I thought Dana Blankenhorn's blog post today on the iPhone matter was interesting. It is best read at his site (URL below) for the additional hyperlinked stories. I'll copy it below, as well:
danablankenhorn.com
Dana's writings are sound and I've come to trust what he states, but I'd still like to learn more about what he is asserting concerning the dependence of iPhones on the cellular carrier's protocols and business systems. Is there anything you've come across that clearly explains this dependence, if such exists?
--
The Apple MacGuffin
January 11, 2007
The_maltese_falcon Instead of calling it an iPhone, how about we call it the MacGuffin?
Hitchcock explained the MacGuffin this way. A man enters a train car and puts down his bag. Another man asks what's in it. "A MacGuffin," the first man says. The MacGuffin is merely a plot device, a way to move the story forward. The Maltese Falcon was a MacGuffin, "the stuff that dreams are made of."
In this case the dream is of a new, site-defined and carrier-controlled Internet. This has been the carriers' demand in the U.S. since they first introduced "Internet access" to mobile phones. Consumers have resisted this, U.S. cellular growth has plainly lagged the rest of the world, and the carriers have mainly blamed the phones.
Now that excuse is gone.
The Apple MacGuffin (as Cisco would have us call it) is, like all such phones, completely carrier-controlled. In this case the carrier is Cingular, soon to become AT&T. Had such an agreement not been necessary, Apple would have introduced the phone a year ago (and in fact planned to).
Iphone_1 On the MacGuffin your Internet use will be completely defined by Cingular, which is signing up sites to provide basic service. It's not like a PC. There will be no such thing as network neutrality with the iPhone (sorry, uh MacGuffin). A site that does not have a specific service agreement with Cingular won't reach your iPhone, or will have its service severely degraded.
That's the threat of this phone, and of cellular generally. If Americans switch their Internet use to wireless devices, to cellular networks, they lose network neutrality no matter what happens elsewhere. AT&T said in acquiring BellSouth that it saw its opportunities laying in wireless and advertising -- how much more explicit do they have to be?
Yet you haven't read that, until now. Everybody's got their eyes on the MacGuffin.
You should be watching the director instead.
------ |
