It's Time to Break the Carrier Stranglehold on Innovation

A cartel of mobile phone companies controls innovation on our wireless networks. It’s time for government to step in. So says Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who just published an article in Forbes making a strong argument for open access to wireless networks. This argument is based on the precedent set by Carterfone, an FCC ruling from 1968 which said that AT&T did not have the right to prevent companies from selling equipment that connected to its phone network, as long as that equipment didn't harm the network itself. The decision led directly to a competitive market for handsets as well as innovations like answering machines, the fax machine, and computer modems.

Without Carterfone, any startup company would have to petition the phone company for access to its network--just like mobile startups have to do today with wireless carriers' networks.

Says Wu:

The good news is that the federal government will soon have a chance to change all that and throw open America’s airwaves to innovation and entrepreneurship. It will come in the form of an auction, within the next year, of the few remaining pieces of a precious national resource–licenses to the nation’s wireless spectrum. This particular chunk of spectrum is becoming available because TV stations must stop using it to broadcast old-fashioned analog television by February 2009.

However, there are few politicians on the national level who have argued for "attachment rights," or the necessity of a competitive, open wireless network. Representatives Edward Markey (D–Mass.) and John Dingell (D–Mich.) have held hearings, and Wu points to John McCain's support for the issue. Maybe their colleagues just don't understand the technical stuff?

For more background, read Wired contributing editor Frank Rose's recent piece, It's Silicon Valley vs. Telcos in Battle for Wireless Spectrum.