{"id":399,"date":"2003-07-29T19:29:36","date_gmt":"2003-07-29T23:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/benadida\/2003\/07\/29\/can-you-hear-me-now-part-i\/"},"modified":"2003-07-29T19:29:36","modified_gmt":"2003-07-29T23:29:36","slug":"can-you-hear-me-now-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/2003\/07\/29\/can-you-hear-me-now-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Hear Me Now? (part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a14'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nI subscribe to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tmobile.com\">T-Mobile<\/a> because I get to use the funky <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonyericsson.com\/T68i\/\">Sony Ericsson T68i<\/a> which synchronizes wirelessly with my Powerbook&#8217;s address book. To most American cell phone users, it makes sense that phones are specific to a given network: Sprint PCS phones do not work with Verizon, and that&#8217;s just the way the cookie crumbles. To Europeans, it&#8217;s blasphemy: cell phones are cell phones, compatible with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.orange.com\">Orange<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bouygues.com\">Bouygues<\/a>, and any other operator.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIt&#8217;s all about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gsmworld.com\">GSM<\/a>, the European cell network standard that began as a 1982 effort between European governments to standardize the use of the 900Mhz (and later 1.8Ghz) spectrum to allow international roaming. 15 years of collaboration yielded a single standard, massive economies of scale, and seamless compatibility across many boundaries.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nGSM phones are, without a doubt, more innovative and advanced than their non-GSM counterparts. Text messaging, photo messaging, data connectivity (GPRS), color screens, bluetooth support, all appeared on GSM phones and networks long before they did on non-GSM. GSM base stations are cheaper to build and maintain than non-GSM equivalents.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAnd now, the US is slowly joining the club. T-Mobile, AT&amp;T&#8217;s new network, and Cingular are GSM based. My T68i can roam world-wide, going from carrier to carrier without ever losing my US-based identity. And if I don&#8217;t like the crazy international roaming charges from T-Mobile, I simply switch a tiny smart card (SIM) inside the phone and take on a new phone number without losing my phone, directory, and laptop connectivity.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nYet <b>GSM technology is the result of heavy-handed regulation, not market economics<\/b>. Shocking!\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThis is just another case of <b>competition on a shared platform<\/b>. The GSM network backbone is the cell phone railway. Competing at the basic infrastructure level is simply inefficient. Yet at the edge, on top of this infrastructure, the handhelds compete quite nicely: Ericsson, Nokia, Motorolla, Samsung, etc&#8230; They simply agree to compete, not on the lowest possible base (the laws of nature with respect to spectrum), but on a collaboratively developed base (the laws of GSM networks).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nStand on the shoulders of giants and you can see farther. Share the giant instead of hogging it , and <b>everyone can see farther<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I subscribe to T-Mobile because I get to use the funky Sony Ericsson T68i which synchronizes wirelessly with my Powerbook&#8217;s address book. To most American cell phone users, it makes sense that phones are specific to a given network: Sprint PCS phones do not work with Verizon, and that&#8217;s just the way the cookie crumbles. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}