Google Bans Tethering App From Android Market 361
narramissic writes "Maybe Android and the Android Market aren't so open after all. A developer who contributed to the WiFi Tether for Root Users app reports that Google has banned the application from the Android Market. The developer writes in his blog that Google cited a section of the developer agreement that says that Google may remove applications if they violate the device maker's or the operator's terms of service. T-Mobile, the only operator to offer an Android phone, expressly forbids tethering phones to a computer. This incident raises some interesting questions, the developer notes in his blog. 'Does this mean that apps in the Market have to adhere to the ToS for only T-Mobile, even when other carriers sign on? Will all apps have to adhere to the ToS for every carrier that supports Android phones?'"
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Re:Tether Different (tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tether Different (tm) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tether Different (tm) (Score:5, Funny)
Course thats nothing when you compare it to what the dingos do...
They eat your babies?
Real? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't normally bash Apple for their iPhone platform, but the restrictions placed on apps is just too limiting compared to Android (unless you factor jailbreaking), but it's popularity makes it a must for mobile development so you have to just accept it. That said, I thought anything could run on Android granted it compiled and you distributed it but I guess I was wrong, according to this.
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> but it's popularity makes it a must for mobile development
Custom home theater app? Are you fricking kidding me? Sounds like you do turnkey solutions. The customer isn't going to give a rats rear what the underlying hardware was when you set them up a custom solution and waiting around months for Apple's permission just means you could have been selling stuff for months had you picked a better platform to build on. Or just jailbreak the damned thing and get on with it.
Re:Real? (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, jailbreaking is not an option, as Apple would get a tad pissed at us hacking their products, even more so since we sell them based on a huge contract we had to sign in order to do so. These solutions are anything but "turnkey", by the way, as we've done contracting work for several owners of Forbes list companies. Not to take a dig, but your sig is starting to make sense...
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> we are also an Apple dealer
Ok, so that would kinda preclude jailbreaking. But it is still true you (and Crestron) are leaving money on the table by being tied to Apple's whims. You can't sell a product you don't have. Unless Apple would yank your dealer agreement for daring to use other products, and if they are that anal get out NOW, ya should keep in mind that the world doesn't revolve around em and be prepared to use somebody else's hardware when they get in your way. Enough folk did that and th
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But it is still true you (and Crestron) are leaving money on the table by being tied to Apple's whims.
Trust me, if everybody were using Android or Windows Mobile, we would be either developing or using apps for those platforms, but the vast majority of our customers use iPhones and since we sell them we promote them to our customers so we can integrate the products we sell with our solutions and profit off of both.
There's something in R&D I can't talk about that involves a far different and 100% cross-platform (web-based) solution that doesn't have to succumb to anybody's restrictions save for our own
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Re:Real? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Real? (Score:5, Informative)
This is the single most insightful comment in the whole story, which also happens to make it a non-story (and therefore all other comments, redundant). Bravo.
Re:Real? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google seem to be being perfectly reasonable. They They are doing enough to keep the carriers happy, but only that. In addition, AFAIK, the platform is more open then Apple's so you can obtain the application from elsewhere and install it without jail breaking.
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Man, the summary should definitely be updated.
Come on editors, do your job !
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What could you possibly be doing with a simple remote control app that wouldn't pass the Apple test? (Assuming that the application was well written so that it wasn't constantly crashing, etc.) Given that it is only using the public APIs, there isn't anything particularly "low level" that you are allowed to do with the hardware.
Re:Real? (Score:4, Informative)
I thought anything could run on Android granted it compiled and you distributed it but I guess I was wrong, according to this.
Did you even read TFA? It said:
G1 users can download applications directly from developers, circumventing rules that may prohibit apps from the Market.
So yes, your original belief was correct.
Re:Real? (Score:4, Interesting)
Admittedly, the android market is not the ONLY place you have to download applications. The G1 does allow installs (once you enable the option) from other sources, so its not as bad at the iPhone.
My T-Mobile UK data plan DOES allow tethering. Its called Mobile Broadband Plus, and indeed does allow you to use a phone as a modem (and I have used it on my N95). Hmm, so does this mean I cant do tethering on my G1? Its a bit unfair I am being held to the terms of some T-Mobile contracts, especially ones not in my own country.
What did you expect? (Score:4, Funny)
In the United States the carriers would rape your mother and charge you for it if it were legal. I can only hope that there is a special place in Hell for these scumbags, maybe somewhere near the FOX executives.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Funny)
Ninth Circle Of Hell: For those who commit treason, exploit a monopoly, or cancel _Firefly_
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They are going to send them to Canada and force them to pay for the cell phone / data plans we have here. Most plans here charge us long distance charges for long distance calls... that we RECEIVE!. Try that one on.
I suppose if all you do is change lost passwds... (Score:4, Insightful)
For a group of so-called "IT professionals", you sure don't know jack shit about technology.
What in the world makes you think that Google can't feed different "Google Store" pages to different users based on carrier?
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Sure they could, and the half bright user who realizes this can get the software from another source and stick in on the handset. Still doesn't solve the problem.
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doesn't solve which problem?
you can if you wish install the app, just google won't help you break your TOS, sounds fair
T-Mobile does support tethering (Score:5, Interesting)
The T-Mobile MDA and the follup, T-Mobile Wing are both based on Windows Mobile 6, which includes a tethering app as part of the operating system.
T-Mobile always supported tethering with my old MDA (that's a rebranded HTC Hermes).
So... is it an android rule, or does T-Mobile just not bother to stand up to Microsoft who supports it on all of their phones?
hmmm..
Re:T-Mobile does support tethering (Score:5, Informative)
No, the MDA had the tethering app removed. You could download the missing .exe file off the web but it was removed from the base system. I spent many hours trying to get it working.
Can't vouch for the wing.
--Joseph
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I tethered with the MDA all the time when I was with T-Mobile by using it as a Bluetooth modem. They never complained once.
Re:T-Mobile does support tethering (Score:5, Informative)
Re:T-Mobile does support tethering (Score:4, Informative)
I tether my Trinity with a laptop and I use T-Mobile, in the UK. I don't have unlimited anything - I have a sim only contract, with 50 min talk included, plus HSDPA plus tethering for less than £20 per month. (The HSDPA tethering option is 10/month)
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Carriers can disable WM tethering from the OS, just like they can install their own apps to replace/extend it.
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I have a TMobile Dash (HTC) and it tethers just fine, and yes, it's a built in app. Been using it this way for over a year, and it was an ADVERTISED feature of the phone when I was shopping for phones...
Too bad it's only EDGE.
Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Google isn't going to allow apps that annoy the carriers. In that respect they will be no better than the iPhone. On the other hand they probably won't be banning apps simply because they don't fit into Google's view of what you 'should' be doing on Android so that is a step up from Steve's Iron Fist.
Bottom line, get an unlocked develoopers handset unless you want the cell company and/or Google to tell you what you can and can't run on THEIR hardware. Because that's the bottom line, get a contract phone and it isn't yours and you shouldn't think it is.
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Can't you just install a rooted version of the standard handset firmware over it?
There was some discussion about that in the previous /. story after someone noticed the bonus firmware worked for paid but not copyprotected apps.
Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
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Here's the app in question, hosted by none other than Google.
http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/ [google.com]
you can buy Android apps from outside the market (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike the iPhone, there is more than one market for the Android platform. Developers can sell their apps directly on their own websites.
Perhaps the app will remain on the developer's site for purchase.
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Re:you can buy Android apps from outside the marke (Score:2)
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On the other hand, can't carriers specifically modify the phones that they sell to disable this functionality (just as they do with Java phones)?
With different carriers (Score:3, Interesting)
I would think, and it's only a guess here, that once other carriers come on board w/ the Android, they would have a notice by the app if it would violate the ToS of the carrier. I don't know how they would enforce it, though.
No crazy restriction for Windows Mobile Apps (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I use and develop for Windows Mobile.
I can write my app, I don't have to pay anyone or tell anyone.
My app can do whatever I want, to the limits of possibility.
I can sell my app or give it away to enrich the platform.
I'm not so keen on these App Store ideas - or phones that require you to upload your app to the mothership so it can be validated that it doesn't conflict with any one else's future business plans.
Just compile, run, and distribute .... whats wrong with that?
Re:No crazy restriction for Windows Mobile Apps (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to sell through the Android App Store if you don't want to. You are free to distribute your Android software however you see fit.
Re:No crazy restriction for Windows Mobile Apps (Score:4, Funny)
You and your user certainly couldn't be more satisfied.
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You can run .net apps on phones and PDAs. And any express edition will make you .net app.
Windows Mobile is very open platform and easy to develop for. Marketing, usability departments for it etc seems to be run by idiots though.
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Out of curiosity, is that actually true? Last time I checked, the only way to compile applications for the Windows Mobile platform required that you have at least the "Standard" edition of Visual Studio, which will set you back $250.
http://cegcc.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
http://classic.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=11502&associateid=1224 [pocketgear.com]
I'm sure at least one of these WinCE ports of GCC works.
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This describes Android to a tea. This is being driven by T-mobile and has already been undone by Google in the rest of the world (Singtel/Optus still have the app). The platform is open but the phone companies are still arseholes, that
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The Android Market is entirely optional; if you want to, you can write apps and distribute them apart from it, the same as you do with Windows Mobile.
forbids tethering? (Score:3, Interesting)
I asked about tethering, they sold me a phone with a data plan. It works. They told me I could use it tethered.
WTF?
Re:forbids tethering? (Score:4, Insightful)
They forbid tethering to the G1 with the $24.99 data plan.
The only way T-Mobile was going to sell any G1 phones at all was to lower the price of their unlimited data plan from $59 a month to $24.99 for G1 users.
They're not prepared to let you tether at that price.
And if you were told different, the sales jerks lied and you have a lawsuit on your hands.
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I got a Motorola somethingorother a year ago with $19.99/month data which is either unlimited or enough that I've never hit the limit.
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Re:forbids tethering? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the fundamental problem.
US ISPs and Telcos need to stop offering "unlimited" if they don't mean it.
If they offered tiered pricing with shaping after a set limit, then they wouldn't have these issues.
Bandwidth isn't infinite, there's nothing wrong with paying more for using more.
T-Mobile BlackBerry tethering (Score:3, Informative)
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Android not open, news at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, I can't see how anybody could be even remotely surprised with this.
Android was touted as being open. But users are stuck with all kinds of limitations. This has been known since day one it was out there. Sure you can jailbreak it though, but wth. You can't even write native apps (well you technically can, but its not supported)
Why are people surprised at this move? Sure, the G1 is on sale in many countries around the world and not just by T-Mobile USA, but Google bends to T-Mobile USA anyways.
When you get down to it, the G1 is just a glorified Java-phone not deserving of ANY of the hype. Basically, you can compare it to an iPhone, but without the 'charm' of Apple, and it just doesn't really work half as well. And even worse than iPhone, you cant get these apps in Europe in the appstore either anymore.
And guess what, I actually am from Europe and have a tethering-allowed data plan - from T-Mobile! Not even Apple removed the tethering stuff for their EU users....
Google ... I've just shut off my G1 for the last time. Back to playing with WM. Hey it ain't as shiny as iPhone but at least there's none of this ridiculous crap involved.
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You can't even write native apps (well you technically can, but its not supported)
You can use JNI, which is documented but not yet part of the SDK; a native SDK is in the works. There's even an official forum [google.com] for native development.
Manpower is the limiting factor in Android's development, and if you'd like to help work on it, the code is out there and I'm sure your efforts would be welcome. Try that with iPhone or even Windows Mobile.
Bits are bits!!!! (Score:2)
Why do carriers hate tethering so much?
Bits are bits, whether the phone's OS uses them or a tethered laptop.
Just set a monthly limit and be done with it. Yeah, a laptop can reach the limit sooner, but at least then everything will be on equal footing.
What's funny is that even providers that explicitly allow tethering charge more for it even though THE TRANSFER LIMIT IS THE SAME.
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Because the moment your phone can provide an Internet connection to your laptop is the moment the bottom falls out of pricey "business on the go" plans which include a plug-in card for your laptop.
You Ask The Wrong Questions (Score:2)
You're asking the wrong questions, those are not the only possible outcomes. You need to take a look at option #3: Some apps will be restricted to customers of certain carriers. So the Anroid Market will not sell a tethering app to a T-Mobile customer because T-Mobile won't allow it, but they will to custo
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So the Anroid Market will not sell a tethering app to a T-Mobile customer because T-Mobile won't allow it, but they will to customers of [insert fictional non-sucky carrier here].
Any proof that this is because of T-Mobile?
Just a little mistake, it's already been fixed (Score:5, Informative)
Quoth Ars Technica's article [arstechnica.com] on this same thing (which was updated well before Slashdot's was posted):
And while I'm sure some people will complain about it being blocked to anyone at all, the fault here lies with T-Mobile. While it'd be nice if Google could dictate terms as it pleased to the carriers, I somehow don't think that'd go over too well. And on top of that, you don't even *need* to get software from the Android Market to install it (insert jab at iPhone here).
T-Mobile's tech support didn't get the memo. (Score:2, Interesting)
Oookay, if T-Mobile bans tethering their phones, why have they helped me and my mom seperately to configure their phones to tether over bluetooth to our laptops? Hell, I'm running Linux, that didn't even phase them, they still helped me find the command-strings I needed!
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Oookay, if T-Mobile bans tethering their phones, why have they helped me and my mom seperately to configure their phones to tether over bluetooth to our laptops? Hell, I'm running Linux, that didn't even phase them, they still helped me find the command-strings I needed!
Tech support that helped with Linux settings? Wow, that's actually kind of cool.
Please join my movement (Score:2)
There's an increasingly popular scam being perpitrated on consumers as more and more devices coming onto the market do not give full control of their functionality to the person who actually bought and paid for it, because the seller wants a marketing model that allows them to double-dip or extort more money for old rope.
I now refuse to buy any product that does not give me, the owner, total control and use of it in any way I like.
Please join me in making this your policy too.
The only way we can end this pr
If only it wasn't April 1st... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are likely some people who think this is one of the thousands of joke stories that destroy the funniness of jokes by seriously over-doing it.
But hopefully people will take it seriously that Google is not more than "just a business." It is a business that has gathered up a lot of good will which it has been steadily spending over the past few years. They are a business that exists to sell advertising. They are a marketing company. Marketing companies, in my view, are just about as annoying as any b
Um, so? (Score:2)
Google don't want to provide free hosting for an app that pisses off one of their partners. BFD.
I hardly see the issue, the guys who wrote this app were surely aware that google wouldn't want to subsidise its distribution?
There's nothing stopping them just hosting it themselves.
Open OS not open Market (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If only (Score:5, Informative)
The application lets users connect their G1 Android phones via Wi-Fi to their laptops and then access the Internet from the laptop using the phone's cellular connection.
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
They see no glamourous future for them if they are DUMB FUCKING PIPES.
But that is exactly what they should be striving for. People will jailbreak, people will fork android, hacker will have PALM PRE by the balls in no time. The dumb pipes should stop trying to charge for music or other "enhanced experience" bullshit and think and act like WALL-MART. We are cheap; we are huge; we are everywhere; and you can't beat us, because we are some FUCKING CHEAP DUMB PIPES, and proud of it.
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, cellular bandwidth is fundamentally limited, and has been extremely costly to deploy. It's not particularly surprising that the carriers want to recoup their investment.
Although I'll gladly admit that there is price-gouging going on, if the carriers offer unlimited cheap bandwidth, their networks will be quickly overwhelmed. As it currently stands, the carriers can utilize a large percentage of their capacity by charging high rates; what incentive is there for them to lower prices?
As technology improves, and competing companies become more ambitious, we'll likely see prices slowly begin to fall. It's all a matter of economics.
If we want companies to become more ambitious, the government should take steps to prevent monopolies from forming, and ban the absurd contract schemes that the cellular companies force on their customers.
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is not with carriers charging high rates for mobile internet. The issue is that, after charging those rates, they won't let me use the full extent of its capabilities (such as VoIP), because they provide other services which that would downcut (because the prices for those services are artificially inflated).
Re:If only (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, cellular telephone rates are astounding. Want to send a few 100kB of text messages? That could cost you $5-10 depending on text length.
Want tethering? They will only activate that for you if you are on a business or premium($$$) plan, and you still pay per megabyte unless you pay for unlimited($$$$).
They gouge consumers any way they can and disallow anything that might cut into their profits.
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Gah, it's not about gouging. Why are you assuming every mobile operator in the world (cuz they practically all have the same policies) are Evil(tm)? Doesn't that strike you as rather unrealistic?
The reason tethering is disallowed is that it's the only business decision which makes sense. Simple.
Consider it from the operators perspective. They have finite mobile bandwidth, and they want to sell it to the mass market, ie, Joe Sixpack on his consumer phone. But they have a problem, the same problem landline ISPs have. Nobody, I repeat nobody understands what bandwidth is. Not Joe. Not you. Not me. It is sold to us in units of gigabytes/month, but what does that really mean? How many MP3s is that? How much web browsing? How many operating system updates? How many apps from the app store?
The fact is, consumer bandwith providers are in the unenviable position of selling a product nobody understands. They might as well sell bandwidth in pints for all the difference it'd make.
There is a simple solution for this problem - sell unlimited bandwidth plans (or plans so huge they're practically unlimited), and then use statistical models of how much bandwidth the average user gets through to set prices. Swallow the costs of the outliers and hope that on average your accounts end up a bit higher at the end of each month.
This business model works, and has allowed massive rollouts of internet connectivity across the world. There are a few things that break it. For mobile operators, tethering is one, because laptops will use so much more bandwidth than a mobile phone will. VoIP is the same - only a few people will use it, but those people will use the majority of the bandwidth dramatically raising costs for everyone. Rather than go back to selling people things they can't possibly understand, or boosting prices for everyone to subsidise the minority, they amend the contracts to read "unlimited, except no tethering and no voip" which is easy to grok even for Joe Sixpack.
If you were trying to sell bandwidth to the masses (and then deal with their billing enquiries!) you'd undoubtably do the exact same thing.
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume for the moment that you're right.
Explain the cost of SMS.
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume for the moment that you're right.
Explain the cost of SMS.
It's a popular service that people will pay for; so it's priced accordingly. What counts is what people are willing to pay, not what it costs to provide or produce it.
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume for the moment that you're right.
Explain the cost of SMS.
That one's easy.
Absolutely free text messages would result in people using them for everything, including massive file transfers. (hey, people use gmail as a storage drive. I can't wait for textmsg2avi to come out. :P )
Text messages save them bandwidth, but also costs them their bread and butter phone calls, so when you pair that with the huge negative that free text messages would create, it's obvious they have to charge for them.
I still think they charge way too much, though. You should be granted something like 100 free text messages per day - plenty for average use, but not enough to abuse them. Or they could have reasonable rates like $0.01 per 25 text-messages. (clumps, reset daily)
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The only explanation I can see for all the carriers charging the same price to consumers for a service that literally costs them nothing to provide...
is collusion.
Simple. price transparency and low switching costs (out of contract) means that unless you sufficiently differentiate your product you will charge what the lowest product in the market costs and prices will converge. That does not mean you colluded on pricing; just that when one competitor sets a price the others follow or lose customers. As a note, not all pricing is uniform across US cell phone carriers. As long as no competitor is really stupid everyone makes money. The airlines do this as well excep
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I take it that Three don't operate in your area? They offer a range of services based on cheap bandwidth - but it is metered and you get silly charges if you go over. They provide a simple display of how much has been used that the customer can access and leave it up to them.
Their 3Pay dongle service has lots of different pricing plans, but the best low-usage one is 10euro for 1GB/data. The top-up lasts for 30 days. If you have higher usage they sell 5/10GB plans on a monthly basis.
The business model is bas
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I'll gladly admit that there is price-gouging going on, if the carriers offer unlimited cheap bandwidth, their networks will be quickly overwhelmed. As it currently stands, the carriers can utilize a large percentage of their capacity by charging high rates; what incentive is there for them to lower prices?
I hate you for making me say this as I'm usually a critic of the way corporations misuse capitalism. However I don't think this would be considered price gouging. There's a limited supply and a high demand, this means that higher prices are not only acceptable, they're required.
Now if they were artificially limiting supply (like what oil companies do) I might have a problem with it. Unfortunately it does cost a lot to deploy cellular systems. Now, if we could have an extremely high capacity satellite communication network we might be able to deploy high speed wireless Internet much cheaper and faster. Of course this would need a huge amount of initial investment, cellular networks, while expensive, can be deployed in tiny sections, satellites have a lower area/$ cost, but cover a much larger area. Also it would require a major change in technology. You probably couldn't use standard cell phones and would probably require higher powered handsets, causing more cancer causing brain frizzle.
Re:If only (Score:4, Informative)
something is fishy (Score:3, Interesting)
To be fair, cellular bandwidth is fundamentally limited, and has been extremely costly to deploy. It's not particularly surprising that the carriers want to recoup their investment.
Unlimited 3G plans (including tethering) in Europe are a fraction of what they are here in the US, and that is with more government regulations, more usage, and more available services. In fact, 3G in Europe isn't even an issue anymore--you get it everywhere--carriers are mostly done deploying 3.5G and have started 4G deployment
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem of course is that until recently no one (or rather, a very small number of their customers) saw them as dumb pipes -- only with the rise of decently internet enabled phones has the idea started to occur to people in large numbers that "surprise! your phone is just like your computer". A surprisingly large number of people (in the US I think 80%+) don't use their phones for internet/data on a regular basis, so the idea that their voice bits are the same as their data bits isn't readily apparent. Mobile phone companies are kind of like the AOL-era ISPs, faced with a sudden, rapid change in the way users view their services, as well as a desire to create rich "walled garden" experiences for their subscribers. In my mind, the transition to a mobile company as a dumb pipe will happen eventually and unstoppably, it's just a matter of when.
To be fair, switching to "dumb pipe" providers is a fundamental change in their business model. While certainly not expensive enough to wholly justify their current margins, running the kind of networks these companies do is expensive, and it's a lot to ask for that kind of change to occur. Remember, it wasn't long ago that 3G was just something to rant about not having on /., and data access on phones is really just starting to take off.
Companies are coming around, I think, albeit slowly. Offering unlimited data plans is a really major step that fundamentally changes the way people use data on their phones. In time, that will become cheaper, mobile devices will become more ubiquitous and cheaper, and that's when I think you'll start to see more "dumb pipe" type plans being offerred. I don't see mobile companies and their current model completely going away for some time at least, due to the large portion of the market that still doesn't care about data. As more services are offered for mobile devices, however, I think that too will change.
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The reason I don't use my cellphone for "internet" and email is because AT&T wants to rape me economically if I choose to do so. All this crap is useless if I have to pay 50 cents a min for it. Until AT&T loses the put a meter on it mentality I never will.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly.
It used to be possible (at least on Verizon) to call up a number from a phone and get a plain vanilla DUN connection - nothing too complex, but enough to get something like weather or news at 14.4kbps speeds.
However, when they went to 3G (EVDO) that became impossible. Trying to do so is now a data fee (because the old inverface is gone, and a lot of people used it).
But yet, there is still no way to reasonable get data onto a capable phone, short of paying $50 on top of the base phone service, and th
Re:If only (Score:4, Insightful)
The "dumb pipes" analogy doesn't work terribly well.
In the case of terrestrial phone and data lines, capacity can be improved either by improving bandwidth along existing lines, or installing additional lines.
In the case of cellular, this isn't so easy. The amount of usable EM spectrum is finite, and most speed improvements using the already-allocated frequencies will either break compatibility with existing devices, or require a reallocation of the spectrum. Improvements are possible, though they're much more difficult to implement.
A WiFi access point with lots of clients connected tends to be quite slow, regardless of the speed of the WAN that it's connected to. Cell towers operate on that same principle.
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The EM spectrum isn't really finite, but certain frequency bands are better than others for short range high bandwidth communication.
Sure, it's possible to saturate a tower or even a whole swath of towers with excess traffic, but this imo is just evidence that we need more spectrum dedicated to Wifi and cellular services.
Re:If only (Score:4, Informative)
The "dumb pipes" analogy doesn't work terribly well.
In the case of terrestrial phone and data lines, capacity can be improved either by improving bandwidth along existing lines, or installing additional lines.
In the case of cellular, this isn't so easy. The amount of usable EM spectrum is finite, and most speed improvements using the already-allocated frequencies will either break compatibility with existing devices, or require a reallocation of the spectrum. Improvements are possible, though they're much more difficult to implement.
A WiFi access point with lots of clients connected tends to be quite slow, regardless of the speed of the WAN that it's connected to. Cell towers operate on that same principle.
I understand what you are saying, but you didn't refute the "dumb pipes analogy", you just mentioned the difficulty with various types and speeds of pipe.
Wi-fi, WAN, G3, are all just 'dumb pipes' using different portions of the EM spectrum allowing them slightly different characteristics such as range and bandwidth, but they are still 'dumb'.
The GP argues "Offering unlimited data plans is a really major step that fundamentally changes the way people use data on their phones. In time, that will become cheaper, mobile devices will become more ubiquitous and cheaper, and that's when I think you'll start to see more "dumb pipe" type plans being offerred."
And I agree, the RF services the telco's provide will one day end up as transports for internet traffic - 'dumb pipes'.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My refutation lies in the assumption that you can always "lay more pipes" for terrestrial connections, while it's WAY more difficult to add capacity for wireless capacity, which is an inherently shared resource.
There are tricks that can be used to improve capacity, although none of them are particularly straightforward or inexpensive.
But, yeah. From the application layer, cell providers are indeed "dumb pipes." However, given the fact that bandwidth is a finite and scarce resource, it does make sense to
Re:If only (Score:5, Interesting)
If I had a few billion dollars lying around, I would start a new wireless provider or buy an existing one.
I'd just offer a pipe and sell bandwidth with packet shaping. I wouldn't care what you run on the network. I'd let vonage / skype, etc. sell their services and let whatever phone run on the network (that passes FCC regulation).
I don't know if its feasible, but i'd also offer two low level network calls to send packets at different QoS levels. Email, text messages, podcast syncing can go at a low QoS level while voice and active web browsing can go at a higher.
I'd still charge plenty for my service and I'm fairly certain I'd still get a ton of customers.
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I think that's exactly what the WiMax company Clear is trying to be, though it's composed basically of entrenched players plus a few extras : Sprint Nextel, Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House, Google and Intel.
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Would you willingly take a paycut doing the same work?? No, then why the fuck do you think they are going to. They are going to string this out as long as they can, making loads of money all the time. What the fuck do you not understand about this...sure, we wan't it to be different, but it isn't and they won't be for as long as they can.
You writing in all caps isn't going to change that one little bit.
Mod me down all you want fuckers, but this is the truth.
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Would you willingly take a paycut doing the same work?? No, then why the fuck do you think they are going to.
No one is suggesting that they (the people) have to take a pay cut. What we are suggesting is that they should catch up with the times, and provide more service in the first place.
Put another way: Working at a local ISP, you're probably doing about the same work for about the same amount of money now as you were five or ten years ago. And in that time, you've seen the bandwidth go from 56k to 100 mbits. Does it mean you're doing more work? No, you're doing less work and providing more value.
That's called pr
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
People will jailbreak, people will fork android
Or they can simply download the application from the author's website since Android is open. Unlike with the iPhone, you are free to install applications from any number of sources which include both third party websites and your own computer via USB cable.
Don't forget, Android Market is a defacto application repository provided by Google to, in theory, multiple carriers. As such, Google must maintain a relationship with carriers for Android to continue to grow as rapidly as it has. Thusly it is reasonable to assume Google needs to acquiesce to carrier demands on the Android Market. Google exercising their rights intelligently does not limit a user's ability to install third party applications. Rather, it only limits a user's ability to install third party applications from the Android Market.
If people were not so caught up in the locked-in mentality which is associated with the iPhone's limitations this story wouldn't even be news worthy. But, since people are so used to a single application source with such restricted rights on the iPhone, no one stops to consider if stories like these should be framed the same way for Android. Simply put, it is incorrect to frame the story as you might an iPhone story - its simply a different world.
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Click [lmgtfy.com].
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So since the phone is GSM only you have the choi