Blog: SMS

Maybe it's the criticism Verizon has been getting on blogs, in the press, from academics, and in Congress for its anticompetitive behavior. Maybe it's pressure from activist groups like Save the Internet. Maybe it's the upcoming spectrum auction, where the FCC implemented some (but not enough) rules to encourage mobile competition, and Verizon sees the writing on the wall. Maybe it's because they refused to launch the iPhone on their network, and instead Apple ended up with an exclusive with AT&T. Maybe it's Google's recent announcement of their open Android platform.

Whatever the reason, yesterday Verizon—the most control-freak-ish of mobile carriers, the one that cripples phones to disable WiFi or Bluetooth or anything that might compete with their high-priced service add-ons, the one that refused to give NARAL SMS access, whose BREW system locks out all but the deepest-pocketed developers—that same Verizon Wireless yesterday announced that it will open up its network to any phone, the "cellular Carterfone" Tim Wu has been advocating.

Read more...

In the early days of the Internet, there were two types of Internet access: the walled garden "online services" like Prodigy, CompuServe, and what became the most successful of them, AOL; and "raw" Internet access. The first type gave you a managed, controlled, predictable experience. In order to reach users on one of these services, the provider had to work out a special deal. That was time consuming and expensive, but ensured a certain baseline level of quality and decency.

On the other hand, the Internet itself grew to be orders of magnitude larger in the information and services available, because a site operator did not have to get permission from AOL or anyone else. With that freedom came some amount of chaos: there was no guarantee of quality, spam grew, and some even worse stuff. But ultimately, this won out. The managed online services started offering access from their services to the larger Internet, and all but AOL ultimately went out of business, unable to provide greater value than Internet itself where millions of people were creating countless Web sites and services.

Meanwhile, we have another network which is still all "walled gardens" - the cell phone network. As this anonymous entrepreneur writes, creating a service that runs over SMS on a US cell phone network requires the site offering the service to pay thousands of dollars just to have an "aggregator" negotiate with the wireless carriers on your behalf, comply with many asinine and intricate requirements, and wait months for approval. And "unmoderated chatting, flirting and/or peer-to-peer communication services" are prohibited outright by Verizon.

I can create a Web site by paying as little as $20 a month for hosting (free if I just host it on the same server as other sites I run), plus about $9 a year for a domain name. With services like Blogspot or Google Pages, it's free. And if my site doesn't make any money, that's okay. But if it's not profitable for the cell carriers, they won't allow it. When the overhead to create an SMS service and the bar to make it worthwhile are so high, no wonder we haven't had even a tiny fraction of the amount of innovation we have on the Internet.

Fascinatingly, some commenters on that article, who come from the wireless industry world, defend the status quo. One commenter writes that the decency requirements are necessary because of parents who complain to the carriers; another, that because the bandwidth is relatively low, the carriers need to manage the experience to keep out spam and satisfy customers.

It's surely true that for some customers, the purity and cleanliness of a walled-garden experience is desirable. After all, AOL is now building its business around making the Internet safe by blocking spam, viruses, and content unsuitable for children. But consumers have a choice. On the wireless networks, there is no choice. There is no carrier who allows unfettered SMS service creation or allows software developers to release software to install on their phones without restrictions.

Perhaps consumers would still opt for the safer, more managed networks, but I believe they wouldn't. After all, last time consumers has this choice, they chose the wilder but more innovative network. Let's give them the choice again and see what happens.