Or maybe I'm wrong about the corporate vision.
This is basically the old AOL or CIX model.
Say a broadbank link today costs $100/mo for 50Mbit. That will remain. It may even get better. They'll say "Look! We used to charge $100/mo for 50Mbit, and now we give you 100Mbit for the same price! We're innovating!"
Meanwhile on the other end, they'll offer the $20 package with 500 Premium Websites, and the $10 package with Facebook & Twitter & Google, but not DuckDuckGo. Or whatever.
And then, as you'd expect, millions will sign up for the cheap packages (because when it comes down to it, most people make a decision based on price and that's it). And the cable cos will still say: "We're still offering totally neutral 100Mbit internet - just like the good 'ol days! We're good guys! It's not our fault that people want the value packages. The free market has spoken."
And then the new players wonder why they can't get any traction until they too pay up to be part of the "value" packages, and the nightmare is real.
Facebook's free access in India and some other countries is part of their internet.org project (or the team that deals with that). In that model, Facebook has a partnership with the local telecoms. The telecom opens access to that domain for every customer and Facebook pays the telecom for the data access.
In wired world, the carriers were granted monopoly to dig the trenches, and the fact that they now abuse that monopoly without giving access to other players is what riles people.
Wireless world is fairly fragmented - carriers are separate from equipment companies, which are separate from tower operators. Anybody can buy up some equipment and tower space and just start offering mobile voice+broadband. Or start on MVNO to piggyback existing infrastructure and expand from there.
Really? Unless you can participate in the multi-billion dollar spectrum auction, you can't use any of those towers or disparate device providers. The right to use a large block of spectrum in a given geographic area is a monopoly of sorts for that carrier. Given the capital and scale needed to enter the market, it's no wonder we have so few wireless carriers to choose from.
That's actually not all that true. While both the 2010 Open Internet Order and the more recent NPRM for a new version have provided looser rules for mobile broadband, (fixed wireless has the same rules as fixed wired broadband), its been on the FCC radar, and a number of big players pushing for more full neutrality than the current NPRM offers for fixed broadband have also been advocating for the same treatment for mobile broadband as fixed rather than two separate models.
> In wired world, the carriers were granted monopoly to dig the trenches, and the fact that they now abuse that monopoly without giving access to other players is what riles people.
In the wireless world, companies rely on exclusive monopoly licenses to spectrum, so its an ongoing -- not merely historical -- monopoly on which they rely.
No, its not. The particular mechanism for managing scarcity may be a policy choice, but the scarcity is pretty fundamental.
That is why you can't have two FM radio stations on 106.7.
are not even close to comparable. Cellphone towers do not use frequencies and powers that travel nearly as far as those employed by radio stations.
>The scarcity isn't artificial.
Nope, it's artificial.
The next generation of base stations performs beamforming for physics-based channel sharing in addition to CDMA ("algorithm-based" channel sharing). Beamforming effectively allows you to employ a sizable number of "virtual antennas", each aimed separately at individual receivers. With multiple base stations it's an even more effective strategy because you can create signals that constructively interfere at a point rather than along a line. Everyone gets their own spatially-localized signal and can transmit their own spatially-localized signal because the same trick works in reverse for reception.
So no, there isn't fundamental spectrum scarcity. Perhaps there are too few beamforming base stations installed, but that's a problem to be solved through investment in new technology, not by allowing carriers to impose business models that de-commoditize bandwidth.
Also beamforming doesn't work as well from the mobile station because you don't have multiple, sufficiently separated antennas.
Beamforming gives roughly the same advantage to TX and RX. While I'm sure mobile stations will eventually take advantage of it for power conservation purposes, very large advantages still stand to be gained even from a one-sided implementation at the base stations which can have multiple sufficiently separated antennas.
Radio astronomy provides a very good example of this: from Earth, stars look like point radiators, yet VLBI astronomy still yields an insanely powerful RX advantage once you get up to effective apertures the size of Earth.
That is the key points. In the near future it'll be artificial but it hasn't been until those exist in sufficient quantities and with sufficient QoS. Simply because it is technically possible for them to get away with less spectrum doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of installed base stations don't function that way at present and that the technology wasn't available to get that performance until super recently.
That is like saying everyone could buy an autonomous cars and so human driver error is no longer an issue.
There are real limits on their rate of capex.
The carrying capacity for wireless customers (and carriers) could increase to above where it is now, but not the point where frequency coordination is unnecessary.
Why not? The ISM bands haven't become unusable even in densely packed residences with large numbers of Netflix-streaming cable cutters. Yes, cell phone towers have a longer range (which puts them at a small constant factor disadvantage), but they are also professionally maintained and can therefore make use of directional antennas and beamforming which gives them a constant factor advantage proportional to investment.
We have the technology to provide service to any reasonable density of people. It's a matter of cost, not scarcity. As opposed to, say, healthcare, this is a problem that markets should be very good at solving.
There are two different scopes of monopoly here. My house is bathed in the waves of at least four different cellular networks; that's not really a monopoly.
That's surprising to me. How can the FCC charging billions for mobile spectrum licences? [1] It would seem to me that there are government-granted monopolies for both wired and wireless.
[1] http://www.networkworld.com/article/2307154/network-security...
It's not a perfect analogy, but I'd compare it to broadcast media. The barrier to entry for creating a new TV channel is absurdly high compared to that of creating a website. Imagine a world where suddenly creating a website meant negotiating with Internet providers to get included in the standard packages. It's just a huge step back, but the majority of consumers might not notice the difference. (At least not right away.)
I can live without any of my most visited websites - they are not business important. But my business web site? The local calendaring etc? My mobile plan loses all value if I can't use those on the go.
Another reason for why these offers will fail is status. If you bought such a package, you better not tell your peers, because it lowers your status among them. Well, your peers will know it anyway, because you cannot just open this Youtube video they posted on their Facebook timeline. This is a bigger issue with Sprint's targeted customer: poor people and kids.
It would be a good strategy, if Sprint compensates these offerings by also offering an instant access choice. If a customer with a Facebook package opens an external resource, she/he shall see a page where she/he can buy 24h Internet access for less than $2.
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If providers stop offering "undiscriminated" Internet access, others will fill this gap with new "Real Internet Access".
My point wasn't that the Internet would suddenly become a set of pre-packaged channels. It's just that, if you leave it up to the average internet subscriber, I can see a future where the desires of many price-conscious consumers ultimately how Internet service gets structured. I suspect my parents, for instance, would be willing to trade reduced Internet access for much lower prices.
Sure, plenty of people would still go for the "Real Internet Access" option, but for a ton of consumers the Internet would cease being as open as it is today, and I'm not so sure they wouldn't be totally okay with that, if it meant paying a lot less.
Net Neutrality is not about how a company forms their products for their customers. It is only about (backbone) providers trying to extort money from companies which happen to send traffic through the pipes of those providers, because their customers asked for that traffic. Providers, offering QoS based access is not a matter of Net Neutrality.
It would automatically avoid interference by ensuring that links are never overlapping (eg: receiving an unintended sender's signal), but ensuring links are either parallel or perpendicular.
At least AOL had internet access!