open access

G1 vs. iPhone 3G: to be, or not to be "open"?

Phil Goldstein — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:13:27 -0400

With the launch of the T-Mobile G1, Google is hoping that its open platform for application developers will lure developers away from Apple and the iPhone 3G. But is the open platform format really going to take off, or does Apple have the better model? Here's an in-depth look. Article

Google looking to free handsets from carriers

Phil Goldstein — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:56:29 -0400

Google is interested in producing a technology that will enable users to have an open mobile device that searches for cellular networks in range, much like WiFi devices currently sniff out hotspots, according to a patent the company filed in 2007 that was released this week.

The concept, called "Instant Bid," allows users to effectively end the system in which handsets are tethered to a single wireless network, and may be geared more toward prepaid cell phone users who do not have long-term contracts with carriers.

Google has said that the idea may amount to nothing, but with the Android software and the G1 device promising open application development, as well as Google co-founder Larry Page's push to get white-space freed up for unlicensed wireless applications, the idea of "open" at Google seems to be gaining steam.

For more:
- see this article
- click here to see the patent

Related Articles:
SPOTLIGHT: Google calls out Verizon Wireless' "open" plans
In open access environment, Internet giants like Google still need operator friends

On the Hot Seat with Verizon's Anthony Lewis

Sue Marek — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:58:07 -0400

Open networks were a hot topic at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Francisco earlier this month. At the center of the open access debate is Verizon Wireless' Vice President of Open Development Anthony Lewis, who is charged with developing Verizon's open device and application initiative. Lewis talked to FierceWireless editor in chief Sue Marek at the show about Verizon's progress on this front and why this carrier's approach is different from its competitors.

FierceWireless: Verizon first announced the Open Device Initiative last fall. How is the program progressing?

Anthony Lewis: Two devices have been certified on the network through this program--the SupplyNet Communications device and an inmate tracking device made by Behavior Innovations. It's basically a device that tracks those that have skirted the law.

There also is a low-cost handset that is in process [this device was shown by Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam during the opening keynote session at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco]. It is pre-certified.

FierceWireless: How much interest have you had in this program?

Lewis: Back in March in New York we had a conference about the Open Device Initiative and we had about 320 companies that physically attended the conference and received the introduction to the program. An additional 350 watched the broadcast live via the Web. Some folks were application developers but we also had distributors. RadioShack was a presenter at the conference.

FierceWireless: When it comes to open networks, some operators are more focused on open applications. I spoke with Sprint Nextel's Kevin Packingham last week and he said Sprint thinks the big opportunity is in the applications area. What is Verizon's view?

Lewis: We are a catalyst for the device maker. We have invested in a network and we have distribution partners interested in this as well.

Investing in designing devices is no small feat. We want to encourage this and we are getting those folks together with distribution partners. We are figuring out what is the business model to get the handsets into the hands of consumers and businesses. That is why we have open development business at Verizon.

I don't disagree with other operators that think the applications are important. Applications are a big part of the business. We agree. We think we have to start with the devices and the device market is huge. If you look at the market-just think of all the devices that are possible. Look at home automation alone. I'm not talking about just embedding a chip in the television and the refrigerator. We can start to make your home smart and there is an incentive to do it.

Being able to wirelessly connect all these devices is simple. When you move to a new home the appliances will typically last 10-15 years. What if we had the ability to tell you when something was going to go wrong? Just like the computers that are in your car today, we can have those same indicators in your home with diagnostic signals that can be sent via SMS.

FierceWireless: So you have focused not just on the device market but on machine to machine communications?

Lewis: We think this is the sweet spot for us and we can cultivate the market. We want to be on the forefront. Folks are surprised that we are being proactive about this because few companies want to do this. We get in early and partner early. We get the devices certified on the network and you don't have to wonder about it again.

FierceWireless: What is the biggest challenge for you?

Lewis: I need to execute and get out there to support the mechanism behind this organization. Without a device, an application is interesting. But we are redefining what a device means in the wireless business.

In the future, the majority of the wireless devices will be M2M devices. You won't even know they are communicating and helping you.

FierceWireless: You are starting with this vision now--with the 1xEVDO Rev. A network and not waiting until LTE?

Lewis: No we are not going to wait for LTE. We want to get to market right away. As the network transitions, we will too.

I have to substantiate that I have created an organization around this. I am out to prove this is the way to go and the future of the connections and devices.

FierceWireless: But what about the application side of this?

Lewis: Right now we are concentrating on devices. You can run any application on these devices, it doesn't matter to me. And you can run any operating system. I'll take them all. I'm not excluding applications. Go ahead and bring me applications. Application providers were prominent at the conference. But we need the devices to supply to the application providers.

FierceWireless: But your vision of the connected home doesn't necessarily take advantage of the wireless network. Why do you need mobile to monitor appliances?

Lewis: You don't. Our vision includes all of Verizon. Depending on the application, it could be using the Verizon Wireless network, Verizon's FIOS network or even WiFi. In the future you may want certain things in your home to be mobile and maybe those things will talk to immobile devices. So the communications will move from one network to the other.

Skype official calls out carriers on "open" networks

Phil Goldstein — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:26:55 -0400

In a strongly-worded letter to the FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Skype official complained that the major U.S. wireless carriers were all talk when it came to "open" networks, and that if the Commission wanted to live up to its stated goal of making open networks more accessible, it would affirm that this policy covers wireless networks.

Christopher Libertelli, Skype's senior director of government and regulatory affairs for North America, said that last week at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco, the major U.S. carriers paid lip service to the idea of open networks, but strongly cautioned that too much choice would lead to chaos, and damage the viability of their business model.

Libertelli stated that, "The attitude of the wireless carriers was perhaps best summed up in Sprint Nextel Corp. CEO Dan Hesse's recent comment: 'The big Internet can be daunting... There can be too much choice.' This stands in stark contrast to the Commission's wise policies designed to promote as much consumer choice as possible."

He said Skype was mindful of the challenges wireless carriers faced in moving to an open network. But he also said it was not enough to simply talk about open networks.

"Consumer choice, competition and free markets, not carriers acting to block competition, should win the day in wireless--now, not later," he said. "If the Commission believed that the transition to more open networks was going to proceed quickly, statements out of CTIA's convention suggest just the opposite."

"Openness" was a major theme of the conference in San Francisco, and the first keynote session included Sprint Nextel's Hesse as well T-Mobile USA's CEO Robert Dotson and Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam speaking about what "open" meant to their companies.

For more:
- see the letter

Related Articles:
CTIA: Carriers talk "open" network but no clear definition
What is open anyway?

On the Hot Seat with Sprint's Kevin Packingham

Sue Marek — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:50:31 -0400

On the eve of the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco, FierceWireless editor-in-chief Sue Marek talked with Kevin Packingham, senior vice president, product and technology development at Sprint Nextel, about the company's open strategy and how it plans to reinvigorate its wireless data business.

FierceWireless: There is a lot of confusion about what is meant by open networks and open ecosystem. What does "open" mean to Sprint?

Packingham: Open has become the trendy description for a strategy. Every year we go through a different trend and 2008 it's open. There are two ways to approach this and these variations get confused. One variation is open access, which is the ability to take devices and recertify them on different networks. I don't think there is a huge opportunity there. I don't think that is something that a huge volume of subscribers are interested in doing.

For the most part, carriers such as Sprint, Verizon and AT&T--we all optimize the devices for our networks so it's in the best interest of subscribers to get devices that are certified on the networks they were designed for. But there are a lot of third party devices and Sprint has been doing this for years and hasn't made that big of deal about it because it didn't seem that interesting from a media perspective--telemetry and MVNOs and other third parties get devices certified on the network and they aren't branded by Sprint.

FierceWireless: Would you consider the Amazon Kindle in this category?

Packingham: Yes, absolutely. This is a great example of a device--it doesn't fall into the pure open access--but it's something where we have formed a partnership to develop an experience that is not Sprint-branded. This hit the mark from a customer experience perspective. It was a huge win-win for Amazon and for us.

Where most people are spending their time right now is application development. There is a lot of buzz around it. The reality is Sprint launched our application developer program in 2001 and we were the first to have a developer program and to really work in an open Java framework for applications on our handsets. It's something that we have been pushing toward for many years. We have evolved and learned to find ways to make it easier for developers to create services that will operate on mobile devices. Why it's become trendy is that it used to be that four or five years ago something like a ringtone or game or screensaver was the biggest opportunity that there was for developing an application for a mobile device. That has started to shift with email and the success with Windows and Windows Mobile and now it's gone to a new extreme. There is really compelling content that is information oriented and social networking oriented. There are capabilities that have become robust through the Internet and customers expectations have started to rise so they want those services available to them in the mobile environment as well.

The mobile device is a powerful piece of equipment for a very personalized experience. The PC by nature is impersonal. But the mobile phone you carry around all the time and it's very intelligent in how it interacts with you. It knows your contacts and your calendar and it is something you interact with so frequently that the opportunity to take those services and use the mobile device as a platform is a huge evolutionary step for what trends we have seen on the Internet.

FierceWireless: So what is your strategy?

Packingham: What is core to the Sprint strategy is how we differ from our competitors. We embrace a long list of partners and an ecosystem that is very advanced and already aggressively growing in the Internet space and make those services available on the Sprint handset.

We want to break down those barriers and make it simple for them to do it. Right now it is too challenging and too big of an investment for developers to go to the mobile space. As an industry there is an opportunity for us to make it easier for them and get some more compelling services on the phone so we can really see this massive growth in data adoption.

FierceWireless: But how do you make it easier? Mobile does make it more challenging.

Packingham: The first thing we did early this year was announce our open Web platform. It's a network-based gateway where we do transcoding of HTML content. Traditionally if you wanted Web content on a mobile phone you would have had to have written it in WAP. This gateway will transcode HTML so it's backwards compatible and customers have access to all HTML content on the Internet.

You've gone from a very small portion of content on the Internet and massively exploded it to make it available to customers. They can now view HTML on a standard phone. They don't have to buy a $500 phone.

FierceWireless: So the developers can then use this gateway?

Packingham: That's true but don't just think about the mobile developer. Think about the guy who develops for the Internet. You can't make it too painful for him. You don't want him to have to hire developers that just do WAP because that's too hard for him. If it works on the Internet and on a Sprint phone we have dramatically lowered the barrier for him to make his service available on a Sprint phone.

FierceWireless: You also announced Sprint Web recently.

Packingham: Traditionally you flipped open your phone and you had a category of services but you had to be motivated to find a piece of content. Working with Changingworlds, we were able to create a personalized experience. If you open your Sprint phone you will get a very different experience than I will see if I look at my Sprint phone. It's a very intelligent platform. It learns about your interests and personal preferences and lets us bring information to the customer that we think is relevant to them. It just gets better and better so you don't have to go through this difficult process to navigate how to find these pieces of information.

That is the second piece of the success of mobile--that is discoverability. You don't have to pay me for placement on the deck. Whatever is relevant to the customer we will get in front of them. That motivates developers to make content for the phone.

Another piece of this strategy is One-click. This is the branded name for it, it's a widget-based design for the standby screen. When you flip open the new series of phones we are launching for the holidays, rather than getting a static standby screen, we have all those services on the standby screen. Google is a featured partner on here and the Google widget is available on the standby screen. You can do a search, not to go buy games but a true Internet content search. You'll have access to YouTube and Google Maps. Google--because it's so personal and important to subscribers--is available on the standby screen. We will have 60 widgets available when we launch.

FierceWireless: Who designed this framework?

Packingham: We worked with Frog Design and it's a collaborative effort with the manufacturers also--Samsung, Sanyo, Qualcomm--and we have a big design shop internally.

The goal was to create a targeted customer experience around usability. Our philosophy of open is to give our customers access to whatever is important to them. We would love for them to go to Sprint Music or Sprint Navigation but if they want to use Google Maps instead of Sprint Navigation that is more important to me than forcing them to want to use Sprint Maps. That's what One Click is about. They can take the phone and customize it in a way that is appropriate for them.

FierceWireless: You mentioned that this will be on your handsets for the holidays. What about future handsets? Will it be on all of them eventually?

Packingham: Yes, it will be on all the EVDO handsets but probably not the low-end handsets. This is a ground-breaking shift for us.

FierceWireless: You mentioned there were four parts to this strategy. What's the final element?

Packingham: The final thing is our migration toward a true Java-based platform. This framework opens up the true Java development platform. No longer is it just J2ME, which was the mobile version of it and it frustrated someone who was a true Java developer. If we want true application developers to develop for mobile we have to take some of the pain out of it. That's what we have done. We have shifted toward creating something that works in parallel with Java so they don't have to rewrite their applications. You can port those applications to a mobile device without revamping it. It isn't something that happens right away, it's something that we are moving toward. We are moving away from proprietary or mobile-centric application environments and embracing the Internet as a development environment.

M2Z asks FCC to reject more AWS-3 interference tests

Lynnette Luna — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:10:51 -0400

M2Z Networks said it has submitted evidence to the FCC to confirm that no further interference testing is needed to auction off the AWS-3 spectrum, which will be designed for an operator willing to offer free broadband wireless services. T-Mobile has been a vocal opponent of the plan, saying the FCC is rushing into an auction without adequately testing for potential interference. T-Mobile is the largest spectrum holder in the adjacent AWS-1 band and is concerned about interference. M2Z and T-Mobile have been trading barbs over the issue. M2Z says its latest filing with the FCC specifically rebuts the false assertions of T-Mobile based on its recent test, but also provides reference to two recent additional tests on the exact same interference scenarios that were conducted by the International Telecommunications Union and the United Kingdom's spectrum regulator, Ofcom. The recent tests also contradict T-Mobile's assertions.

According to M2Z, the fact that T-Mobile and the other carriers are now seeking an additional fifth round of testing on mobile to mobile interference issues without addressing any of the countervailing evidence in front of the FCC is further proof that these large phone companies are using "interference testing" as a veiled attempt to prevent nationwide broadband competition. The FCC wants to create a 25-megahertz swath of spectrum that would support a nationwide license. The AWS-3 spectrum would require the licensee to dedicate 25 percent of its network capacity to free broadband service, install a network-based Internet filtering system to block pornography and allow open access to third-party devices and applications.

For more:
- check out this release

Related stories:
M2Z: T-Mobile's interference argument over AWS-3 spectrum flawed. M2Z story
T-Mobile takes M2Z to task over AWS-3 auction arguments. T-Mobile story

Verizon gets first open network device

Sue Marek — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:45:08 -0400

The first device to take advantage of Verizon Wireless' Open Development Initiative has been certified and is ready to deploy. SupplyNet Communications has released a battery-powered modem for machine-to-machine communications. The modem connects to a sensor that dips into large storage containers and then sends a text message to SupplyNet to report when the container is running low. The monitoring system can be used to measure many things, including diesel in diesel tanks or shortening at a food production facility.

In fact, most of the early devices that have been certified will likely be for M2M applications. Anthony Lewis, Verizon Wireless' vice president of open development, says that the company has had a few conversations with companies that plan to launch consumer cell phones on the network but he doesn't know when they will make their debut.

Verizon's Open Development Initiative was launched last November. At that time, the carrier said it would open its network to any device and any application that meets minimal technical standards.

For more:
- see this AP story

Related stories:
Verizon Wireless reveals open access detail
Verizon to release Open Development device specs

Verizon Wireless: 'Course will abide by the rules

Fri, 09 May 2008 06:59:55 -0400

After Google filed a petition with the FCC to insist that the regulator put in place stricter terms for Verizon Wireless' C Block 700 MHz spectrum, which requires open access for devices and applications, Verizon Wireless claimed the petition had "no legal basis." The carrier plans to file its own petition with the FCC soon, but noted that "it's really no surprise that despite not winning spectrum, [Google] continue[s] to try to change the rules and further their own business interests through the regulatory process." The carrier said it knew the rules before it took part in the auction and "of course" they will abide by them, but if it doesn't the carrier points out that "Google or anybody else..." can use "legitimate and expedited ways to address that."

For more on Verizon's response:
- read this article from Verizon's policy blog

SPOTLIGHT: Google calls out Verizon Wireless' "open" plans

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:59:52 -0400

TODAY'S SPOTLIGHT... Google calls out Verizon Wireless' "open" plans
Google is petitioning the FCC to obtain a guarantee from Verizon Wireless promising the operator will honor its commitment to open access. A Google filing Friday raises concerns that Verizon isn't fully dedicated to the open-access restrictions instituted by the FCC over the nationwide C block of 700 MHz spectrum the federal agency auctioned in March--the provisions mandate the C block winner (i.e., Verizon Wireless) allow consumers carte blanche authority over the devices and applications that run on the spectrum, and it seems Google fears Verizon won't uphold its end of the bargain. Read Jason Ankeny's column on Google's open access petition in FierceDeveloper.

Is AT&T bitter about the C Block?

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:59:59 -0400

- Click here for our full coverage of the 700 MHz Wireless Auction -

Is AT&T bitter about the C Block?

Sound bites and dollar signs: That's what keeps our legislative branch humming along. Yesterday, the House of Representatives subcommittee on telecommunications hosted FCC chairman Kevin Martin to discuss the results of the 700 MHz spectrum auction. Three Republican representatives grilled Martin over whether Google "gamed" the system by lobbying to get the open access provisions on the C Block and then not bidding to win.

"Google was successful in gaming the system," Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) said. The open access provisions were simply a "social engineering" experiment by the FCC that prevented the C-Block from raising billions of dollars more, Upton continued.

Google, of course, did bid on the C Block. The company bid just as it promised it would: until the provisionally winning bid on the C Block had reached its reserve price: $4.6 billion. By meeting that reserve price, Google triggered the open access provisions the company so desired. The FCC, not Google, decided on the reserve price and if it proved (in hindsight) to be too low, then the FCC is at fault for short changing Congress of the extra billions--not Google. Verizon Wireless ultimately bid to win the C Block for $4.7 billion.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) and Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) both followed Upton's lead. Shimkus asked Martin whether Google had "duped" the FCC by bidding in order to trigger the open access rules. Martin assured them that the agency was not duped and that the rules were not put into place to keep any company from bidding.

FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein noted that Google did precisely what it had promised to do: Bid enough to trigger the open access provisions. "They put over $4.6 billion of their capital at risk," Adelstein noted.

The 700 MHz auction brought in more than $19 billion, far more than the most optimistic projections of $15 billion in winning bids. The final $19 billion figure is not even counting the D Block, which did not garner enough to meet its reserve price.

So who would have swooped in and driven up the price of the C Block had it been provision-free? Most analysts figured AT&T would compete with Verizon Wireless and Google for the C Block, but the carrier acquired some spectrum from Aloha and bid on other blocks instead. So is AT&T upset about the results?

It may be worth noting that all three of the Republican representatives that grilled Martin yesterday entered office about 14 years ago. The company whose political action committee contributed most to each of their campaigns during the past 14 years? That's right: AT&T. -Brian