CTIA: Defining open access

SAN FRANCISCO—The CEOs of Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless were in agreement for once: the walled garden is relic and open access is an inevitable future on their networks. But Dan Hesse, Robert Dotson and Lowell McAdam all differed in the details when queried by CTIA CEO Steve Largent at Wireless IT & Entertainment’s keynote session. Each offered a nuanced view of how their respective operators would achieve open access.

For Sprint, open access is a business model. Whatever open access may be, the “one thing it’s not is regulating the Internet,” Hesse said. Of the three different viewpoints, Sprint’s is perhaps the most radical as well as familiar, turning old wireless business models on their heads and with a new WiMAX network offering a service akin to the offerings of a wireline broadband service with the added value of mobility. While closely supervising customers and controlling their access to the much more limited world of 2G data was necessary, Hesse said, it becomes a hindrance in the 3G and especially 4G worlds.

“We say, from a customer’s point of view, ‘Knock yourself out--the entire Internet is yours,’” Hesse said. “4G and the embedded chip model for WiMax will allow people to bring whatever device -- a laptop, camera or whatever -- to the network.”

Dotson’s definition of open access is firmly grounded in the phone—more specifically the phone’s operating system. For T-Mobile, open access closely equates open source: By creating a freely licensed and open platform for developers to build applications on—such as the Android platform T-Mobile is championing—the market can drive innovation much faster than a sole operator at the wheel could, Dotson said. But while the notion of the walled garden is a thing of the past, Dotson said, operators can’t give over control of their networks. Carriers need to safeguard their customers and ensure their mobile data experiences are optimal, Dotson said.

“I don’t mean control as in stifling innovation,” Dotson said. “If you look at unfettered access in an open world, all of us would agree you have a poor experience at the end of the day. Innovation is most productive when you have some control over it. The true wild west in that open environment is a poor customer experience.”

For Verizon Wireless, open access is a function of the network itself, not necessarily a concept that can be defined and categorized. “My opinion and the carriers’ opinion of openness is almost irrelevant,” McAdam said. “It comes back to what the consumers are going to purchase.” While meeting that need doesn’t require a fundamental overhaul of the network or business model, McAdam acknowledged that an operator cannot keep up with the pace of innovation itself, which is why it launched its open-development program, allowing outside vendors and developers to certify their devices and applications on the Verizon network. “Opening the doors and protecting the network—that’s all we have to do,” McAdam said.

When Largent asked McAdam when those first open-development devices would appear, McAdam surprised the room by producing two devices that had already passed Verizon’s certification program. One was a wireless router that can be fitted with a Verizon broadband access card, which could be used to set up ad-hoc WLAN networks in remote areas. The other was a third-party voice and messaging device.