National Phone Regulations Advancing

Politics

While many states are individually trying to regulate and rein-in wireless carriers, Techdirt has long argued for national regulations in this industry. This is an industry with national companies providing a service that is oblivious to political borders, and state-by-state regulation not only fails to make sense, but is expensive, complicated, and might actually lead to more consumer confusion, not less. It’s refreshing, then, to hear that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee is now pushing for a national solution to the “cellular customer bill of rights” issue. The industry, needless to say, is against any and all regulation, preferring the chimeric “self-regulation“. However, industry certainly prefers a national approach to regional. With the pressure presently being exerted by the CPUC, it seems to be a likely time that the carriers will be willing to partner towards a central solution. So let’s do it. Senator Stevens is just beginning his efforts, but it sounds like the right direction.

Wireless Gaming In Nevada Casinos

Wireless

I’ve often heard the complaint from visitors to Vegas and other Nevada casinos that, “There just isn’t enough opportunity to gamble here!” But fear not, forsaken gambler, there’s hope ahead: Nevada has passed bill AB471 which will allow wireless gaming for the spaces between the existing gaming. The law, which Mike foreshadowed last week, will allow visitors of casinos with more than 100 machines to enter wagers, play games of chance, etc. from wireless devices linked to casino servers. You could play the sports book from the pool, or play poker from your breakfast table (at 2:00PM). We expect the systems to take advantage of WiFi technology and stored-value (or credit) accounts at the casino. The mobile devices will likely be PDA-like and also be used as “mobile concierges” for the casinos, delivering hospitality-type apps as well as games of chance. For example, you could book a bet on your favorite horse, then book a table at the top-floor restaurant, then buy show tickets all from your poolside cabana. No word on whether there’ll be a link to Gamblers Anon.

Filed Under: wi-fi, wifi

Children's Charity Bullies Mobile Toting Bullies For Money

Overhype

from the who's-exploiting-who-here? dept

We’ve learned to be extra cautious whenever we see stories coming out with studies sponsored by NCH, a “children’s charity” in the UK that seems to get a lot of publicity. The organization has a history of coming out with obviously biased and poorly done studies, and then trumpeting up points that clearly were not supported by the actual study they did. They blamed the internet for child porn (rather than, say, the child pornographers). They created a ridiculously biased study to make it look like parents hated 3G phones because they might be used for child porn. They made incredibly misleading statements suggesting that 11-year-old kids were gambling online, when there was no evidence at all to support it (and the report was paid for by a company selling age verification tools to gambling companies) — and they claimed any parent who didn’t agree with them was uneducated. Their latest hype-inducing report is now out, and it covers the topic of cyber-bullying with mobile phones. Of course, this isn’t a new issue at all. It’s been covered many times before by a variety of sources. So what’s new with this study? Well, actually, if you look at the details, it shows that such bullying is decreasing! However, that’s not what you will read in the stories covering the report. Instead, you’ll read that there is an “urgent need to tackle mobile bullying before it ruins more lives.” Ruins more lives? Bullying — mobile or not — is a serious issue. But, nowhere does the evidence show that anyone’s lives were ruined because of bullying. Also, bullying is unlikely to just be limited to “mobile bullying.” Blaming the technology doesn’t help the problem — and kids will just find other ways to bully. Also, the group has a very broad definition of bullying: including anyone who was “embarrassed” by something on a mobile phone. They include an example that hardly appears to be bullying at all — where a stupid boyfriend sent his friends private cameraphone photos of his girlfriend, and those friends passed them around. That’s not “bullying,” that’s an obnoxious boyfriend who shouldn’t have sent those photos out. However, the end of this article sheds a little more light on all this misplaced hype. Following this report, a telco is starting a service where kids can send text messages to get more info on bullying. Of course, the text messages cost money — and all of the proceeds are (you guessed it) going back to NCH. This isn’t to trivialize the issue of childhood bullying — but blaming the technology with misleading stats and misplaced anecdotal stories doesn’t solve bullying. It just gets people to donate more money so your charity can put out more misleading reports.

New Wireless App: Celebrity Mugshots

Wireless

I’ve never gotten into it here on Techdirt, but I’m somewhat anti-celebrity. We humans tend to devote way too much time and energy on stars and their lives. I find awards ceremonies like the Oscars the biggest irony of all, because it takes the most over-celebrated bipeds in the world, and is a gala to…celebrate them more! It’s all the more ironic that the writers who actually create good ideas are feted off-screen before the main event. Anyhow, that’s why I enjoy a bit of schadenfreude with this new wireless application, celebrity mugshots as mobile phone wallpaper, which offer keepsakes of celebrity run-ins with the law. It’s like The Smoking Gun for your phone. Turns out celebs are basically normal people, just a little prettier than average – although the mugshots cast even that advantage in doubt.

SK- Earthlink Lands National Retailer

Wireless

The new MVNO, SK-Earthlink, has landed a retail partner in OfficeMax. OfficeMax will begin by selling the PalmOne (is that their name today?) Treo 650 with service from SK-Earthlink. The CDMA-version 650 is priced at a fairly standard $450 with a service contract. The MVNO, launched in March, is primarily after the mobile professional market. A national retailer is an important step for an MVNO, especially this one backed by SK Telecom of Korea and Earthlink, neither of which has any US brick/mortar presence.

Nintendo WiFi Confirmed

Wireless

While I had written about Nintendo’s plans to launch a huge WiFi network in Japan a month ago, it appears the company has now made the official announcement, while also mentioning that they may expand it to other countries as well. The idea, of course, is to encourage more WiFi gaming on the Nintendo DS portable gaming system.

Filed Under: wi-fi, wifi

Politics, Telco Style

Miscellaneous

from the change-the-rules-for-us,-repeatedly dept

It’s not surprising (or even wrong) for companies to lobby on behalf of what they believe is best for themselves and themselves alone — but it’s still amusing to point out some of the contradictory aspects of it. We’ve already seen how the telcos view muni-broadband laws, and now they’re pushing to change the laws for video in their favor, so they don’t have to get municipal level approval across the entire country to offer IPTV. At the same time, they’re pushing to get empty FCC slots filled as quickly as possible so they know who to put pressure on. To some extent, the telcos are right. Having to go through each municipality to get permission to offer video is a bad and inefficient policy — designed to keep out competition. However, given how these same telcos seem to react to competition normally, you know that they’re not looking to spread competition, but just get themselves into the fold, before blocking everyone else out from competing again as well. Meanwhile, Om Malik is taking this idea, along with the concept that the TV channel is dead and is wondering why the telcos don’t bother skipping “IPTV” altogether and offering real downloadable TV over fiber — where people get to create their own lineups, based on what they want to see. Of course, that would take (1) amazingly creative thinking from the telcos (stop laughing) and (2) the broadcast industry to agree to that as well. Given how broadcasters have reacted so far to such plans — it seems unlikely that they’d go anywhere near such a plan. These are both industries that still think in terms of “broadcast,” and that people need to be guided to the content they would like, rather than recognizing the ability for people to discover (and create) what they’d like to see themselves. Of course, the telcos also have a history of convincing the government to give them all sorts of incentives to do certain things, taking the money and not doing what they promised — which, at some point, would make you wonder why the government should be changing laws in their favor again?

Sony Repeats Aibo Mistakes With The PSP

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the the-importance-of-the-developer-ecosystem... dept

Ah, Sony. They tell us they had learned from the past and yet they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Remember in 2001, when people were getting a huge kick out of hacking their Aibo robotic dogs? They made them dance and do all sorts of neat tricks. It really made the Aibos a lot more interesting and worth having, and was a great value-added offering for Sony — which Sony had to spend exactly nothing on to have. Yet, Sony, in their short-sightedness squashed the hackers with DMCA claims, turning the Aibo into just another boring robotic dog. So, now that the PSP gaming device is out — and doing quite well, indeed — some developers have been out there hacking the device as much as possible to let it do much more than Sony originally intended. Does Sony encourage them, knowing that it will make the device even more valuable? Nope. They upgrade the firmware to block out these hacks, and then try to force users who want to play new games to upgrade the firmware specifically to block out these hacks. Apparently, Sony hasn’t realized that by creating a platform and letting the enthusiast community make it more valuable for free, they’d be in a position to sell even more of the devices.

BellSouth Says They'll Offer (Sorta) WiMax To The Home

Wireless

from the wait-and-see... dept

Over the last few months, it seemed that more companies were coming to the realization that WiMax technology, for all the hype would make for decent backhaul technology, but was unlikely to be a real threat to cable and DSL in the short-term. However, WiMax number one fan Intel, keeps saying that WiMax is perfectly positioned to compete with DSL and cable, and they finally found a guinea pig willing to test it out for them. BellSouth has announced that it will be offering WiMax to the home service using Navini equipment. Initially it will just be offered in Athens, Georgia, with a few more cities in Florida added by the end of the year. There are several things about this announcement… First, WiMax equipment still doesn’t exist, so despite the announcement, BellSouth isn’t really offering WiMax. They’re offering proprietary equipment that they hope will be WiMax when the certification process happens, but which may require updating. Second, they don’t announce pricing at all, but they do say that the offering will be focused on college kids who will be more willing to try out the new service (and, they hope, more willing to accept any problems it has). Part of the plan is to let college kids suspend service while they’re home in the summer time, and be able to start it up again when they come back in the fall. Finally, of course, despite the fact that this is “wireless” it’s fixed wireless technology, so it’s not as if the kids using this will be able to plop a WiMax card in their laptop and surf from anywhere. Instead, it will be just like any other fixed wireless solution from the past decade or so, where a box is stuck to the side of the house, and there will be a modem (and most likely a WiFi access point) inside the house.

Siemens Finally Finds A Buyer

Wireless

Took ’em long enough, didn’t it? After plenty of rumors and questions about what Siemens would really do with their handset business, it appears they’ve finally pawned the division off on BenQ. Sure, they’re positioning it as a “partnership” or joint venture, or whatnot… but this is really about Siemens getting out of the business, and BenQ taking it over. Siemens never really seemed sure of what it wanted to do in the handset space, and that hesitation let everyone zip by them. Now it’ll be interesting to see what BenQ does. The big question some are asking is why BenQ bothered — as it’s not clear what they get out of the deal, but it sounds like BenQ is hoping the deal will help open up some emerging markets for them.