Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Across several threads, and across several years, this community and others has talked about this issue of carrier involvement on the side of mobile devices. There's a positive and negative side to these carriers, but I want to concentrate on the Maemo questions:

• Nokia is already a known commodity to carriers, does Maemo help or hurt their perception here?
• Maemo is currently made up of groups of people and small companies that are usually contrary to some carrier goals; how does the introduction of Maemo 5 change that, if at all?
• Is it possible for carriers to not only embrace the kind of open-network development and use that this commnity aspires to, while guarantering a compariable level of quality of service, while keeping some scheme of making a profit (even if the profit doesn't look like current numbers)?

Like many of you, I'm in favor of getting carriers out of my wireless life. And at the same time, I appreciate the kinds of pipes they maintain so that I can have a wireless life that's financially and ethically attainable.

What I don't hear in most of our discussion is how Maemo could be of value to carriers. Clearly, they've shown enough of a value to Nokia by being included as part of the Maemo 5 experience (the addition of a SIM card and WCDMA technolgies). What do we offer them?

EDIT: yes, this is based on this post, and just some general observations of everything here from perceptions, to politics, to app suggestions, to use-case conversations.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Personally, I'm offering my business to them. I'm switching to T-mobile for the express purpose of running the N900 with 3G. I think that's plenty ;)

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

It is absolutely 100% possible, it's already happened in countries where regulators force networks to allow use of unlocked devices or even ban the locking of devices. When you stop locking you get an environment that's a lot more like the PC industry and the ISP industry: Does your ISP care what operating system is on your PC?

The reason they wouldn't want to admit that it's possible is because it involves competition, i.e. it involves hard work to win customers instead of just lazy milking of customers. The network operators in the USA seem to be the laziest of all.

No large company ever allows competition to increase if they can stop it. They have to be forced into competitive environments, and that's why we need strong government regulators to do the forcing.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Perhaps we need to pay for an "open-source" premium, similar to organic produce. :D

This way they get our business plus a premuim for whatever risk they are afraid of. Then when the marketplace is mature the premium is dropped since open is the commonplace not the exception.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

So you want to PROMOTE non-open source, effectively.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

This is possibly Nokia's business model for their high end smartphones in the US, almost all released unlocked: you pay a lot for them, but you get a highly-spec'd phone that shows some of what is possible when carriers are not involved in producing the device.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Maemo would add on top of unlocked devices, the idea of open-access IP stacks, firmware, and network codecs.

Are carriers ready for that much openness? TI wasn't (as much) when a group here asked Nokia to ask them about opening the framworks that drive Wi-Fi modules.

At some point though, it does work for TI's benefit to do so. How does this community convince carriers the same?

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

That would be protection money, they'd be being paid for not interfering with something that isn't their business anyway.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

You don't. It would be as pointless as appeasing some tinpot dictator, his interests do not overlap with yours.

The only way is to convince regulators to force carriers to accept whatever their customers use. Fuel stations don't lock, neither do water suppliers, electricity suppliers etc so why should phone connection suppliers be any different?

Connections are a commodity, they should be as cheap as they could possibly be, there shouldn't be any value added stuff forced on people.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Yea I know. But you would think you could eat vegatables and fruits without harmful chemicals on them. However, if you dont like such poisons you need to buy organic.

I guess that would also be protection money....:D

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

When there is an industry-wide notion to harm consumers, there's not a lot you can do to convince the industry to stop the harm. This is the entire reason for any regulation. What is the point of government if the government isn't there to represent its constituents? Instead, at least in the telecommunications industry, we have much of the government working to represent lobbying telecommunications carriers who claim to represent what the customers think and want while ignoring or even preventing up-and-coming smaller carriers with aspirations of providing what customers actually want, if only they had a fair opportunity. Ultimately, convincing carriers of anything, in this climate, is an exercise in the banal absurd.

Actually, the truth be told, most of the organic-labeled foods are arguably less safe than the non-organic. You're mainly paying a premium price for the label of 'organic.' (ref: Mayo Clinic, as one example - http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/org...SECTIONGROUP=2 ...read anything scientific, really, for the same results)

I'm not sure that I would prefer to pay the extra for organic to know that I got something that generally doesn't taste as fresh, succulent nor is any safer than the cheaper and more reliably less bug-eaten fruit.

Therefore, I'm not sure I like the idea of promoting open-source as the 'organic food' in this analogy. I certainly don't think I should have to pay more to run something I may have written or contributed to making, either.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

The only positive side of the carriers is their network, but even if there were no at&t or Tmobile and all we had was people with wifi modems at home we (the public) would have came up with solutions like boingo and wefi and mesh networking (meraki) to spread around the wifi. Nokia and the community of programmers and app writers contribute more to mobile innovation and fun then the carriers ever will or could.
They are being helped and at the same time they are somewhat hindering the people and companies that help them. Nokia has thousands of patents on wireless technology and they (Nokia-siemens ) are the ones speeding up EDGE improving the carriers ability to deliver.
Where are all the carrier employees on this maemo council trying to make it a better, funner, more usable OS? There are none.
I bet that AT&T guy/s on symbian foundation is there mostly to figure out how to cripple the OS. I'm sure he's not there to contribute much other than "will it work on AT&T and can i cripple it?"
When is the last time you heard a carrier make a significant contribution to a council or group that led to more innovation? Did they get forced into it or in some way pressured into it?
Most of these carriers are like big stupid obnoxious bullies standing around going "Don't call me dumb!"
Well compared to the programmers and Manufacturers and even a portion of the end users they are!
If they start trying to cripple our Nokia tablets then I better get a Vertu tablet with sapphires and liquid metal on it to make up for it.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

It would be like paying the makers of the chemicals money not to use them, it would simply give them even more reason to manufacture chemicals.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Don't make the mistake of confusing selfishness and deviousness for being dumb. If they're gaining anything, they're not being dumb--they're quite successful. The dumb, in that case, are we the consumers for not making a bigger noise together to complain about it and demand regulations.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

This metaphor isn't very apt.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

From what ive read, carrier relationships in the US have never flourished because of Nokia's unwillingness to cripple the phone at the carriers behest. The E71x so crippled its not funny from what ive heard and a pointless exercise for Nokia if they want to be a services company.

What i imagine Nokia might be doing is making their devices so appealing to the consumer that the carriers will have to capitulate in the end because if they dont, a small carrier be happy to run the devices as Nokia intended and risk losing market share.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Nokia N900 is the most liberal, feature_complete smartphone as of yet. Ofcourse carriers do not like such progressive device. They'd rather have control. Nokia, to me, seems like a corporation which least screws their customers in this regard, and is therefore on less good ties with carriers than for example Apple. Example: Nokia bundles Skype in mobile phones. Apple clearly gives its users heroin, after which they don't care they're screwed by both carrier (T-Mobile in NL, AT&T in US, ...) and Apple (crazy control freaks).

The carriers don't want to be convinced because it hurts their direct interests and because others are easy to influence. The users cannot be convinced because they are too stupid due to lack of formal education (simple maths). The government cannot be convinced because they are too corrupt. Nothing will change in the short term. Unfortunately.

What you want instead is the infrastructure owned by an entity who has incentive to own it. When I was in US, I saw roads being sponsored by private business of the area. In return they had their name advertised as-is. A great principle IMO. Meanwhile, the Dutch railroad is not owned by the government but instead by a private corporation different than those who operate the trains. Positive: every entity has interest to provide quality. Negative: finger pointing.

I also see on 'broadband' Internet landscape some businesses who break network neutrality while others don't. If vulture.. err venture capitalists own the business and all they care for is short term profit they don't give a **** about the brand recognition, and because they have a monopoly or very little competition they can screw the customer. Thats what UPC (cable corp.) does here. Meanwhile you get what you pay for! I pay more for my ADSL but its managed by professionals who have more ethics than the average ADSL provider.

So in the end money talks and most customers are stupid or don't care. If unsubsidized phones are becoming more and more popular, or law limits or prevents the practice, we're going to see some fireworks. They also throw with mud. In reply to 2-year contracts becoming illegal in NL (instead 1 year + then each month able to unsubscribe) they replied this would be the end of carrier subsidized phones. The end? Hmm, strange, given they continuously sell 1-year subsidized phones as well as of now. Slowly but surely however, LTE will roll out, and this means there will be IP-only subscriptions with limits in one way or another (speed, priority/network_neutrality, traffic, ...).

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

I agree. I want an open source device (the N900 is perfect) and I will offer my business to any network operator that supports the full features of that device.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Sorry, that is just not true. The most recent scientific study I read was so poorly done that its conclusions could not be supported. So it takes more than reading "anything scientific". It takes critical reading of a lot of things and it takes a deeper understanding of the big picture.

I know this is off topic, but I could not let that nonsense go unchallenged.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

This website covers USA; not world-wide.

It is case by case scenario. You're talking about fruit; the above website is not centered about fruit. Fruit generally rots quickly, and there are various methods to preserve it (e.g. freeze dry). Try raw nuts (e.g. almonds, pistachio, peanut) versus organic nuts and tell me what tastes more fresh. I bet many people have neve even eaten a raw almond/pistachio/peanut. Some fruits are always organic, like coconut. And some countries simply have other (stricter) rules than others.

Anyway, the compare is moot because open source or not says nothing about the quality of the product, and organic has nothing to do with 'openness'.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

The metaphor doesn't make much sense because the suggestion it was responding to didn't make much sense.

If there's a carrier making lots of money very very easily due to a lack of competition, and that carrier is going out of its way to stifle competition at every opportunity, and making it as difficult as possible for their customers to change to another carrier...

...under those circumstances how can customers even consider giving those same carriers compensation for lost profits? Why would we owe them a single penny?

If they can't make a good profit in a free market then they don't deserve any profit at all. We owe them absolutely nothing, they treat us like cattle. They're providing a commodity, so we're the ones who should be milking them, not the other way round.

The farmer's organic food metaphor doesn't apply because organic food isn't quite the same thing as non-organic food. They're two different products produced by two different methods so they have two different prices.

With carriers though they're all providing exactly the same product: calls, texts, data. There is absolutely nothing better about expensive data compared to cheap data, it's all just a single commodity. The ONLY reason calls cost more in America is because the carriers have stifled competition, and for that they deserve massive fines, not massive rewards.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

this whole thread reminds me of the story when some people tried to explain packet switching to the "whitebeards" of ma bell...

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

I'm guessing that a big part of the reason of the carrier's pricing & locking system is their financial calculation.

They've made their calculations before investing in all the infrastructure with certain assumptions, and those assumptions include components such as:
- number of customers per base station
- customer growth\cycles
- expected income from each customer

You can see how an open system that brings free\low cost alternative solutions to what they're selling (voip, messaging system, etc) may mess up with with their calculation and they're fighting it off to delay the inevitable.

You can be sure that such calculations made nowadays already take into account disruptive devices such as the N900 (for any new infrastructure investments), but we just can't expect things to change overnight.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Sounds like the carriers need to start developing better plan offerings dependent on device type. If someone has a n900 type device they will just start charging them at a rate equivalent to unlimited voice text data. (which at tmo US is still only costing me 85$ vs the 150 i would pay with at&t.)

I'm pretty sure that carriers can tell what devices are accessing their network and they will just block you unless you are properly registered and paying into the appropriate scheme. Low for dumb phones, Medium for phones like the 5800xm, high for the n900.

(at the same time I think they should give you a credit for signing a contract without one of their subsidized phones... it is nice to dream)

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

I love this thread. I am happy to see people voicing the same thoughts I have with regards to the Carriers and their meddling in our phones, software, and wallets. :)

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Unfortunately, it is. Whenever governments have offered bounties on pests (rats, foxes, whatever) some enterprising farmers always start breeding the pests to cash in on the bounty money. :(

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

I think Maemo has a built-in threat to carriers, and it's all about that word they're allergic to: open.

I think that's Nokia's biggest challenge here with this product. Of course, T-Mobile tends to be more flexible than other major carriers...

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Quick question based on a comment under "Networks may reject..." Has anyone ever received a discounted rate plan for NOT buying a subsidized phone?

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

I haven't been able to find a link, but I remember seeing a link to a graph published by Verizon a few months ago which outlined that they expected that with the advent of LTE and it's gradual upgrades that there would be a shift toward data only packages by sometime around 2014. It mentioned the adoption of VOIP/SIP for the majority of voice and video communications, and chat like programs/email replacing SMS.
This led me to believe that these big companies are expecting devices like this to be the future, but they don't believe that their networks are presently able to hold the network load, thus they are currently restricting VOIP, etc.

If anyone knows where I can find this graph, I'd love to link to it...surely I'm not the only one who saw it.

Your best bet is probably to "buy" a phone using your discount and then resell it on ebay, which would theoretically recover more money than you paid for it after the subsidy.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

I was not able to find the article I was looking for, but I did find this: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/05/n...partnership-i/

It's interesting, because the hinted LTE (Verizon/Nokia) device would describe a yet to be announced Maemo device far better than any Symbian one. Maybe this is the N920...here's to hoping!:D Think about it, it would be a test OS platform on a test network platform.

Notice that the third Green box says: "LTE VoIP emerging" :cool:

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

nokia did recently announce a LTE radio for handheld devices, iirc...

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Ah, so scientific is immediately invalid? What about peer review, studies and tests? :P It's off topic, but it's certainly no nonsense to look at something pragmatically. Can you provide me a link to 'the most recent scientific study' that you're talking about?

You know... it's funny that you say that, but I remember actually being in the room with a coworker who was on the phone with Southern Bell techs to explain to them how to set their packet switching systems from analog to digital to support frame relays. :P heheh Even in the 90's, that was STILL going on. :) Mind you, the techs were eager to learn.. but they had just no knowledge of data and packet switching even then. :)

Not I. Last time I had a contract was from 2004-2006 and haven't had a contract for my service since... and I STILL don't get any discounted rate despite using the same phone I'd bought in 2004. :) (HEY.. it works and it seems to take a lot of abuse, what can I say?)

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

It's amusing some of the situations they are in, take orange.
I have a "virgin tariff" with orange at the moment (like pay as you go, but automatically paid monthly).
The only way I can transfer my number to a contract for my n900 is to go to another provider, so I want to pay more money but Orange can't do it!
Also Orange do not do any contract for web browsing on a phone, which is even more bizarre.

As a final twist looks like I'll be going with T-Mobile, and they are merging with Orange now.

The carrier world is a big mess! and that's in the UK I hate to think what the situation is like in the US!
At least things are slowly improving...never thought I'd say it, but thanks to EU regulations!

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

The way I see it the carriers see their business model being converted to an ISP dumb pipe one. Fact of the matter is not very likely. If I need phone services I won't rely on voip or skype or such like. I'll rely on a local carrier to provide this. So no their business model is not so endengeared but they should remodel a bit to offer better data services maybe offer some other things along the way(like music subscriptions and such that some are starting to offer). But it actually needs to be VALUE not ringtones and themes.

They also need to start treating their customers as more than just sheep. A year ago I found out that my 3g data only connection had blocked incoming ports while my regular line with a mobile data option had them all open. I contacted their service departemnt and they told no all are blocked(took me a while to get this message accross). I was hoping that the blocked stuff was a mistake but it appeared the open one was a mistake. I didn't really care so much for this but I wanted this inconsistency resolved. So I did ask them to fix the other link. I do wish they would offer a let's say 5eur/month extra so that you would be able to manage your own firewall and not rely on theirs(as in all incoming ports open).

I can't see this hapening but this is how they would make some extra profit for near no work. Other options as well. Like extra for high bandwidth stuff(voip, videos) this isn't about download limits. It's how much you transfer per second on the pipe(something they still offer unlimited(or as high as technology will go) here).

Plenty of ways for them to make money from data and voice. They just don't want to just like any other established industry.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

What you're overlooking is that the infrastructure is inverting, from ISP over POTS to phone and other services over IP. So, yeah, it's not only likely it's underway.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

That's the dumb pipe theory. Unfortunately there's just too much incremental revenue they'd be giving up by not messing with phone functions and software. The last thing you as a business owner want is to have a gas station model: One on every corner, selling effectively the same product. The only difference might be price, if you have the stomach to run razor thin margins. There are companies that compete well, but they are the big integrated players who have control over every aspect of the product, like Exxon. Verizon's margins are much higher than an Exxon, and they like it that way.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Or the corollary: when your 2 year contract is over, did you get a discount if you kept the phone?

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Right on target. However, it's important to draw a greater distinction between the oil companies and the end distributers and stations. Yeah, I'd hate to be at the very end of the chain where you're lucky to scrape a few cents off the retail price of gasoline, but Exxon Mobil and it's brethren aren't hurting by any means. ;)

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Nice thread.

Re: Maemo, What's the Carrier's Argument?
 

Back in the old good days, selling phones with contracts was illegal here in Finland. And then the the EU directive came, allowing operators to sell sim-locked 3G phones with a 2-year contract...

All this time I've been laughing at the poor fellows who manage to break their phone before the contract is over, or just get tired to the ridiculous call rates they are paying. I vowed I'd never fall to that trap. Oh, how wrong I was...

Yesterday, in anticipation of the coming N900, I signed a 2-year contract with the worst of them all - TeliaSonera Finland, the previously government-owned telco, which managed to waste 3 billion euros to a 3G license in Germany - which was voided when they finally figured they couldn't actually afford to build the infrastructure needed. For simplicity's sake, let's just call them the AT&T of Finland (yes, the same company also sells the iPhone here).

The reason? Well, they offered an unlimited data plan at a nominal 3,6Mbps transfer rate for 11,90 per month. Even comes with a free Huawei usb modem. The actual transfer rates remain to be seen, though... I'm more than just a little skeptical :cool:

Gotta love it when huge, monolithic corporations finally "get" it :p