold by AT&T and T-Mobile come with the SIM card disabled, effectively locking them to the network. It is possible, though not easy, to unlock these phones, and is also legal to do so in the United States. Not wanting to push the envelope too much, AT&T and T-Mobile allow the unlocking of their phones after an initial period of ownership.
In an attempt to keep users on their networks, and thus revenues up, the cellcos
have crippled applications that others enjoy world wide. The very popular activities
of downloading music, pictures, and video are indeed available in the US cellular
market, but try to email or upload to a location not approved,
and you'll likely find your efforts blocked. You can, for an additional
fee of course, upload and share your media to web sites approved by the carrier.
Bluetooth wireless technology lets devices communicate with each other over
a low band, short range radio frequency. Bluetooth enabled printers, computers,
mobile phones and wireless headsets, allow users to up and download media, send
files and photos to a printer, and talk on your cell phone hands free. Yet US
carriers have at some time or another crippled many of the features available
through Bluetooth technology.
Probably the most disruptive technology for the cellular industry is WiFi. The 802.11b/g standard allows for a broadband wireless connection suitable for email, web browsing, inter device communication, and the dreaded, extremely cheap, voice over Internet Protocol. Internet telephony can bypass the cellular networks by sending voice directly over the Internet through a landline or a WiFi connection.
Apples iPhone available in June
Device manufacturers can and do incorporate WiFi technology into their handsets, but the cellular carriers in the US have resisted tooth and nail by crippling WiFi in their devices, and demanding that manufacturers make WiFi-less versions of their phones for the American market. While it is technologically possible to load third party applications such as Skype onto a mobile phone, to do so on a WiFi capable cell phone would threaten the very business model of the cellcos.
Today, you will find very few cell phones in America that are WiFi capable. Just now, cell phones are becoming available in Europe that can operate on the cellular network as well as corporate wireless LANs, integrating into the company IP/PBX telephony system.
In conjunction with AT&T, Apple announced recently that its premier iPhone coming out in June will have WiFi functionality, but to what extent is yet to be seen. Unfortunately for Skype and others, there will be no third party applications allowed on the iPhone.
The major carriers in the US also offer broadband Internet access over their networks, mainly through an antenna placed on a PC card plugged into a laptop. Cellular broadband access is in direct competition with the WiFi hotspots popping up in airports, hotels, corporate LANS, and other public facilities. The developing 802.16 WiMax technology also threatens to add the Metropolitan LAN into the competitive mix.
While WiFi is considerably faster than the cellular networks, it is mainly designed for short range networks and hot spots must be searched out. The cellular networks, on the other hand, can offer broadband access wherever their network reaches.
The U.S. carriers restrict what type of services, applications, and features are allowed on their network, and will terminate and charge users suspected of violating their contractual agreement. Basically, broadband services allow only email, browsing, and corporate intranet access. Downloading of music and video from unauthorized sites (iTunes and YouTube for example) and P2P file sharing is prohibited, and enforced in some cases by placing strict band width limitations on users.
