December 5th, 2008
End the carrier veto over mobile technology
The problem with building the mobile Internet can be summed up in one headline:
The story then describes an AT&T plan for a “dramatic consolidation” of technologies it will allow on its mobile network. (The original Star Wars Trilogy now available for Christmas.)
That can’t happen on the Internet, but in mobile networks it can, because AT&T and Verizon hold a controlling interest in the market. They bought it by using their monopoly profits from wired phone service to buy the electromagnetic spectrum.
Their control over mobile technology has hampered the market for years, and here AT&T is bragging that they’re going to intensify that control, and unilaterally decide which Internet technologies will live and which will die.
The passivity of both consumers and policymakers in the face of this is, to me, incredible. No company should have that kind of power in a free market.
Which is my point. Mobile services are not a free market. This was a choice made by policymakers, who allowed AT&T and Verizon to buy up so much of that spectrum, and thus endorsed duopoly.
So here is my economic stimulus plan. Break up the duopoly. Add more unlicensed spectrum. Force AT&T and Verizon to run their mobile networks as Internet networks, not as private fiefdoms.
There may be less carrier revenue overall as a result, but there will be tremendous economic growth for everyone.
The health of the whole economy should be the bottom line. Not the stock price of AT&T.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 12/05/08
