Frontline Reveals Open Access Developers Group

The Open Access Developers Group aims to help design the open platform for 700 MHz, Frontline said. Members include Sarva’s Txtbl, ZVUE Entertainment Networks, Chumby Industries and Bug Labs. The group will work alongside Frontline’s Open Access Advisory Council, to which Sarva belongs. The group’s launch is another step in designing “the business plan for open access,” Frontline CEO Haynes Griffin said.

Rumored 700 MHz auction strategy talks between Google and Verizon are “extremely concerning,” Sarva said. Google once was a “purported champion” of open principles but backroom talks with “sworn enemy” Verizon suggest Google no longer may dislike the idea of “playing ball” with the big carriers, he said: “What it looks like Google might do is end up being just another [carrier] partner.”

Google’s rumored talks may mean the “big [Internet] elephants” that open access advocates hoped would “change the [wireless] game” are instead looking to “dance” with the major carriers that want to preserve a closed structure, he said. Apple and Skype seem to have quit the quest for an open network, Sarva said. Apple did so when it made the iPhone exclusive to AT&T, he said. Meanwhile, a Skype phone released last week in Europe whose VoIP feature only connects to other Skype users shows that the eBay company wants to deal with big carriers, Sarva said. A Microsoft/T-Mobile deal could be next, he added. “It is very easy to imagine… a cartel of wireless and software players.”

Apple, Google and other Internet big shots may be having trouble resisting the money a carrier deal brings, Sarva said. “There is a price tag that seems to motivate Apple,” he said. Apple gets $631 when someone signs an AT&T iPhone contract, he said. “It’s a similar kind of constraint that I'm starting to worry about with some of these other guys.”

Wireless is an “incredibly closed universe,” Sarva told VON. The current vertically integrated system makes it impossible to turn a wireless service or application idea into reality without convincing one of only a handful of people in control of the industry, he said. Frontline wants to create an open, horizontal network easier for entrepreneurs at VON to access, he said. For example, standards for making a device, service or application on Frontline’s network will be “posted on the Internet,” he said. It’s Sarva’s job to “keep Frontline honest,” he added, inviting audience members to join the Developer Group. “You won’t be competing with Frontline.”

Frontline’s main opponent for 700 MHz spectrum will be Verizon, which has the “most to lose from an open regime emerging” and which probably will try to block Frontline’s auction bid, Sarva said. AT&T’s acquisition of Aloha 700 MHz spectrum indicates it won’t be a combatant, he said.

VON is an “interesting” venue in which to talk about open access issues because it comprises “such an unparalleled group of telecom nerds,” Sarva told us before his speech. The event is “full of the people that are developing the devices and software” that are often the industry’s most innovative, he said, but “those types of developers have largely had low access to wireless.” The 700 MHz auction’s open access rules are an opportunity to change that, he said. -- Adam Bender

VON Notebook…

Fusing voice and Internet services “will create a new industry, so new that it doesn’t even have a name,” Nokia Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanpera told the VON conference Wednesday. Consumers want an Internet experience on cellphones like that on PCs, he said. Nokia will add “more and more” Internet features to its devices, he said. The Finnish manufacturer will have made 300 million devices with “complete and compelling” Internet capabilities by 2010, he said. Nokia’s recent agreement to acquire map maker Navteq doesn’t mean the buyer is entering the navigation business, Ojanpera said. “Navigation is just one application.” Owning Navteq means Nokia easily can integrate maps and other services, he said. “What we have here is really actually is… dynamic maps [for] a context-sensitive Web.” The Internet should set the industry’s future, but manufacturers don’t always need fancy new services to make their phones more attractive, he said. For example, simply making text easier to read can make a difference, he said. “We talk about these great innovations, but it’s very small things” that impress consumers, he said.

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A VON panel promoting femtocells’ business feasibility drew skepticism in a Q-and-A session late Tuesday. Femtocells are book-sized devices that plug into home broadband connections and act as localized cellular base stations. “You're trying to solve” a wireless coverage problem with broadband “in North America, where there’s the worst broadband and cellphone coverage,” said an audience member. Femtocells won’t drain bandwidth because voice uses 8 to 13 kbps on a CDMA network, said Samsung’s Jim Parker, who’s working with Sprint Nextel on a femtocell service, Airave. “I'm actually far more worried about my son streaming videos on YouTube.” That may be true, said Analysys researcher Jason Kowal, but the video still could disrupt the conversation. Operators that own the broadband backbone could solve the problem by giving voice priority over video on a managed network, said lawyer Barlow Keener. Carriers that own both broadband and wireless will have an advantage deploying femtocell, Keener said. That AT&T doesn’t offer wireline service everywhere it offers wireless is a reason the Bell has hesitated to offer femtocell, said Thomson’s Stephen Vincent. The U.S. divide isn’t seen in the U.K. and other European countries, where major operators own both kinds of national networks, he said. Another audience member questioned whether it made business sense for carriers to spend money to build femtocells only, as Kowal suggested in prepared remarks, to subsidize the cost to consumers. Femtocells cost as much as $600, but the goal is to get that to $200 once they're in production, Keener said. The expense will be worth it in the long run because “churn costs money” and femtocells eliminate churn, he said. That plus the network savings from expanding coverage without building new towers will enable carriers to subsidize femtocell devices while still making a profit, he said.