Skype Earns Our Adoration

September 16, 2008

(5 votes, average: 4.8 out of 5)

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Skype Communications lashes out against the closed network policies of the nation’s wireless carriers and earns our respect. In an open letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Skype’s Senior Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs, Christopher Libertelli, laid out 7 key reasons why government officials should continue to press the Wireless Industry to adopt polices which “serves the interests of consumers, carriers and innovative providers of wireless devices and software applications.”

Mr. Libertelli was responding to a perception that the Wireless carriers are simply giving lip service to open networks but continuing to keep their networks walled off to most external development.

“When lip service to the goals of open networks is translated into their terms of service, they continue to require their subscribers to limit the applications and devices that can be used on their networks. The attitude of the wireless carriers was perhaps best summed up in Sprint Nextel Corp. CEO Dan Hesse’s recent comment: “The big Internet can be daunting …. There can be too much choice.”

Skype is clearly keeping tabs on the under-regulated Wireless Industry. If the Wireless carriers were to be forced to open their networks to all traffic and applications, such as the broadband industry is compelled to do, it would enable Skype and others to begin offering phone services via the cellular carriers’ wireless broadband networks. That would essentially allow Skype to compete with Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon on their own networks and no different from how Skype competes with the incumbent telephone networks over their wired broadband networks today.

Although the carriers don’t realize it now, what Skype is asking would actually make them all stronger. As soon as the carriers stop thinking of themselves as phone companies, and start thinking of themselves as wireless broadband companies, they can begin expanding their customer bases and offering all sorts of broadband services to residential and business customers everywhere.

If Mr. Libertelli were a rock star, we might build him a fan site. But if Skype and others (Google among them) are able to crack the walled gardens of the mobile carriers broadband networks, there will be much rejoicing by consumers and companies of all sorts who will finally be able to offer the sort of applications, services, and competition that consumers really want, and which will help move the mobile industry into the future.

Written by Todd · Filed Under Mobile, Telecom