unbundling of phone services

Robin Paulson robin.paulson at gmail.com
Tue Jun 12 23:23:17 CEST 2007


sorry for the partly off-topic, slightly rambling post, but i feel
this has partial relevance to openmoko

one of the hot topics where i live (NZ), is LLU, unbundling of
monopoly-controlled internet connections to the home/business, to
allow any other companies to have access to the network at a fair
price. this is seen by many as the holy grail of open internet access,
spurring innovation and driving down prices. a number of countries
where one company/entity has monopoly control of the lines have taken,
or are about to take, this route.

there has been lots of talk around the iphone/openmoko about what
could potentially be done in the way of innovative use of mobile phone
networks, but as the networks are locked down and controlled by their
operators, there is very little considering how old/how pervasive the
technologies are.

so my question is:
is there a similar movement anywhere for the equivalent of LLU for
mobile phone networks? i.e. allowing other operators to use networks
of vodafone/state-owned telco/sprint/whoever at reasonable price? most
countries don't have monopolies providing mobile services (even nz has
2 providers), but they still act as though they are monoplies,
providing (in my experience) vastly overpriced, very limited services

at the moment, the innovative things that could potentially be done
are restricted to using wi-fi connections, but wi-fi is not anywhere
near as pervasive as gsm/cdma coverage




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