No Substance to AT&T Open Network Claims

[Lee]

A few months back I bookmarked an article in USA Today entitled "AT&T
flings cellphone network wide open" (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/
wireless/phones/2007-12-05-att_N.htm) - it sounded exciting going by
the title but on a first read I could not understand where the news
was, so I noted to return to it later to investigate further. I got
round to it today and it took me 20 minutes to conclude it was only a
corporate PR excercise and nothing more - at least going by what is
stated in the public domain. The quality of the news reporting is
appallingly low.

Last time I checked stats 85% of the planet was using GSM. GSM is ~15
years old and during all that time people have been taking old
handsets to a new provider, buying handsets on the likes of Expansys
or eBay, and popping in a SIM card to use on the new providers
network. In fact in every GSM country I have visited you can just buy
a SIM card from a network operator, and plug it into your existing
device or device bought from elsewhere.

Because I am on a fact finding excercise ahead of the inaugural eComm
conference, if anyone can shed any light that I may not be aware of or
have missed on the AT&T announcement, please let me know?

As one can imagine, I welcome any representative from AT&T (in
particular President and CEO of AT&T Mobility, Ralph de la Vega) to
come and join us on the "What will Drive Wireless Innovation?" panel
(http://ecommmedia.com/schedule/#fri). I also welcome and will publish
any information from AT&T which expresses views contrary to the ones I
outlined.

[fgoldstein]

At 2/27/2008 06:11 AM, Lee Dryburgh wrote:
Just as with my quick look into the Verizon open network claims, my
look into AT&T open network claims are the same - nothing of substance
and certainly nothing newsworthy, let alone anything that deserved the
media coverage it got:

http://groups.google.com/group/EmergingCommunications-public-general/browse_thread/thread/ac8d59cb2f879238

I think AT&T was responding to the publicity that Verizon got when
they announced that they would be allowing "bring your own" handsets.

Verizon uses CDMA, which is popular here in the US. I dare say it's
technically superior to GSM (2G), but the GSM world went to some
lengths to prevent CDMA from joining the SIM club. So CDMA sets don't
have SIMs, and their ESNs have to be registered with the network.
That led to a kind of subsidy-lock system in reverse, where the phones
are subsidized but you still couldn't bring your own.

As a result of the rules for the 700 MHz C Block, which require the
network to allow the user to "bring your own" device, Verizon adopted
a new policy. Besides, it costs them nothing -- it means they can
have more iPhone-like unsubsidized phones on their network. They got
a lot of publicity for it. (I even got interviewed about it on New
England Cable News.)

So AT&T, which of course had adopted GSM a few years ago (after using
ESN-based IS-136 TDMA for years), announced that they too would be
open. It's a non-event, true, but it means that instead of their
merely looking the other way at SIM swaps, they officially accept what
is standard practice elsewhere.

Verizon will be migrating to LTE, which uses SIM cards, so the CDMA
problem will be phased out over time.