Decoding Mobile Carriers' Latest Push For Profits 64
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Soulskill
from the there's-a-trap-for-that dept.
from the there's-a-trap-for-that dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Galen Gruman sifts through the 'doubleplus ungood' of this year's CTIA and Mobile World Congress to spell out 'Big Brother' mobile carriers' true designs for IT and smartphone users. From fake 4G salespitches, to mobile payment systems that hide text-messaging payment confirmation fees, to the inevitability of tier pricing for mobile data usage, no facet of smartphone use is beyond providers' latest profit-engineering push. Even IT's concerns over the invasion of mobile devices at their companies has become 'a great excuse to sell warmed-over management tools to fearful IT and security execs.' And make no mistake, mea culpas, like AT&T admitting to falling short on relieving 3G congestion, will result in additional opportunities to pad providers' bottom lines by, say, buying a $150 femtocell from AT&T to help AT&T 'solve' its problem. 'Of course, in typical Big Brother fashion, [AT&T] told the US government to stay out of wireless — meaning don't regulate prices or impose Net neutrality — while also asking the government for more spectrum. You know the contradiction: The government is good when it gives you free or cheap services but bad when it tries to impose regulation to prevent abusive behavior: doublethink ungood.'"
Re:Who owns the spectrum? (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, we're falling victim to the mindtrap that the government "owns" the electromagnetic spectrum in a specific jurisdiction, which is about as laughable as thinking it owns the weather.
They don't own it, but the FCC has jurisdiction to regulate it's uses similar to the FAA and US airspace.
If there wasn't regulation of some sort, then the wireless spectrum would be dominated by just a few corporations, being able to put millions into over-powered transmitters that drown out all competition.
Re:What went wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
The 4G Article is Simply Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
It makes statements like, "Other carriers are slapping the 4G label on a 3G-based technology, LTE". That's incorrect. LTE is part of the upgrade path for GSM/HSPA, but it's a completely new air interface using OFDM rather than HSPA's CDMA air interface. Just because something comes out of the same standards body doesn't make it 3G-based technology. Based on that logic, all of these technologies are based on old-fashioned radio technology. The author seems to want to imply that most 4G is just re-branded 3G that won't help users.
It says things like the iPhone being "just one device used by 3 percent of [AT&T's] customers." That's flat out wrong. Last quarter, AT&T activated 3.1 million iPhones. AT&T activated iPhones for more than 3% of its customer base *in a single quarter* and over 46% of AT&T's post-pay customer base used integrated devices as of the last quarter. Was there no fact checker for this article?
Finally, the article says that 4G won't solve the spectrum/capacity issue. It provides no evidence for this and merely rants about how you can't use a phone made for one carrier on another carrier and, therefore, nothing will ever work right. Yes, it's disappointing that all carriers don't use the same technology and spectrum bands, but that hardly has anything to do with capacity. The fact is that 4G is likely to solve a lot of capacity issues. With a 4G, all-VoIP solution, carriers should be able to get voice usage down to a fraction of their bandwidth. That's huge. Yes, 4G will see users consume more data as it gives them a faster, better experience. However, people aren't likely to start streaming audio at 512kbps or video above what YouTube and Hulu are pushing anytime soon. So it's likely that 4G will see an increase in available bandwidth considerably above any increase in customer usage. Plus, when talking about websites and such, the majority of the time is still spent with the connection idle as the user reads the page.
4G will improve our wireless experience by improving speeds and alleviating some capacity issues.
Re:The 4G Article is Simply Wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Heh... I'd have to concur. The "double-plus-ungood" article is just as much wrong. LTE AND WiMax are both part of the "4G" spec. It is very much wrong to claim that WiMax isn't 4G and Sprint's lying about it and making "fake" 4G adverts- they're not. Neither is Clear which is also working up to being a mobile voice provider in addition to data. The moment they got that wrong, I quit reading. They might be right in that they're doing big-brother stuff, all of the carriers- but if you can't get that tidbit right, what else in your "facts" do you have wrong?
Re:Doubleplus ungood indeed (Score:3, Informative)
It's quite possible. For example, if you need to support different bands you may not have the space or budget to put in a completely separate radio system for each. So you make some parts multi-frequency. Instead of a nicely tuned radio subsystem you end up with design compromises, and the whole thing is a little less efficient.
Piling more radios into a case of a given size means things have to be packed closer together, which can cause heat problems even if you're not actually producing any more heat.
Also, most components are integrated on a single IC these days and the extra bits, even when not in use, can still have power consumption consequences.