Haakon's blog

It’s been a while since my last blog post, and there have been several news stories related to net neutrality, mobile Internet and what mobile operators do:

• Wireless call quality has dropped in the US according to Business Week. Why? Smartpones are putting strains on the networks.
• Erik Schmidt spoke at MWC and stated “”I feel very, very strongly that we depend on successful businesses for the operators globally and I disagree that we are trying to turn the operators into dumb pipes” (via Guardian.co.uk)
• YouTube Will Kill Flat-rate Mobile Broadband Pricing Forever according to GigaOm
• Associated Press reported that Spain’s Telefonica considers charging Google
• etc, etc.

So what is the issue here. Google develops more and more services for mobile phones. Apple has succeeded with their iPhone and basically control all what used to be called value added services. Mobile operators compete on data plans – probably as a loss leader to secure revenue from voice. If we add wireless net neutrality and regulated low termination rates for mobile voice (or even bill and keep), the situation does not look to bright. They have to start real charging for  or at least versioning their data plans (within any present net neutrality regulation)