Engadget: We had an opportunity earlier today to sit down with one of the powerhouses of the wireless industry in the US: Steve Largent, who heads up the CTIA. In that capacity, Largent oversees the industry group most directly responsible for lobbying carriers' interests in Washington, which means he's helping to steer the direction this business is going on a very broad, long-term, critical scale -- and he also happens to run a trade show that we attend twice a year.
Here's a breakdown of all the important speeches and conferences from last week's Super Mobility Week in Las Vegas. Hear what everyone from Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Dreamworks' Jeffrey Katzenberg to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler think about the future of mobile content.
If you've ever gone to a foreign country with a carrier-branded phone, or tried to use that phone on a different operator in the US, you've probably encountered the problem many have: it's locked. While most carriers did honor unlock requests in the past, or sell their handsets unlocked (like Verizon, mostly), there was no universal policy on the practice in America. As of February 11th, that's changing - the CTIA (basically, the wireless industry's special interest group) is laying out a set of phone unlocking (that is, SIM/network unlocking) principles that AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular will abide by in the wake of the congressional un-banning of phone unlocking.
Maximum PC: I haven't spoken with every individual at Maximum PC about net neutrality and asked what their stances all, though I'm fairly confident we all agree it's a good thing. Certainly our new Editor-in-Chief Tuan Nguyen does, as evidenced by his recent articles on the topic here and here. And obviously so does Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, who recently proposed reclassifying the Internet as a public utility. But not everyone does. Among the comments to some of the articles we've posted on the subject are arguments opposed to treating the Internet like a public utility, which would thereby give the government increased oversight. The CTIA also opposes reclassifying the Internet as such, but I'm not sure their video on the topic will do them any favors.
Oh yeah, those random people on the street were TOOOOOOOTALLY believable.
I agree with the article completely; there might be some valid concerns about broad laws that treat mobile almost exactly the same as regular ISPs, but the "concerns" in the video have pretty much zero merit.
And about that Pandora comment...if said networks/providers didn't have pointless data caps ( https://www.techdirt.com/ar... ), that would never be a problem anyway.
The companies imposed the data caps as fees... now of course companies need a way to guarantee access to the customer. Fuck cable companies... Please Elon free us from the blood sucking capitalists soon! lol
