The open network

Skype has asked the FCC to open cellular networks to any device on the market, citing the Carterfone ruling of 1968 that created a market for home phones, answering machines and eventually the Internet modem. At first glance it seems like the same old tale of a little company challenging an incumbent, the nimble tech pioneer fighting back at the unbudging gargantuan carrier, the Internet model butting heads with the telecom model.

The odd thing is that what Skype is demanding is already happening, maybe not as quickly as Skype would like but happening nonetheless. In fact, what Skype seems to be framing as competitive malice on the part of the carriers is actually a technological issue that most carriers—notice I said most, not all—are trying to overcome. Wireless carriers, while not actually embracing it, seem to have accepted the fact that they’re expected to use their networks to offer gobs and gobs of Internet access at competitive prices. Much of the 3G business for Sprint and Verizon Wireless and Cingular has been dumb pipe broadband access to laptops, and as you may recall Sprint is building out a nationwide WiMAX network that by definition will be open. It claims it will wholesale capacity to all comers.

Skype’s motive in this regulatory wrangling is obvious: It wants to take its VoIP calling service beyond the home broadband connection and the Wi-Fi hotspot to the wide area cellular network. You can’t really blame the carriers for not being too excited about the idea of helping another company cannibalize their revenues. But for every carrier that is actively trying to stop Skype--e.g., Verizon Wireless--there is a carrier that is doing nothing to impede it. Sprint’s EV-DO Revision A network is arguably the first network that can support VoIP given its high-capacity uplink as well as downlink. And so far, Sprint has done nothing to stop people from loading Skype or other VoIP clients onto Rev. A connected devices, though such a barrier would be easy to implement. Sprint could introduce the minutest amount of jitter into the network that would make VoIP conversations unintelligible, while not impeding other broadband applications, but so far it has chosen not to do so. At the same time, Sprint isn’t exactly using Rev. A’s QoS capabilities to prioritize Skype VoIP packets on the network.

The bottom line is that, as the technology emerges that allows carriers to transport VoIP packets efficiently and cheaply, eventually those networks will come to embrace Skype and any other broadband application. Carriers are coming to the conclusion that the value they offer to the data world is mobility, not a whole new proprietary vision of the Internet. The technologies they’re embracing, whether Long Term Evolution (LTE), WiMAX, or Revision C, are all designed to pack a lot of cheap capacity onto the network, letting them get a lot more bang for each megahertz of spectrum. Skype has to wait for the technology to catch up, though. Think about it. Skype’s beloved VoIP has been around a lot longer than Skype has. Back in the days before DSL and cable modems, there were all kinds of services that allowed you to make VoIP calls over a dial-up connection, but they all universally sucked. Skype’s broadband VoIP service would have done just fine--if all of its customers could afford a T-1 line to their homes.

Contact me at kfitchard@telephonyonline.com.