Cell Phones Presage Future of Non-Neutral Internet

An anonymous reader writes "The US cell phone network has no network neutrality. This story on NewsForge takes a look at the obstacles to getting a third-party application running on cell phone networks, and explains why the same obstacles could ruin a non-neutral Internet." (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Competition

I think competition alone at this point would gaurentee net neurality. That is if one company starts limiting access to the web then customers will switch to other providers. If they all try to do it at the same time I am sure they would be breaking some collusion / monopoly laws.

Re:Competition

how many choices of providers do you have available to you right now? if i want decent speed and prices, that list for me consists of one company.

Re:Competition

and in most places if they have more than one company they really just have one company - the others - the "local ISPs" still buy from the big Phone/Cable Cartel company

Re:Competition

Yeah but we can put these mobile networks through the airwaves, and we have a huge amount of air space, so it's no problem. In the US however, mobile networks are a series of tubes full of internets and people taking dumps in them, /that's/ the difference.

Re:Competition

So how come competition hasn't guaranteed neutrality on the cell phone networks? How come existing cell phone carriers aren't in violation of collusion/monopoly laws?

This is not a situation where competition will magically make things better.

Re:Competition

Because cell phone networks are private networks built with private funds. The PSTN (POTS) system was built on common land (right-of-ways) with a large percentage of the cost subsidized by the government. Cell-phone networks were built as either a) an ILEC's towers as endpoints on the PSTN that bridge it to wireless users or b) a CLEC's private network with an upstream ILEC. In the case of (a), the towers are private equipment and are not part of the PSTN. In the case of (b), the provider doesn't even have a stake in the PSTN and owns the whole network, and isn't subject to any of the rules that prevent collusion because what they have is theoretically completely unique (and therefore nobody can collude with them because nobody has the same type of system).

In other words, you're comparing apples to oranges. The PSTN and all the stuff that uses its copper and fiber could be subject to collusion because it's a common and known entity. Private networks are not, and can't be regulated that way. The bright side of this is that the PSTN can't be held hostage without a lot of government help. It's only now (and not 50 years ago) that we're seeing enough "help" from the government to bring this about, and it may not last. We can only hope.

Re:Competition

That's because cell phone providers have realized that the cell network is not a truck that you just "dump" stuff on. It's a series of tubes. *Microwave* tubes to be exact. Competition has helped the service providers to collectively and concurrently realize this fact.

I appreciate the metaphor, but...

I don't think it's the best argument for net neutrality. I think the average person might look at that statement and think, "Well, even though different cell companies are linking different networks together - everything seems to work fine. So why not do the same thing with the internet?"

Of course, we know why. Competing companies would squeeze competitor's offerings unfairly, and that would stifle the current net's model of natural selection. Sub standard service would result.

So, while I agree with the article I don't think it should be used in arguments about net neutrality. It's possibly misleading to non-geeks.

Re:I appreciate the metaphor, but...

Luckily, this is the first time in this debate anyone has tried to dumb it down using a metaphor that is possibly misleading to non-geeks.

Now if you'll excuse me, another internet has just come through the tubes for me.

Ringtones: $2.49 Full songs on Internet: $0.99

Need I say more?

O2 blocks TCP & UDP

I tried to create a chat client for a free mmo game i play http://getcontinuum.com/ [getcontinuum.com] only to discover my cell phone provider

O2 only allows HTTP and blocks TCP and UDP. Sucks, aparently it is to prevent people using VOIP but it prevents hundreds of legitimate uses.
Then again they probabbly dont want people to play or use 3rd party free apps.

Re:O2 blocks TCP & UDP

O2 only allows HTTP and blocks TCP and UDP

You mean HTTP runs on something besides TCP? That's news to me.

Re:O2 blocks TCP & UDP

Are you sure? The reason I ask is that I thought the same was true with my network (vodafone), but found that actually it was the default phone settings that only connected to a proxy, and creating a new connection on my phone allowed me full tcp/udp access (over 3G/GPRS). This basically involved changing the user/pass from 'wap' to 'web'. More information:

http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html [filesaveas.com] (O2 settings at the top, but this is UK information, I don't know about the rest of the world, but it's worth looking in to).

After that I also had to contact the network to get them to lift the blocks on certain ports. This involved them doing an age verification check for some reason or another, maybe to stop kids running up huge data bills using such services).

Incidentally, I had to find this information out for myself on the web, speaking to vodafone without being armed with the information did not yield results.

Outrageous!

You mean to tell me that a company that builds a networking infrastructure actually gets to set the terms by which others are or are not allowed to use it?

Clearly, something must be done!

Re:Outrageous!

The backbone networks that the Internet runs on were funded in part by massive public subsidies, so it seems the public should get a say in who gets to use them, not just the company that "owns" them.

Re:Outrageous!

A company that builds a networking infrastructure that runs through public land and has government-enforced monopoly powers (e.g. most cable companies have exclusive contracts with the cities they serve, such that a second cable provider is forbidden by law to set up shop) should accept some conditions in return for the use of public resources.

If we were talking about an actual free market with no externally imposed restrictions, I'd be right there with you. But the fact of the matter is, my cable and phone companies do not have to buy the land they dig up at will to lay cables, and my local government grants them a competition-free marketplace by legal decree. Not exactly a level playing field to begin with.

Re:Outrageous!

The internet is NOT the existing cell phone network.

Well, duh! It is a series of tubes.

Excuse me if I'm ignorant...

But what if the 'Net's neutrality *is* compromised? Could this not spur the development of a new kind of communications network? It seems to me that there is not a great enough incentive for our civilization to make the next great leap in how communication is sent because we haven't been weaned from the nipple of the telcos.

Re:Excuse me if I'm ignorant...

Like what? Any network involving wires would pretty much have to work with the telcos, because no one else can or will spend billions of dollars to build out a new network. So, the only other option is some sort of peer to peer wireless network, which would work except that the telcos already have the FCC in their pockets, so it wouldn't take long for such a thing to be regulated out of existence.

Sure, the airwaves technically belong to the people, but the FCC and Congress sold them to the highest bigger a long time ago, and have long since stopped paying anything but lip service to the idea that the new owners have any sort of obligation to the public trust.

Its all about the money

I assume that if it was profitable for cell phone companies to find a way to create a net neutral infrastructure, there would already be steps in that direction. It seems to me that the biggest reason that they are insisting on controlling their own networks is that it is simply more profitable to them, no surprise the telcom giant want to do the same to the internet. Imagine if ISPs had the same amount of control over the internet that cell phone companies have over their networks now. I dont think what we know as the internet today would have ever gotten as large or productive as it currently is.

What a great analogy!

I'm one of the non-IT /. readers. I've never doubted that AT&T charging Google protection money was a BAD idea, but I don't think I could have really articulated why at all, let alone stood up and departed the issue. What a great way to put it. In an instant, you can see just how bad an idea non-nutral, and just how bad it could get.

I Agree, but not completely

Excelent article, i think it make a very valid point and without intervention, that is a plausible future for the Internet.
The way I see the argument pro-non-netrality is mainly that the big ISP's don't want to invest large amounts of money into new technologies unless they get a piece of the action (control, basically) over those developments. They see it as a way to get back their investments (and I believe that they would have a decent return without all this, just by gaining subscribers and by the simple fact that the internet is not free to the end user).

So they are asking for control in exchange for innovation, that's not a new concept, not even on the internet. (under different forms but with the same basic concept, networks like Netzero allowed access to the net for free, gaining a bit of control on your computer).

The difference is that we know how the internet is today, and I'm not sure the end user is going to stand for less than that, It's easy to switch a paradigm when you give people something better, suddenly they don't stand for what it was before, if you change it for something less good, people complain, and markets shift, if a given ISP chose to be more neutral than others, there's a chance they'll attract more customers.
Before all the replys come in, I don't like the idea of a non-neutral Internet, we see what happens in China and other countries that block traffic, we look upon them as something dirty and low, ISP's need to realize that they may be looked upon that way if they choose to go too far with their efforts to make extra money.

point is valid

I think his point is valid. Anyone who has a cellphone knows how these companies cripple their phones and basically limit their customers to very few expensive, poorly designed, services. It seems pretty obvious to me that verizon would love to be able to control their landline network with the same stranglehold. How else could they get people to actually use their shitty services?

Application locking in 'doze for Smartphone

The real fun begins when you attempt to install a 3rd party application or even an "untrusted" certificate on a Smartphone running 'doze 2005. A warning that an application is "untrusted" along with an annoying warning window that requires something affirmative to be entered would be one thing; but some (most?) Smartphones are programmed to simply forbid the installation of untrusted apps and certificates. Sucks for those businesses that want push e-mail and don't want to bend over and pay VeriSlime or EquiFucks several hundred dollars for a "trusted" certificate!

Fortunately, unlocking and registry hacking tools are starting to be ubiquitous.

-b.

SMS is not IP

SMS uses the, rather limited bandwidth, control channel for transport. That puts a lot of pressure on the kinds of applications that can be supported.

Look at the price per megabit for messages outside a package to get an idea of the cost (k$).
    Not the same at all!

But some cell carriers are far from neutral on IP as well. I'm not sure they are clear on how that affects their market share.

What's the alternative?

So, no net neutrality is a bad thing - I've felt this in my guts for a long time and this article gives me some very good arguments to articulate it (yes, I should have done my own thinking, but I'm lazy).

It's easy to understand WHY cell phone companies are doing this, though. Too much money was lost in creating a transparent, neutral internet; some companies and executives may have gotten rich but as an industry, global telecommunications has an appaling performance record.

Cell phone providers are one of the potential providers of the "next net" (depending on who will win the technology battle - the cell phone providers with 3g/4g, broadband providers with WiMax or whoever else can float a business model for some cool technology). So, the folks in strategy and marketing of Verizon/AT&T/ have figured that net neutrality is a bad thing 'coz they need to get some ROE on their investor's buck.

The question is - how are we as consumers (or better - potential entrepreneurs?) going to prevent this from happening? I'm not sure Joe Average is smart enough to understand he shouldn't be buying his UMTS minutes from a company that doesn't offer him a neutral service.

Article gets premise wrong

" For now, Internet service providers are prohibited from discriminating against connections to particular sites on the Internet: they are required to treat traffic to Google exactly the same as traffic to Yahoo! or MSN."

Incorrect. They are not *required* to do anything. There aren't any laws that specifically prohibit data discrimination.

"It's simple. Because the cell phone carriers control what services are allowed to use their networks. There is no net neutrality on the cell phone network."

And this is much like how AOL used to be (in the past: Prodigy, CompuServe, and many bulletin boards).

What's next, water pipes?

nice article

but charging against the content control was stupid. There are plenty of conservatives techno-users who would sign up for every single word of the article except the unnecessary libertine diatribes against content screening. The whole net neutrality movement should concentrate on discriminating by business and potential monopolisation instead of focusing on decency censorship issues.

Of course its the money

and the near term motivation is the idea that Bell can't charge google. Its not fair that google makes millions by providing a service and Bell only gets the subscription fees. Its just not fair. Bell needs the legal ability to extort google if it is going to survive and have money to 'innovate'.
much of the article was a stretch however this is slightly disturbing and believable:

He is writing the article pseudonymously because the cell phone companies have the power and freedom to crush his company by blocking it from their networks.

Its all about extortion. Its the American way. Who are we to stand in the way of progress?

incentive

Those who want to eliminate neutrality dismiss this as alarmist, and claim that net neutrality would remove the incentive for broadband providers to build the next generation of Internet infrastructure, which all agree is sorely needed in the US.

If having paying customers is not enough incentive to build the next generation networking infrastructure, I don't see what else is enough.

The only case where non-neutral Internet makes sense is to have ad-supported Internet, so that content providers pay for end user's Internet bills from advertising revenue. If this is the case, then you get what you didn't pay for. But I don't see this coming.

In the current model where end users do pay for their own Internet access, eliminating net neutrality actually poses risks to the ISP. If they happen to choose the wrong premium partner, they will lose customers. In fact, some people will be dissatisfied for every choices of partnership. Remaining neutral is probably the best way to make most people happy.

Separate the network from the application

The great thing about the internet is that it only does one thing, and it does it incredibly well. The internet moves little bits and bytes of information from point A to point B. That's it.

There is some guy who's name escapes me (and who is also I believe famous in geek circles) that said that if you take away features from a protocol, you'll increase innovation. I'm paraphrasing a bit as I don't know the quote or the man who said it, but look at the phone network.

Phone companies do phoen calls really well but in order to add new features the phone company has to redo major portions of their network. The phone network is for the most part one highly integrated network with highly integrated protocol. It's a pain to work with these days. How fast do they innovate?

Now look at the internet and all the layers it has. On the lowest level you have the physical medium to transport data, which could be swapped out from copper to fiber without affecting the IP protocol. IP4 can be swapped for IP6 without dramatically affecting your operating system. Your operating system can be swapped without affecting your email server or your web browsing. You can add a bittorrent client in two seconds as long as your OS supports communicating to your ISP. And all these layers can be shifted and moved without having to create one monolithic company and structure to run everything from the major internet hubs all the way down to the PC on your desk top. You get to select all the layers right for you, and businesses can pick the layers they can put themselves into. It's the ultimate form of expression of competition and innovation.

Fuck companies who are opposed to net neutrality. Companies that support a tiered internet are anti capitalism as Adam Smith envisioned it. They don't want competition or innovation, they want easy profit.

WTF???

The VERY FIRST SENTENCE is innacurate! From TFA:

For now, Internet service providers are prohibited from discriminating against connections to particular sites on the Internet: they are required to treat traffic to Google exactly the same as traffic to Yahoo! or MSN.

The net neutrality bill was VOTED DOWN. And more BS later: "...closely mirrors the technical functionality of the Internet...the US cellular phone network."

No it doesn't "closely mirror the technal functionality" of the internet. It may seem like it to the user, but cells are nothing like backbones. Technically there are few similarities.

Why is there no MySpace, Craigslist, Amazon, Flikr, or eBay accessible through this network?

Because a cell phone has a two inch screen. DUH.

I can't read any more of this crap. I am 100% FOR network neutrality, but when you have to resort to rank bullshit to make your point, you're doing your side no favors. This guy should STFU and let someone with a three digit IQ argue for network neutrality; he's making us all look like fools.

As an example

I can write a letter in the cyrillic characterset on either my phone or computer. I can send the message via computer from the US to Eastern Europe or the other direction with few problems (especially if in Unicode). I can not send or receive cyrillic (or other alternet non-latin character sets) to or from Cingular with SMS, but while in Ukraine the same phone sends the same text without problems to other Ukraine phones. Worse, I can MMS a message from Ukraine to Cingular in cyrillic and it is garbled by Cingular, but on the way from US to Ukraine (starting on Cingular and ending on Kyivstar) the MMS message _sometimes_ arrives intact. Other times it is just replacement characters. So parts of Cingular are different than others (I have wondered if the ATT Wireless vs Cingular from the acquisition is the cause).

If the cell phone networks worked like the Internet it would just work if both ends adopted the same standards (i.e., the phones used the same standards) as the telephone network would be a layer above that doing just data delivery.

The Daily Show Hit this on the head on the 19th...

If you want to convince anyone of net neutrality.. you just show them this video [youtube.com] where john stewart & co describe net neutrality in a way even your grandmother could understand.

Good argument

That's a good argument.

Furthermore, I already went to a DSL ISP that rents pair from the local telco monopoly rather than be subjected to the abuses of network neutrality that Telus has already perpetrated bly blocking Union websites [michaelgeist.ca].

When I called Telus to disconnect, the service rep tried to tell me that they were posting content unlawfully (like addresses of Telus execs, blabhlabh). I said "You guys don't bother blocking all the rest of the illegal stuff out there on the net, why the hell are you starting here?" In retrospect, I came up with all sorts of smartass responses about the fact that they fail to filter far nastier crap like my favorite kiddy porn sites (yes, as a joke, stupid). Or "That's great. When I want someone to protect me from the Internet, I'll call you."

Not much of that was necessary, of course. To his credit, the service rep got one whiff of my displeasure and went about our business.

I've been with Uniserve [uniserve.com] for years, and have had no such shenanigans. Competition works wonders.

If the internet were like the US cell phone ops...

..we would have to buy a new computer to interface with each companies internet. What a crock.

Demand Parity

We shouldn't be depressed about how wireless networks are the poster child of a closed network. We should point out to our congressmen that wireless carriers should have to meet the same common carrier requirements as any other access provider does.

Free the airwaves!!!!!!

Article brings a good point....

The cell phone non-neutrality problem has even caused the government to go and buy thier own cell network. I would say that this would be a first since the birth of the states. I am talking about the Nextel iDEN network. Eventually all Nextel customers will be on Sprints network with PTT on it as well. Oh you forgot about the DoD buying one of the better networks out there? This has to be a first for the DoD. Usually DARPA invents it, sells it to the company who can make it fo the cheapest. In this case, they bought a whole cell Network for DHS.

This is the number one thing that pisses me off about all cell providers in the states. One example is Verizon Wireless seems to block a wap site outside of thier network. Why? I don't know, but the site I am talking about provides subway train info via wap browser. I can get to the site from my laptop outside of thier network, but on the phone I get nothing. I can get to google and I can get to gmail, but this subway thing? No dice. The reason? I don't really know, but I am guessing that maybe they are going to start selling a app that does the same thing and they'd rather me pay them instead of get it for free.

Seems like a poor analogy

The cell phone marketplace sucks for non-voice applications, but how is it non-neutral? I can make and take calls to/from off-network endpoints without any penalty, voice quality remains the same no matter what, and that describes most of what the cell network is used for currently (although is changing with more smart phones, blackberry, etc). It'd be a better argument if calling a landline or a different carrier meant crappier service, but that would be the death knell for any cell provider.

I think it's too early to make a lot of claims about the cell data networks. Sure, they're largely closed but until very recently they were also unusable for all but a tiny percentage of specific applications. The cell companies would like them to stay limited so they can wring profits out of them, but it's only a matter of time before pretty much anyone who wants a high speed cell-network based data connection can have one inexpensively, and at that point the companies will eventually end up having to provide a neutral network environment as it will become a point of competition.

Tariff Rebate Passthrough would fix the problem

Just as it would on the Internet, Tariff Rebate Passthrough [monashreport.com] would be a fix in the cell phone case as well. All the "decency" and noncompetition rules would be out the window, as would the socialism-style approval cycle. If anybody enforced "decency", it would be the FCC.

On the other hand, the cellular providers would still be allowed to rake in money hand over fist.

What's not to like about the idea?

Drivers for this

The cellular providers are very wary of applications that could consume loads of precious RF bandwidth or spread viruses throughout their networks. These are very real threats that are hard to mitigate without control over the apps themselves.

The other reason is that ISPs in general are afraid of becoming "fat pipes" where they cannot differentiate themsevles from other ISPs except for having tighter operations. Tight operations requires business and technical discipline that few large organizations seem capable of attaining.